The Executive Lounge

Featuring 

Rishad Tobaccowala

Author, Speaker & Advisor

Hosted by

Michael Seidler

Founder & CEO

Madison Alley Global Ventures

December 15, 2021 @ 6 – 7pm ET

EXECUTIVE HIGHLIGHTS

Introduction  

MadisonAlley.tv virtually hosted an exclusive conversation with author, speaker, and advisor, Rishad Tobaccowala, in The Executive Lounge.

Rishad is the former Chief Strategy & Growth Officer of Publicis Groupe.

Overview of Rishad Tobaccowala

• Author, speaker, and advisor
• Author of, “Restoring the Soul of Business: Staying Human in the Age of Data”
• Former Chief Strategy & Growth Officer at Publicis Groupe, an 80,000-employee firm comprised of companies including Epsilon, Sapient, Digitas, Leo Burnett, Saatchi and Saatchi, Starcom and Zenith, dedicated to delivering marketing and business transformation
• Former Chairman of Digitas and Razorfish, two of the largest marketing transformation agencies in the world with over 11,000 employees

-Interview-

The Future

There are four questions that most individuals and companies are asking themselves. The first is about the future: “How will the future be?”

While we cannot predict the future, we can predict trends. Rishad sees six forces that are driving the future. The first force is that of multi-polar globalization. Western-centric globalization is dead, while Asian forces are on the rise. The second force is changing demographics. Apart from Africa, populations around the world are rapidly aging and decreasing. A multi-ethnic, young population is becoming the predominant demographic and countries are experiencing a growing schism between young and old as well as urban and rural. The third force is the third connected age of technology – the age of AI, AR, VR, and Cloud. Significant shifts in health, education, finance, and automobiles, fueled by technology and democratization, is the fourth force. The fifth force is climate change and companies’ ability to adapt to new governance around sustainability. Covid-19 and the impacts of the pandemic are the sixth and final force, that has and will completely change organizations, workers, and the office structure.

Change Management

In Rishad’s words, “Change sucks.” While change is difficult, irrelevance is worse, which is why the second question is, “How does one navigate change?”

There are six drivers of change and growth. Most companies are well adept at the first three, while many struggle or simply ignore the last three. The mechanisms of change that are necessary are: strategy, M&A, and reorganization. These mechanisms, while data-driven and critical, are simply a plan. To effectively execute on change, companies must communicate: why these changes are good for talent’s personal growth; what are some incentives to this change; if there will be training provided to adapt to the change.

Modern Leadership

Change in a company must come from leadership. People follow people, not titles, so it is important to ask a third question: “How to lead today?”

Leaders must have six traits. They must be competent, especially as they age and move higher in the ranks, ensuring they do not become irrelevant as changes in demographics and technology arise. Leaders must also be adept at time management. It is crucial to find a balance of focus between the present and future to grow. They also must have integrity. Talent is increasingly interested in leaders’ intent and value transparency in actions. In order to gain a following, leaders must possess empathy. In the age of Covid-19, leaders must understand their employees’ fears, concerns, challenges as well as hopes, desires, and dreams. The penultima trait is vulnerability—a strength, not a weakness. It is critical that leaders have accountability and communicate when they make a mistake. The final, and often underestimated, trait is inspiration. Real leaders do not micromanage—they inspire their teams to work together and work into the future.

Purposeful Growth

The final question that companies and individuals seek an answer to is, “How does one grow/remain relevant?”

To transform, companies need technology and talent. These factors must work in concert and both are necessary to grow. Technology is a lever, while talent can make it go somewhere. Talent today crave: money, fame, power, purpose, values, connections, freedom, identity, and growth. Freedom, identity, and growth are becoming increasingly important and driving people the most. Workers are concerned with how they grow as a person, how they grow their skillset, and grow in the company. Learning, and dedicating at least one hour per day to learn something new, is critically important for growth.

Leaders must change their mindset and be open to new ways of doing things. To achieve this, they must let go of things they think are really important (with the exception of family and ethics) and build a case for the exact opposite of what they believe to be true.

The Great Resignation

Employee attrition is between 35-50%, and even higher in the agency world, and 20% of the American workforce is doing a side job in addition to their full-time occupations. The future of the workforce is in the gig economy. Companies can adapt to this change by offering more opportunities for plug and play and moving their operations to the cloud.

Restoring The Soul of Business

Touted as one of the best business books of 2020, Rishad’s globally published book, “Restoring The Soul of Business: Staying Human in The Age of Data,” explores how leaders and companies alike can incorporate intuition in their business decisions. Successful individuals and organizations combine the story and the spreadsheet. While math and data are important, a focus on talent and culture are also necessary for success. Rishad explores 12 different ways that companies can work to create this balance through 12 different chapters in his book (available on Amazon).

Q&A

What will be the biggest surprise that we didn’t see coming in the digital media industry in 2022?

-Jeremy Hlavacek, CRO, IBM Watson Advertising

The biggest surprise will be not seeing that we have already reached the peak of Web 2.0 companies and are already in the age of Web 3.0 – transitioning from a closed to open system. The digital media industry will allow much more control in a more democratized landscape.

I’ve seen commoditization of creativity crush thinking and talent over decades, is there a renaissance afoot?

-Heath Rudduck, Chief Creative Officer, Padilla

The renaissance is not only afoot, it’s ablaze. Companies are too focused on the “plumbing” and not on “poetry,” which will leave many behind as we enter the creative age.

What is your key strategy to inspiring creative teams to keep their work fresh, relevant, or even surprising?

-Glen Janssens, CEO, Emotion Studios

The key strategy to inspiring creative teams is recognizing that creativity is connecting the dots in different ways and that innovation requires fresh and insightful connections. To enable this, leaders must have talent do a lot of projects that don’t have to do with work, allow for clashing perspectives, and ask talent to not do the things they do the most.

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