Innovating Leadership:
Co-Creating Our Future

Maureen: [00:00:00] So, hi, welcome Michelle Harrison to Innovative Leaders Driving Thriving Organization in the International Leadership Association Conference. Thank you for having me. So I’m gonna give a little bit of background about Michelle. She is the global CEO of Verian, and former CEO of Kantar Public.

What is it that you think is most important for building sustainable success in business?

Michelle: Two things really. The first is that you understand your client well in the kind of business I’m, which is professional services. Yes. Uh, first and foremost, of course, it’s about understanding how you’re going to help your clients be able to do their job better. Okay. Um, so that [00:01:00] you will be the best possible agency for them.

And so. First and foremost, it’s about understanding your client’s challenges and ensuring that the offer you take to them to, to market, I suppose, is the offer that they need and we’ll need in the future. So, so my job is to get that offer right for our clients to help them. Right now to be able to mm-hmm.

My clients are governments around the world, so to help them with the challenges of decision making around public policy and, and government communications and, and from insight to execution of public policy. So to understand their needs and how we can help with that and to anticipate the challenges they’re about to face next so that we can be ready to support ’em through that.

So first thing is our clients. Understanding their needs, making sure our capability is going to help them with that. And then of course. The [00:02:00] offer is brought to life by the caliber of our people. So it is the, the caliber of our talent in the organization, making sure that we are creating an environment that allows people to be the very best that they can be.

And for me personally, as a CEO, to build a, a team, a leadership team around me. That is a very high performing team.

Maureen: So especially during the theme of our conferences, turbulent times mm-hmm. Dealing with government policy, that has to be a fascinating role that you’re fulfilling at this point.

Michelle: Well, I was about to say, I do, I do my job for pleasure.

I wouldn’t actually, I definitely do wish to get paid, but, uh, the actual subject matter of what Kantar Public does is, is something that I absolutely. Wish to be, uh, challenged by and to be part of because it’s about how to support the [00:03:00] delivery of a better quality public realm. And I find that intrinsically motivating.

So I find it intrinsically motivating and intellectually fascinating. These are are very turbulent times and I think it’s. Easy to be ahistorical. I think it’s easy to overuse the word crisis, but last year we did a piece of work, which is the leaders report, the WPP government practice. Of which we account our public as part.

We, uh, created this, we launched at Davos actually in Oh wow. In January of this year. And it’s the first to the best of our knowledge, it’s the first global overview of the challenges that government communicators face around the world. What that, uh, allowed us to understand is that governments everywhere, regardless of of where they sit on the planet, geopolitically, are facing what they perceive to be an absolute crisis of trust in terms of, um, communicating with the public [00:04:00]disintermediation through technology, which.

In terms of how recent that is, that’s still very recent and there’s a lack of, um, confidence in the ability of government communications to, to manage that, to support democracy or, or, or, or to support the, the functioning of the nation state. And this, this feeling as well that we are at the beginning of another profound period of change, whether.

What we will see will be a rapid run, um, in robotics and, and AI and, and, and governments feeling that their current practices sit in the, in the older paradigm. So I agree that these are turbulent times. Mm-hmm. And I do feel that Kantar Public has a role to play in partnering our clients to, to help them with the decision making and the ability to, to respond to that.

Maureen: I’m encouraged and I should have anticipated. Because we’ve talked about just the ethical and moral issues, everything from cloning humans to [00:05:00] AI and medical, some of the, the medical work going on. One of my clients was talking about we can now with the science of, uh, brain research, you could take, take away a mental illness.

Which seems like it would be a gift, but if you’ve been schizophrenic your whole life and someone now changes part of your brain, your entire way of functioning. Yeah, it must be relearned.

Michelle: So science and technology, biotech, FinTech, all of these things Uhhuh present governments with enormous opportunity and new regulatory challenges.

And so where we can play a role is through thinking about what that means for government, but in light of where citizens wish governments to go with this kind of regulation and what the values and attitudes and resources are of their national populations and [00:06:00] what that means for the public policy issues mm-hmm.

That they’ll face. So these are exciting and difficult times, and obviously governments. Unlike most corporations, their challenge is to work with whole population communities rather than just parts of that. So with all of these opportunities. Come inevitable risk about increasing inequality or how to reduce inequality.

So governments basically, you know, they, they need to deliver public policy. They need to make public services work, and they need to use communications to help the public understand. How they can engage, or they need to use communications to drive behavior change to reduce the cost of the, of the negative consequences of these changes.

So the environment changes of pace governments need to maintain the quality of the public realm just continues, continues within [00:07:00] that.

Maureen: Another one that comes to mind is the increase in, you mentioned desegregation and offshoring. Combined with robotics and AI that’ll do a lot of jobs that that were previously done by people, which then could potentially makes goods and services cheaper.

We like that, but it also raises the challenge of how do we keep people employed? Yes. If we’re offshoring and automating work that was previously done by qualified humans. That no longer have work.

Michelle: Absolutely. And, and our job is to help our clients think about, you know, what does that mean for education policy?

Mm-hmm. What does that mean for, for policy around employment and skills and training? What does that mean for the way we collect taxes? What does that mean for public health? Also, what are the opportunities of these new forms of communication? Actually. To now implement rapid improvement, so mm-hmm. An example of that might be the [00:08:00] work we do now in South Asia where the rapid penetration of, of smartphone or all forms of mobile technology allow us to reach parts of a population that even 15 years ago mm-hmm.

We would’ve been challenged to reach and to bring them into the dialogue with government around establishing. Public policy or to communicate with them in ways that can support behavior change campaigns around public health. So yes, it is a time of great regulatory challenge and it is a time of rapid movement in the need to get public policy right, but also a time of quite unimaginable opportunity to also deal with some of the.

Uh, global public health challenges, for instance, that, that we haven’t managed to before now.

Maureen: So using your example of smartphones mm-hmm. We’ve got people now all over the world that are being [00:09:00] impacted by earth related events. Mm-hmm. Floods, volcanoes, earthquakes. And phones now send alerts. Yes. And no matter where I am in the world, I can get, I do get alerts.

Yeah. For something. And in many cases, those safe lives of people who didn’t or may not have a television.

Michelle: Yeah, exactly. So the work that we do with government communications teams around the world mm-hmm. Some of it is about. How to use technologies for everyday government communications. Mm-hmm. And some of it is what’s the best use of technology for crisis as well.

So we would, we spend a lot of time with our clients on, on those types of issues.

Maureen: So what do you do to build a, a leadership team and an employee team? Because one good teams create solid organizations. And in a time where you’re expecting your people, I’m assuming, to work long hours, stay current, be adaptable, [00:10:00] because things are changing, presumably moment by moment on the political stage and in the technology arena.

So you’re working in a couple of the fastest moving. Arenas and probably nothing is going slow in your world.

Michelle: No, but that’s

Maureen: but

Michelle: train, that’s one of the great things about, that’s one of the great things about, about what we do. So I think we are exceptionally fortunate. The kind of work that we do is engaging enough that we are able to attract very.

Talented people into it. Mm-hmm. And we bring people in who have specific skill sets in the areas we’ve been talking about. They’re much greater than my skillset in any of those particular areas. So they may have deep expertise in behavior change. Okay. They may have deep expertise in, uh, new technologies and have their transforming the way in which people are communicating.

Or they may have deep expertise around how to build capability within government’s, communications teams. Or they may have expertise in global best practice in any form [00:11:00] of public policy. So I am extremely lucky that we are able to retract. Talent of that caliber. My job then is to give the people the space to be able to get on with it, but to be team based.

And so many of the things we’ve talked about in terms of rapid penetration of mobile technology and um, what that means for public policy, we find those answers. By people with those skill sets working together. So a requirement of being able to service our clients is to be able to team around the skill sets needed.

So we attract people with deep expertise. We select people who are predisposed to enjoy team environments. Mm-hmm. Otherwise they may well instead be in other environments like academia, et cetera, but, but for us to be able to work very well with our clients, we have to be excited. By what we can do when we synthesize our own [00:12:00] capabilities mm-hmm.

To take those teams to our clients.

Maureen: I came out of Anderson Consulting and Accenture and pros and cons to every environment. But one of the things we talked about, I, I remember going in as a new hire and saying, I, you know, why is everything this or that? And the, the answer was. We’ve got at that point, 70,000 people around the globe.

And you could be on a team with any of them. Yeah. And we have to have a common language and a common way of doing things, or we couldn’t get results for our clients quickly.

Michelle: Yes. I would say though, one of the greatest pleasures I have had in my career is that I’ve had the opportunity to work. With very talented people in teams alongside them.

And I have found that immensely enjoyable. And I think one of the greatest satisfactions is building high performing teams and watching what they achieve when they’re at their best. And you know, we are, we are in a commercial environment, we are a business. So we don’t [00:13:00] just spend our time delivering work, we also spend our time winning work and, and I also really enjoy.

The team spirit that comes with a big pitch, with a long pursuit. Mm-hmm. Um, and again, I think, I think the, the community that comes together for a period of time to fix those problems and because the kinds of problems we are focused on often are, are very much about the values that people are bringing to the office and wanting their professional lives to be making a, a big contribution in the public realm.

I think we are very lucky. I think it’s a privilege actually to be able to do this work.

Maureen: So I’ve heard the theme of values in several of the interviews in the last few days. Can you say more about how that shows up for your organization and for you, how do your values ripple through the organization?

Michelle: Well, I mean, the starting point is, I, I think I said earlier, I make mistakes all the time, so I, I’m sure I have good days when my, my values, I hope, are having a very positive [00:14:00] impact. And I’m sure I have other days where people are trying to understand what I’m on about and I expect, but I. We are here to make money.

Mm-hmm. Our job is to deliver growth. I having spent time in different types of organizations like academia and having been involved in not-for-profits, I’m extremely confident that I’m at my best in a business environment. Okay. And that the pursuit of profit. In no way weakens the pursuit of, uh, delivering benefits to clients that, that also have a public contribution.

I’m extremely happy that those things work very well together, and my experience has been, uh, we are at our best when we’re achieving a healthy bottom line for us and a fantastic outcome for our clients because it allows us to invest in the talent and capability that they need. So, um, my values are about us being successful for our clients.

And, and the cycle that comes outta that. I don’t enjoy working with people who are pompous, so I, on that [00:15:00] basis, I don’t certainly hire people who are pompous around me. And I think in the end, organizations are influenced by the personality of the people who are. Who are senior in them. I don’t think we are pompous.

I think, I think quite the opposite. I think we, uh, you know, we, we have low relative ego. People understand that what we do not negotiate around is collaboration. People who work in, in Kantar and Kantar public speaking on behalf of my particular part of the business, collaboration is not optional. They will collaborate with other people because they will not be able to fix their client’s problems well enough on their own.

No one can do that. So that is non-negotiable. We are a collaborative culture and people who don’t feel comfortable collaborating shouldn’t be part of our business.

Maureen: Um, so part of that means also admitting, I don’t know everything.

Michelle: Oh, absolutely. Or, well, let’s turn that around. It’s about having a passion for learning.

Maureen: Mm-hmm. Okay.

Michelle: Mm-hmm. I would hate to think that [00:16:00] I haven’t still got more to learn than I’ve currently learned to date.

Maureen: Yeah. As a passion for

Michelle: learning. And I would say that alongside that, I care enormously about us being able to bring. The very best of new and evolving methods. So in my world, that’s around the empirical evidence base for, well for evidence-based policy making.

Mm-hmm. So I care passionately about us being able to bring new and evolving methods to those constant problems of how to deliver. Great public policy that works, that works for society. So what that means is we need to be constantly in the mode of innovation. So innovation is an everyday occurrence, and that would mean, again, the people who thrive in our organization and people who want new challenges every day.

Maureen: Okay. So Michelle, what kind of people do you recruit and what are the characteristics of people who thrive not only working in [00:17:00] a consulting space, but this specific space that is doing public policy work across countries? Well, from a

Michelle: professional point of view, they need to have the skillset that comes with.

Good consulting behaviors. Mm-hmm. So they need to be more passionate about their client’s challenges than their own. Mm-hmm. They, uh, need to be inherently motivated to want to support their client, solve problems, to deal with those problems, and find challenges for ’em. They need to be able to maintain long-term relationships because the kinds of things that we work on don’t get fixed.

Very quickly, and they need to be able to work in a team. So the sustainability of our own business practice is based on people who can sustain very high quality professional standards over long periods of time. They also need to have inherent curiosity around the challenges. [00:18:00] Of the contemporary nation state, wherever that is in the world.

Mm-hmm. And to be motivated to bring the very best of their skillset to solve them. Often we are hiring people who, at some point in their lives have studied politics, been involved in journalism or some form of public policy making, have deep expertise in different types of research or consulting capabilities, but they will be.

Interested and inherently motivated to be part of this moment in time of working out how governments adjust to the rapidly shifting technological landscape, some of the biggest public policy challenges of our time. Whether they’re in public health, that can be obesity or that can be outdoor defecation.

That can be the eradication of, of childhood diseases. On the other hand, it may be that they are inherently motivated around issues to do with the effective delivery of public [00:19:00] services, or their passions may be around the function that governments have to communicate to the public. So, you know, governments are delivering.

Policy, they’re delivering services and they’re needing to communicate around all of those things. And the more effectively those things are done, the greater the value to the taxpayer. The more effectively that system of governance is working and ultimately the better that government is able to deliver improvements in the quality of life to citizens.

So our staff need to be able to combine the professional skills of working in a consulting environment and a research environment with the intellectual ability to wrestle and wish to be part of those solutions.

Maureen: So I hear intellectual curiosity, intellectual horsepower. Yes. Gotta be smart.

Michelle: You have, yeah.

Maureen: Gotta be curious.

Michelle: We are all, I guess all of us in, in Kantar public are, are driven by the desire to make [00:20:00] things work better. And we have found that we as individuals. Are, are more effective when we work in high performing teams mm-hmm. In a commercial environment.

Maureen: So, unique about this time is the cross sector collaboration.

Can you say a little bit more about that?

Michelle: Well, I’ve had the privilege to work in, uh, different environments and mostly in the commercial world, but also in the not-for-profit. And I’ve spent time in academic institutions as well and everything about this. Moment. This paradigm, this new paradigm that we’re entering into, tells me that the challenges that we face, whether that be the absolute crisis in trust in governance, the challenges we have around around.

A democracy, technological transformation. What this tells me is we have moved beyond the paradigm where the public sector fix the public sector and corporations are at [00:21:00] themselves. And, and the voluntary sector there to sort of, you know, mop up the pieces, so to speak, are the, the solutions to better governance in our future, I truly believe are going to be matched, brought together through.

Matching the skills of the public, the private, and the third sector. And I think, you know, Kantar public is, can be part of that. Our people come from those worlds and I am basically of the view that we should be bringing together solutions that can make a contribution to the quality of the public realm and drive business and make it easier for, for governments to function.

And that this is about. What works not about how things

Maureen: used to be done. Thank you. What a beautiful note to end on that we’re really committed to finding, identifying what works often through experimentation, through collaboration, we’re gonna make decisions. [00:22:00] Some of them are gonna be directionally as good as they can be with the information we have, and then we’re gonna adjust.

And firms like yours are brilliant at helping. Uh. Identify next directions and evaluating what worked and what needs to be refined as we co-evolve across sectors to make the world better for everyone. Thank you. I couldn’t have put it better than myself.