I had dinner with a client (and now friend) last night. Let’s call him Adrian, for the sake of this missive, to protect confidentiality.
The conversation was rich and alive, jumping around quite a bit before settling into a rhythm that included reflection, stories, personal sharing, laughs, and moments of clarity. I left the restaurant wishing all of my conversations were like this.
We looked back on some work we did together about 5 or 6 years ago. Adrian (a founder and executive at an advertising agency) attended a CEO retreat I host a few times a year: a three-day, two-night experience outside of Cape Town. It’s a transformational event – one that often brings about pretty consequential moves for the CEOs in attendance. I’ve done about 15 of them over the years and, although I recall the experiences of CEOs on the retreat in detail, I don’t always have line of sight of how the experience plays out afterwards.
Our conversation turned to what came out of the retreat for Adrian. From LinkedIn and the like, I had a sense of what transpired post-retreat, but I didn’t know the details. I wasn’t prepared for what I heard.
There are two parts to the story. One is the series of miracles that took place for Adrian, which I’ll describe below, and the other was the bottom-line impact of these miracles.
First, to Adrian’s personal story.
He’s a person who ‘runs hot’. He’s a borderline genius in his ability to see bold ideas and to bring them into beautiful fruition. He’s far more than an ad exec/creative: more in the form of a John Galliano (the longtime creative director of Dior) or Tom Ford, a similarly talented type whose creative genius stretches from fashion into industrial design to movie direction. Advertising was a good platform for him, but it was a thin slice of what he was (and is) capable of.
Adrian had a ‘big’ experience at the CEO retreat. In retrospect, he just needed sacred time to slow down, unwind, decompress, be in the company of other thinkers, feel nature on his skin, and talk about rich topics with smart people. Essentially, to get off the dulling hamster wheel that business can become if we don’t watch it carefully.
We do a few interesting things on the retreat: we begin at dawn with archetypal work using swords, crowns, and cloaks; a solo walk in nature; and a 3-dimensional modelling exercise that allows the CEO to build, critically assess, and then rebuild their business shape and form.
It was the 3D exercise that unlocked him. Out of this came the big ideas: one was to rewire the agency, a move that led to the agency becoming the most dynamic and successful agency in South Africa for a good three or four years.
But it turns out that it birthed other ideas too: record labels and restaurants, to name a few. It was these ideas that allowed Adrian to take flight: a platform for his full genius to be released. Ideas that had been waiting there for him all along, but just needed the right environment to be unearthed.
I could go into more detail, but I’m aware that this is already turning into a long missive that might test the attention span of my readers …
So, to the other part of Adrian’s story: financial returns and Return on Equity. This is not something I write about much, but it’s an important part of my work and the work of the CEOs I work with. It’s not very sexy, I suppose, but unless ROE is in play, their work and mine lack legitimacy and credibility.
Adrian’s agency killed it on this front. Revenue doubled or tripled, and although we didn’t discuss the details, I assume profit and dividends, too. In fact, having sold to the agency to a global conglomerate (a move that was destined to falter because Adrian’s agency was far too brilliant to fit into a low-vibrational global behemoth), he and his partners are now buying the business back.
To be fair, Adrian’s journey was not simple or easy or perfect, and it still has many miles to run before his story is fully told, but here’s the learning:
If you’ve read my last few missives, you’ll have read about the Upstream, Midstream and Downstream axis I’ve been developing. The idea is that the Upstream (quality of thinking, human energy, trust) flows into the Midstream (strategy, processes, system design) and then into the Downstream impact (revenue, profit, ROE).
The stronger the Upstream, the better the Midstream, the greater the Downstream. Adrian completed this axis. He put massive fuel and creativity into himself; he extended this energy into his business, and he and others reaped the financial returns.
This is a pathway that awaits all CEOs. But it has to start with the Upstream. That’s the kicker. Leave out this Upstream, and the Midstream and Downstream are weak.
This is a big idea. I’m still working through the details of it, but it’s coming together in a powerful way. The Upstream is hard to curate, and I don’t think it can be done without expertise and careful curation.
As Adrian and his partners take back control of their business, I suspect even bigger things might be on their horizon. But they will be different this time: he and his partners have all undergone
transformational journeys of one kind or another, and I suspect that their collective futures might be profound and groundbreaking. As long as they continue to do their Upstream work. That’s the spark of everything.