About Ian

My early career in advertising and marketing

My first role in marketing was a project lead for a digital-out-of-home company who installed interactive screens in high-value hairdressers. We would sell advertising on the screens, develop content ideas and try to keep the network working despite the faulty hardware.

It was such a valuable experience, giving me exposure to all facets of the business from installation, reporting, deployment and content development. I could see how each facet, each capability, connected with one another and the cause and effect of when a breakdown in communication or failure happened.

My early career saw me in various advertising and marketing agencies across different client sectors. I was learning my craft, getting more exposure to projects, then programs, of ever increasing scale and complexity. Being based in London it was a wonderful place to be learning in what, at the time, was a growth industry.

My first awareness of organisational identity loss

In my first senior regional role, I saw how our sixteen markets were organised to deliver client work. Each market had similar issues. They were struggling to deliver the quality of work at the speed their clients wanted. People and teams were overextending, working late nights and weekends to keep up.

Senior people’s attention was reduced to operational tasks to meet their immediate needs. Short-term thinking became the dominant thought process. None of this was due to incompetence or neglect. People were working incredibly hard to succeed but all were working in spite of the system they were in.

Over time, if things aren’t changing, then the perception is that it is easier working within constraints than changing them. It was in this understanding that I saw what the organisation perceived as its identity was not reflected in those who were outside looking-in. This gap in the two perceptions was something I carried with me.

Seeing what good looks like

In mid-2015, I moved to an organisation, called R/GA. From my first day, I felt and understood its tangible identity. It was an ethos and a culture, what I saw as ‘a way’. Quality permeated everywhere. Its thinking, culture, the way it was organised, how to lead with clients. R/GA’s identity was built around quality and it was embedded in everything it did.

I embraced the R/GA way. My experience influenced me considerably and I have never looked back. I have taken R/GA’s ethos into everything I have done since.

My life outside of work

I live in the rustic countryside in the North of England with my wife and three small children. My children are wonderfully boisterous so when I do have the energy I have a passion for making music and cooking Thai food. I especially like to make pad ka prao (stir-fried holy basil). I practice meditation each day and endeavour to put my phone down as much as I can.

One of my minor goals in life is to live long enough to have tried every flavour of ice-cream there is!