50 Years Forward: Leading through uncertainty: Stewardship in real time

Before joining Insight in 2011, I’d spent many years on the client side in senior brand and marketing roles. I’d worked inside large organisations, with boards, budgets and performance pressure, and lived with the consequences of strategic decisions made upstream.

What made the move to Insight particularly relevant was that, for eight of those years, I’d been a client of the business. I’d worked closely with the Insight team while leading an eighty-strong brand and marketing function, and I’d seen first-hand how the agency thought, how it worked, and how it showed up when the pressure was on. That perspective has stayed with me.

When I became CEO in 2014, the belief system was already clear. Strategy comes first. Do work that matters. Be straight up. Be easy to work with. Look after people. My role was not to reinvent those principles, but to embed them deeply enough that they would hold when conditions became difficult.

Long before Covid, we were focused on building a business that was resilient, not just successful. That meant being realistic about cost and capability, and treating culture as something lived every day, not something talked about only when times were good.

“Treating culture as something lived every day.”

Covid tested everyone, but in many ways it wasn’t the hardest period. Government wage subsidies provided a temporary buffer. The real test came afterwards.

The subsequent recession has been longer, quieter and far more wearing. Work slowed. Costs rose. Certainty disappeared. There were no safety nets this time, just the need for hard decisions and careful judgement.

We did have to reduce our cost base. That meant letting some people go, which is always the hardest part of leadership. Those decisions were not taken lightly. They involved real people and real consequences. At the same time, we worked to protect as much capability and cohesion as possible so the business could survive intact and ready for what came next.

Throughout that period, we stayed focused on a single question: how do we ensure the long-term health of the business while remaining true to the values that define it?

What I’ve learned is that people respond to honesty. Transparency builds trust, even when the news is hard. Trust builds resilience. And resilience is what allows a business to come through difficult periods able to move forward, not start again from scratch.

“People respond to honesty. Transparency builds trust, even when the news is hard.”

That same mindset shapes how we approach change in our industry. New technologies, new tools and new ways of working are constant. AI in particular is reshaping how we think about efficiency, insight and delivery. We don’t see these shifts as threats. We see them as opportunities to do better work, more intelligently, in service of our clients.

Leading Insight today means holding competing pressures at the same time. Commercial discipline and human responsibility. Progress and care. Ambition and realism. It’s rarely comfortable, but it’s necessary.

“Experience gives us judgement. Curiosity keeps us moving. Holding both at once keeps Insight looking forward.”

Stewardship, as I understand it, is about making decisions that won’t always look clever in the short term, but will stand up over time. It’s about protecting the conditions that allow good work to happen and being honest about the trade-offs along the way.

Fifty years on, that long view matters more than ever. Experience gives us judgement. Curiosity keeps us moving. Holding both at once is what allows Insight to keep looking forward, and to help our clients do the same.

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50 years forward

• Lesson from 50 years
  You can’t control uncertainty, but you can keep adapting how you lead and how you deliver.
  

• What that means for you today
  As conditions keep shifting, the advantage is staying clear, staying honest and staying ready to adjust without losing direction.