Kevin Roberts
Anna Gilligan
Welcome to MeetTheBoss TV, I'm Anna Gilligan. In this programme, Kevin Roberts the CEO of advertising powerhouse Saatchi & Saatchi discusses the business of creativity.
You said your first real job was with Mary Quant as a brand manager. How did you get from there to where you are today?
Kevin Roberts:
We had a great advantage working with Mary. Of course if you’re a fashion designer you’re predicting the colors. So we knew what lip, nail and eye colors were going to be hot way before anybody else. Business moved very fast. London was at the heart of everything swinging in those days and I caught the attention of the Gillette Company who were then in the razor blade business predominantly, 95 percent. They said, “Look, we want to get into female toiletries, female products and you’ve been running this great beauty brand. You’re 22 years old. Why don’t you come here?”
Well I really hadn’t been running it. I had been riding it but I said yes. So I joined Gillette. Then after three years there I moved from there to Proctor and Gamble because I thought P&G – I loved marketing and I thought, “You know P&G is the best marketing company I’ve ever seen. Their people are smarter. They’re skilled. They’re trained. They just look at the world differently.” So I went to P&G and persuaded them that they should take a risk because they had never hired people from other companies. They only hired people from school. So I persuaded them to take a risk on me.
Anna Gilligan:
I wanted to ask you about that. You left school at 16.
Kevin Roberts:
Yeah.
Anna Gilligan:
Did you think you were taking a big risk at the time?
Kevin Roberts:
I was thrown out. So I didn’t have a big choice.
Anna Gilligan:
Oh. What were you thrown out for? May I ask?
Kevin Roberts:
Yeah, of course you can. My girlfriend became pregnant. That sounds like it was a passive thing. So I made my girlfriend pregnant. It was quite a disaster because it was only the second time that we’d done it but I didn’t know anything about birth control in those days either or anything like that.
Anna Gilligan:
So you convinced Proctor and Gamble to hire you despite not having –
Kevin Roberts:
A lot – yeah, no education. In fact P&G became my education. I said to them, “Listen you’ve got a lot of smart guys with MBAs but I’ve been working for the last six years at Mary Quant and Gillette. So it’s my work experience against their MBA. Why don’t you give it a go?” I was blessed really because they took a great, big chance. They broke precedent which they’re not famous for doing now and they turned me into a leader and into a really confident if not very competent perhaps but confident marketing guy.
Anna Gilligan:
Did you have great mentors there?
Kevin Roberts:
I’ve been very lucky that I attracted probably half a dozen over the years, some of whom are still with me thank goodness. I was mentored at P&G by a terrific German guy called Herbert Schmitz who taught me so much stuff like – was just a very exciting, inspirational, non-traditional leader. We’re still friends to this day. He constantly gave me responsibility before I was ready and then provided me with a nurturing environment where when I failed it felt okay and I learned very quickly.
Anna Gilligan:
Was being a CEO was that something you always aspired to or was it kind of a natural progression of your career?
Kevin Roberts:
I was – when you talk to kids and boys and men and you say, “When are you at your best,” a man will pretty always tell you because I’ve done this in loads and loads of research. He’ll say, “I’m at my best when I’m in a team,” because men are taught for a very early age to play sports, to be in a team, sacrifice you and your mates. None of us is as good as all of us, all this stuff. Well I’m at my best when I’m in a team as long as I’m the captain which is not quite so attractive. I found that out from the age of seven.
Anna Gilligan:
But that’s good to know about yourself.
Kevin Roberts:
It is, right, because then if you know that and I don’t even have to be made captain. I’ll walk into a room and assume captaincy. If there’s another captain there when we’ve got two captains it’s a bit of a problem. Right? So I’ve always been sort of one to take charge to get things done, anxious to execute, anxious to get a result. I’ve always loved inspiring and working with others, really.
Anna Gilligan:
Since 1997 Kevin Roberts has been CEO of Saatchi & Saatchi, one of the worlds leading creative organisations, that count some of the most recognisable companies among its clients. Kevin has led Saatchi & Saatchi to unprecedented financial success, so how does he lead such a creative team here at Saatchi and Saatchi?
Kevin Roberts:
Through inspiration because you can’t do it through leadership because you can’t get eagles to fly in formation. These creative people that work here they – you can’t lead them. You have to inspire them, motivate them. Management won’t work, command and control. Old fashioned followers and leaders won’t work because they won’t follow because they’re creatively driven. They’re driven by the moment, by the mood, by the impulse. They’re intuitive people.
Anna Gilligan:
So you’re saying you can’t manage these creative types that work here but – so I would imagine that there’s probably some big egos, some very stubborn ideas. How do you manage conflict when it arises?
Kevin Roberts:
I’m not big on conflict because I think dynamic tension which is a way many creative organizations are run is a really short term policy. It can solve a problem. It’s good on a project basis but over time the problem with dynamic tension is that it is injurious to human capital because dynamic tension hurts people and people don’t perform at their best in a creative environment when they’re hurt. We were talking about before the show that people work better when they’re given unconditional love and support, when you’re given positive reinforcement. Dynamic tension this for me is an old model that is – you see it on TV and these guys are mad men and throwing things up in the air. That’s an awful way to run a company. We’re here to run a sustainable enterprise that should be based on family values, demanding yet caring.
Anna Gilligan:
I wanted to ask you a little bit about strategy. How do you ensure that since Saatchi and Saatchi is global that there’s a shared sense of vision and culture?
Kevin Roberts:
Okay, so I don’t believe in vision.
Anna Gilligan:
No? Why not?
Kevin Roberts:
Martin Luther King, do you remember him?
Anna Gilligan:
He had a dream.
Kevin Roberts:
Did not say, “I have a vision statement,” did he?
Anna Gilligan:
“I have a dream.”
Kevin Roberts:
If he had said to the people, “I have a vision,” everybody would go, “Oh boy.” But you want a dream. We want to have visions or dreams? What do you want to do? We want to have dreams as kids. We want to live our dreams. We want to buy into those dreams. We want to make our dreams come true. We don’t want a vision statement or a mission statement. I don’t believe in strategy. I think tactics dictate strategy. I don’t think – I think –
Anna Gilligan:
Do you believe in culture, company culture?
Kevin Roberts:
Massively although culture is a very sort of anthropological word but I do believe it’s vital. I believe in a set of beliefs and values which is what culture really is made of. So I think we have a purpose, we have a dream. We have a set of believes. We have a spirit. That’s how we run the company, not on a vision statement or a strategy.
Anna Gilligan:
So how do you convey that, your dream?
Kevin Roberts:
Through every screen. We’re all screenagers here. Everybody’s got mobiles. Everybody’s got computers.
Everybody here is Facebooking, Tweeting, doing the whole – you can imagine. The average age of my company the person here is 27 years old. I take it up a little bit as you can guess. So here people – there is no such thing here as new media. It’s all now.
Anna Gilligan:
So do you send out companywide e-mails a lot? How do you –
Kevin Roberts:
I don’t do any companywide stuff. It’s much more personal. We integrate – we talk to people personally. So I do a blog. So I care to connect which everybody reads. So I blog every day about stuff that’s on my mind and all that kind of stuff so people can read that. Saatchi has a lot of bloggers in the place. We have a lot of Websites, a lot of networks. All my stuff’s posted on my Website and stuff like that so people dip in, dip out. It’s highly participative. I’ve got three people, assistants working with me who make sure I respond to everything that comes into me and I respond to it all personally.
Anna Gilligan:
What would you define your job as being?
Kevin Roberts:
The job is to inspire all our people to be the best they can be in the pursuit of our dream. That’s job number one, inspire our people to be the best they can be in pursuit of our dream. The second role for me is to create a love – to turn Saatchi and Saatchi brand into a love mark for clients and perspective clients. So I’m the brand manager of Saatchi and Saatchi, too.
Anna Gilligan:
I was reading you had all these pieces of advice for people. What do you say would help people and businesses in general?
Kevin Roberts:
The first thing is follow your passion, right? So don’t go into business unless you just love it because this is not about work/life balance. Work/life balance is moderation, cop out. It’s about work/life integration.
Anna Gilligan:
So you can’t balance it? Work has to come first?
Kevin Roberts:
Balance is terrible. Balance is about moderation. Who wants to live a life of moderation? Nothing succeeds like success.
Anna Gilligan:
So go all out at whatever you’re doing?
Kevin Roberts:
That’s it. Live your best live every day. Drive your work, your life. Integrate them so they’re best fantastic because you want to be the best friend, the best mom, the best lover, the best business person, the best sister doing – having fun every day. To be successful at work you need to get four things, responsibility, learning, recognition and joy. Get those four things every day from work and from life you’re a happy bunny. Happy bunnies work harder and happy and better.
Anna Gilligan:
So other than loving what you do –
Kevin Roberts:
So that’s the first thing. The second thing I think that you’ve got to learn about business is surround yourself with friends and family. This whole notion is never do business with your friend and your family. I’ve never seen anything more stupid in all my life. Surround yourself with people that you like hanging out with, that you trust and that will take care of you.
Anna Gilligan:
So you’ve never had a relationship ruined because you went into business with them?
Kevin Roberts:
Never. I mean I’ve ruined – we had maybe a business ruined.
Anna Gilligan:
Were you born with this outlook on life and this kind of optimism and nothing is impossible attitude?
Kevin Roberts:
Great question. So I was born in a working class home. I never had my own bedroom and never had a car or anything like that. Never – it was just a typical working class parent in the north mainland. My father was a guard in a security – in a mental asylum. My mom worked in a shop. None of the family had every gone to college. I grew up in a pretty tough area and I wanted to get out and I believed that education was the way out. I tried to get to a good school and I screwed it up. I got into the good school and I always felt that I could make it and I was determined to make it and I was determined never to go back. I had a very – I’ve always been a radical optimist from the age of three.
Anna Gilligan:
Speaking of your motto that nothing is impossible how does that affect your leadership style?
Kevin Roberts:
It means you don’t spend a lot of time on denial, regret. Nothing is as painful as regret to coin a phrase. We don’t spend any time on guilt.
Anna Gilligan:
So you don’t beat yourself up on bad decisions?
Kevin Roberts:
Never. You just – I mean I just made a bad decision. I made it. Learn from it. Fix it.
It’s the learning and the fixing that’s important in business. It’s not making a mistake that defines you because we all make mistakes. It’s how you learn from that and fix it that defines you really.
Anna Gilligan:
So would you say the most important part of business is your people?
Kevin Roberts:
No question. This idea is nonsense that you have three stakeholders. There are three stakeholders in the business, your customers, your shareholders and your people. Nonsense. You have your people. If you inspire your people to be the best they can be against third purpose they sell more product, they make more money. If they make more money customers are happy. If your customers are happy they buy more and your shareholders are happy. It starts and ends with inspiring people.