Pitch forward

In this episode, hosts Sarah and Stephen Waddington cover key industry topics and share insights from recent events in management, public relations and communications.

They discuss:

• Creative challenges in leadership and how to stay motivated as a director, including using practical tools such as the wheel of life.
• The latest Wadds Inc. research report for NewsWhip which explores the digital transformation of the communication function and the use of technology in corporate communications.
• A recent Co-op and DEMOS event that explored how social mobility drives innovation and business growth in the UK. It’s aligned with the vision of Socially Mobile.
• CommsHero in Leeds featuring sessions on internal communications and sustainability and a powerful talk by Socially Mobile graduate Karl Connor.
• UK government research that sets out the impact of late payments on SMEs and potential solutions.
• A new PRCA report called Pitch Forward which concludes that the pitch process is broken and recommends greater transparency in the client-agency relationship and sales process.

Presented by Sarah Waddington and Stephen Waddington

For more information visit https://www.wadds.co.uk/
With thanks to our production partners at What Goes On Media

Transcript

Sarah Waddington
Hello and welcome to the Better Business Outcomes podcast with Sarah and Stephen Waddington, where we talk about all the latest developments in leadership, management, tech, PR and marketing. Great to have you along with us today. We've got a very busy show. We're going to talk about all kinds of things from how we manage when we're down in the dumps as directors. We're going to look at different tools. Stephen's got a fantastic new report for you that he's done with NewsWhip. We're going to cover various events that we've been up to, and we're gonna look at other things that we think will be useful for people to be aware of, wherever they are in their career and whether you're in comms or you're in a more of a director position.

Stephen, where shall we start? Shall we start with the LinkedIn post that I posted yesterday, just on the Sunday? It was a Sunday read which talked about how sometimes it can be difficult to find your creative mojo.

Stephen Waddington
Yeah, go for it. You've been blowing up on LinkedIn.

Sarah Waddington
I've been blowing it up. Well, actually, it just was really interesting, right? So you've seen, and we've both been through this ourselves, that what can happen is you have a really great spurt creatively, which will take you so far in your career. And that might be you decide to move jobs, that you create your own business, and then you learn how to scale it. Or it could be just different initiatives that you're involved with. And then sometimes you can find yourself as a director a little bit lost. And I've had a few of these conversations recently, and it basically prompted me to write this LinkedIn post, just on Sunday, a little Sunday read, talking about how that's perfectly normal. And it's particularly normal at the moment because we've been in a particularly challenging time for businesses. If you're running a business, if you talk to people, they will tell you that having been through different recessions, they're usd to challenging times. this point after Brexit, COVID, and on the back of recession has just been particularly tough. And so, recognising that everybody needs downtime is really important. So I posted this post and the reaction has been quite incredible with people saying it's good to recognise that and to plan for when those downtimes come.

Stephen, what's your go-to when you are feeling tired and lethargic and need a bit of break from your working head?

Stephen Waddington
I think it's just the recognition that you need to take time out and it's okay to stop. There's a session you do as a PhD student about learning curves and one of the realisations, the reflexivity from that is that you will go through periods during learning where you have completely fallen on hard times where you don't seem to be making much progress at all, but then there'll be others where you make incredibly rapid progress. I'm actually in one of those at the moment. You've just got to recognize them and lean into them.

Sarah Waddington
And that's great. that's, think that's why the post resonated. And it also brought me to another of the posts that I've written called The Wheel of Life Tool. Now as an executive coach, I share this quite often with my coachees and I know that you and I have both done that. And I like this as a tool when I'm getting a bit out of kilter because often directors can focus on work when they feel that things aren't quite right there, but often the answer isn't in the workplace, it's in the environment around you. And so for those who are listening, if you've never done that, I do have a Google because you can find a template very, very easily, or you can go to my Sarah Waddington website and you'll find a Wheel of Life tool on there and a Work Wheel tool, which I'll also talk about.

But the idea is that you basically draw a wheel and you can do it very simply and you cut it into eight parts and then you title those in whichever way that you like. Now, a very traditional way could be with romance, business, career, finance, health, family personal growth, fun and recreation, and physical environment. And then you score each one out of 10 and then work out three actions that will help you nudge that score up. I just find it fascinating for directors who are tired or struggling with work-life balance, because often they can use that to find an answer that's not in the office but elsewhere. So for example, if you're regularly working late every night, if your romance score is low, perhaps putting a date night in on a Tuesday. You're laughing, Stephen, because these are things that we have done and it works - can stop you working and then you're nudging your romance score up there, so a win-win! But you can basically title them as you want.

But this is a brilliantly adaptable tool. And as I say, you can use it in the workplace too if you want to make improvements and enhancements there. And you can do this as an individual task or you could do it as a group task. And all you do is switch out the titles of those eight segments and you swap them for what you think is pertinent to you at that point. So that could be customer service, it could be training and development, products and services. If you were a membership body or a charity, which we both work with, it could be membership, volunteer engagement, fundraising. And again, you type them all in the way that you think fit, and then you basically score it and find three ways to nudge it up. And it's about this wonderful incremental improvements that we talk about all the time when we're acting as directors with people.

And I just wanted to bring that to the fore at the very start of this, just because we're getting towards the end of the year. It has been challenging, people have fatigued and it can be worrying when you feel like you've lost your mojo. But please don't fret because it will come back. You just need to give yourself a chance to rest. So that's a way to start off. Kick off, you can do this, you've got it.

Stephen, talking about tool tool vendors, you've done a brilliant report with Newswhip. Tell everybody listening about that because there's some interesting results from that just published.

Stephen Waddington
Yeah, so like your Wheel of Life, this is a very practical piece of work. That's why we use the Wheel of Life. It is so straightforward and easy to use. This piece of work we've just completed for the NewsWhip. It's the third report in a series exploring the relationship between the corporate communications function and public relations function in an organisation and management.

So the first one looked at the alignment between the two. The second one looked specifically at an issue related to polarisation. When should organizations take a stance? When should they stay quiet? And this third one looks at the digital transformation of the communication function. Now this is something that's very front of mind right now because of artificial intelligence. There's a real energy in conversations over the last two years since the advent of chatGPT from OpenAI. There's organisations leaning into it and using it, organisations locking it down, preventing it's being used. And organisations not doing anything at all. And that really reflected the different perspectives we found. So unlike previous pieces of work we've done, there was no clear headline or insight from this, the insight being that there are a range of perspectives and that depends on the practice, the processes and the different structures for the comms function from organisation to organisation. Comms, unlike other, if you think of other functions, maybe like legal, like marketing, it has a very clearly defined workflow that can be reinvented, recreated, reimagined from a tech perspective. Public relations, corporate communications is far more contextual. So yeah, that's the headline. It's really worth reading it because I know this is something that is front of mind for any communication function. It's up there as an issue within all the industry reports from the page society through to PR Week and I think we uncovered some interesting and original insights so I'd encourage you to look that up.

Moving on actually I’m working on a piece of work at the moment looking at measurement within the public affairs function and that's throwing up equally interesting insights so perhaps we can come and talk on a future podcast about that.

Sarah Waddington
Ooh, so that's coming down the road, is it? Excellent. And you can find a write-up about the Newswhip report on corporate affairs on the wadds.co.uk website, I'm guessing. Good.

All right, so let's talk about various events that we've been involved with and I had the privilege of going to Westminster this past week to attend a joint event from Co-op and Demos called The Opportunity Effect. And they were hosting what they call a ‘careers unfair’.

And it was really, really great. And it's interesting because by the time this podcast is published, we'll have just heard what's in the budget. And a key theme of this particular event was how we drive business and the economy forward. And they were talking about the main lever being social mobility. Now, Steven, you and I, big, big advocates of social mobility. We run our community interest company, Socially Mobile. We're currently fundraising for that. And you can look at that sociallymobile.org.uk if you're interested. But we really believe that diversifying the UK's workforce will take us further faster and will unlock creativity and innovation. So was great to hear this and it should be a core part of the report from from Demos and Co-op. And the speaker from Demos actually talked about how social mobility could boost the UK economy by £19 billion a year. And he just talked about how insurance people reach their potential, how it makes use of our country's talents,

addressing skills shortages, which is a big, big issue for UK SMEs. And it just boosts business and drives growth.  And it was a really interesting event. The Social Mobility Foundation were there. Stutt and Trust was there. And Alison McGovern, who's the Minister for Employment, was there. And I really loved her quote. She said, “the growth mission and opportunity mission for the UK go hand in hand. We will only achieve sustainable growth in this country when we make the best usable available talent”. I mean, she couldn't have put it better. And it's what we say week in week out, isn't it? When we're fundraising with social mobile or trying to get new people on the program.

Talk to me about Comms Hero, because you also went to a really lovely event that we love being involved with.

Stephen Waddington
Yeah, so Comms Hero 10 years old, the community started by Asif Chaudhry, up in Leeds, he's the sales and marketing director of Resource Marketing Services and Printing Company. 10 year anniversary event brought together 250 practitioners from across the UK from a comms and marketing perspective.

Three really great standout sessions for me. I mean, there were keynotes and panel discussions throughout the day, but the three that really stood out for me, the first one was exploring the role of internal communications within an organisation and its alignment with management. So this panel discussion, Rachel Miller talked about the role of the function as a listening and informing management. Jessica Roberts talked about its role within motivating and supporting productivity within an organisation and the key role of practitioners from a cultural perspective. So that was the first one.

The second one was a keynote speaker actually. It took place after lunch. Tough gig to fill, but Michelle Carville filled it magnificently. She's a writer and consultant on the alignment of the environment and marketing. She had this great perspective actually that woke everyone up. Did you know that the global CO2 emissions from the digital sector is more than from Air Transport. I didn't! And she called on us to think about our organisation's sustainability commitments and to bring those to life through its marketing activity. Quite a powerful, really powerful keynote, actually.

And then the final one was from a socially mobile graduate - session on mental health. It was a wide ranging discussion. Carl Conner, one of our graduates, spoke about… yeah, he was on the first program, wasn't he? So he spoke about his own perspective of mental health. Now, if you've ever met him – he’s 6.4, he's a rugby player, huge guy. And he, you know, he talks about how he'd always had a skeptical perspective of mental health. And people literally said people just need to man up and get on with it. Actually, that came to a fall when he was in a role where, you know, this situation where you're trying to, you've got one role and you're trying to act up to another. So you end up doing your role and then the other one, and it completely led to him, him burning out. And he spoke about how socially mobile was part of his, his journey. So yeah, really, really great session. Big shout out to the Comms Hero team over in Leeds for that. I really appreciated it and the opportunity to attend.

Sarah Waddington
And to Carl for his advocacy for the program. Real bravery in that and kind of brings us back to our circle to the start of this conversation in terms of directors just need to take it steady. There's a lot of hustle culture out there, particularly right now. It's not healthy, it's not accurate, it's not how our brains work and it's not what our bodies need.

Stephen Waddington
I think that's why you're cutting through on LinkedIn because you're actually the antidote to that hustle, ultrapreneur culture - you know, the wake up at five o'clock, six o'clock in the morning, get a run in, do your email, all that. It's actually no, don't, take a pause, take some time out!

Sarah Waddington
Exhausting, exhausting. We've got too many things juggling and it's been too trying a time. No, none of that. If that's right for you, go for it. But I think generally that's the expectation that's what people should be doing and it's not. And we've all got to be very careful to recognize the signs of burnout and deal with that.

Another event we went to, you joined me at the IOD for my Chartered Director graduation, which was lovely. So I'm just, know, just giving myself a little pat on the back there, but I'm the UK's only chartered director and chartered PR practitioner now, which does give me a really unique position in terms of my governance skills and my comms and stakeholder engagement and risk, all those things that, nice things that come with it. So I'm very proud and so is my mum.

Stephen Waddington
So am I, so am I!

Sarah Waddington
Ahhh thank you. I'm glad you're proud too.
Wadds Inc event, tell us about that. We've got Progress coming up, which is a lovely one. And this has been a big demand. 12th of November.

Stephen Waddington
Yeah, so part of our non-exec work with agencies, we run a network, private network, peer-to-peer agency founders and managers. We meet once a month virtually. And as you might expect, that's often a therapy session, but know, we share best practice and ideas and thinking as well. There's a real power in that actually. It's a learning opportunity. And then we meet once a quarter and we always try and bring in speakers that provoke the members. This coming session, there's lot of discussion about employee ownership trusts within the agency sector at the moment. So we've got a speaker from More, one of our partners, who's going to talk about the EMEA market broadly within the agency sector, and then employee ownership trust. And then we've got two speakers, so I hope I'm going to provide contrary perspectives or certainly different viewpoints. We've got speakers from Circle and Milk and Honey to talk about their experiences of living an employee ownership trust. That's on the 12th of November. It's in London in the city. It's in the morning. If you'd like to come along, drop me an email, DM me, wave or holla and I'll gladly invite you.

Sarah Waddington
Yeah, so do get in quick though. I can say it's been a hugely popular event. People always want to know about MA opportunities, mergers and acquisitions and DOT. So do get in if you'd like to come along.

Another thing that has been very popular in our community and elsewhere when talking to businesses generally and across our client portfolio has been discussions around debt in terms of late payments. Because over the last 12 to 18 months and there are reports that back this up, late payment has really started to increase. Now, it was really interesting because in September, the Department for Trade and Business published some late payments research and they were looking to understand variations in payment performance and practices across business sectors and sizes. Now, there is nothing surprising in there and it doesn't go far enough to give lots and lots of different remedies for if you find yourself in this situation, although you can find those on gov.uk and if you ever need advice, we're here to help. But it's a really good piece if you've ever felt like perhaps your client is using late payment as a form of free finance, because this survey, 80 % of those surveyed said, yeah, that's what we feel like is happening here. And of course, that could be a really big issue because if you've got late payment in a chain, it can trickle down. And that can create financial distress, particularly for smaller businesses. And it becomes strained in types of economic conditions as we're seeing right now.

Interestingly, while some people were saying, we're not getting paid on time and they're using us as a form of free finance, the people who were paying late were saying that they're actually down to administrative errors, disputed invoices and technical issues. Perhaps there wasn't a PO, which made me laugh a little bit in terms of wry smile. Sounds all very convenient, but who's to know?

Stephen Waddington
Bullshit.

Sarah Waddington
Excuse you! Yeah, it's quite possible.

I thought a couple of other headlines from that were just interesting. Large businesses were more likely to formally pursue late payments. I thought that was interesting because SMEs didn't want to potentially damage customer relationships. Interesting because as a NED, I would always try and do something, you know, using the relationship first to recoup the money owed but then I would always look to recoup it using formal means if I absolutely had to and that's the advice I would be giving.

The other thing I thought was interesting was that 69 % of all the surveyed businesses were unaware of regulations brought in by government requiring large business to report publicly on payment policies. So I thought that was pretty good actually because A, you're a director in a large business, quickly get across it. But secondly, if you are an SMA not getting paid, there's another lever for you outside the usual right there.

And then finally, just on that, I thought it was quite interesting that there was quite a few people said government shouldn't really intervene anymore to improve payment practices. But there was a group of people who said introducing maximum payment terms would be beneficial. And I actually have to say on reflection, I kind of agree with that. There was a mechanism that kicked in at the point where that maximum term had been exceeded. Anyway, that was just one thing that we thought that we saw that we thought might be useful.

Stephen, you've written about two. Talk to us first about PRCA Pitch Forward, which you did a really good blog summary on.

Stephen Waddington
Yeah, so we try and share insight from advisory, from reports that come across our desk from an advisory perspective, really good one from the PRCA. Pitch forward, looking at the pitch process in the UK says it's completely broken and reading the data, you have to conclude the same. So the average cost of a pitch is 7,000 pounds for an agency, can be up to 20,000 pounds. Briefs are highly variable, a third rated as excellence in that they have a clear budget, clear objectives and clear expectations of what's required. When an agency winner wins a pitch doesn't always result in work, more than a third report ghosting and on and on.

So the PRCA who's done this piece of work and it has to be said it interviewed both agency and client side and found that 9 in 10 participants would welcome some form of voluntary code to address these issues. It's got a working party in play to look at it's four areas, budget transparency, an aspect of planning so clear and specific objectives, the involvement of stakeholders in the process and then an examination of the procurement process.

Brilliant piece of work from our trade association the PRCA. Thank you very much for that.

Sarah Waddington
Yeah. And let's be very clear. The pitch forward piece of work from the PRCA is a solid piece of work. But if you're procuring, ghosting has no part to play because it's wasting people's time and it's costing them money. Please just don't do that. And we're very, yeah, don't do it.

We're very close to being out of time. So very quickly headline on the industrial strategy that you've also written about.

Stephen Waddington
Yeah, so the UK published its industrial strategy beginning a week or so ago to coincide with the investment conference in the UK. Focuses on three areas. It's really important that public relations practitioners, court comms practitioners get across this because there's an opportunity to share the perspective of their organisation, three aspects to it. So there's a focus on eight high potential industrial sectors.

They include financial services, professional and business services and digital technologies, all aspects from a business perspective for communication. It has a place-based approach to leveraging regional expertise and opportunities, so centers of excellence around the UK. And then finally, the government sets out a policy framework that it's going to bring to bear to support growth. It's a long-term piece of work.

10 year plan. The opportunity for practitioners, the opportunity for any organisation is to participate in the consultation exercise that surrounds the publication of this green paper. You can find that on our blog. You can also find it by Googling a bit, but head to our blog and there's a full write up of the report there. Key date is the deadline for submission is the 24th of November. I would urge you to read our blog, read the report and then consider submitting a perspective on behalf of the organisation that you work for.

Sarah Waddington
Consider yourself urged. Thank you, Stephen. And thank you to everybody who's been with us today and listened to today's podcast. We'll be back soon in the next fortnight. In the meantime, if you need help with your business, you would like a non-exec director, you're looking for an executive coach, just hit us up. We'd love to have a chat with you. Anyway, thank you very much and take care. See you next time.