My Biggest Lesson: Suzie Shaw
Suzie Shaw is CEO of the socially-led creative agency, We Are Social, heading up its 60-strong Australian team. She joined the company in mid-2015.
Suzie is a creative leader with extensive comms and marketing experience across a broad range of categories, including technology, financial services, travel and tourism, telco, FMCG and more. She worked for 14 years in London advertising agencies – including a decade at TBWA London – before returning to her native Australia in 2011 to continue her career in advertising.
A skilled networker, Suzie is passionate about championing the progress of women in leadership and is the founder of SWIMM Australia (Senior Women in Media and Marketing). She is also a member of Greenpeace's General Assembly and contributes to their efforts to exert social, political, economic and political power to shepherd a just and healthy planet and remove power from climate destroyers.
She is a pop culture enthusiast and has recently been appointed to the Sydney FC board of directors.
It was 2008 and I was 34, working at the UK’s largest independent creative agency as a senior client service person. I’d been head of client service at my previous agency, but with two young children I wanted to move into a position where I was focused on leading client business rather than team management.
In partnership with one of the agency’s strategy directors, I was leading a pitch for a large energy company. It was in the era of energy companies just starting to talk about alternative and renewable energy. They were looking for a new brand strategy to position themselves as more progressive than their competitors.
Like all pitches, there were many long days, nights and weekends and overall, the process was pretty fraught. As an agency team, we had many debates about the strategy and creative approach.
Under mine and the strategy director’s guidance, we went into the pitch confidently, with just one route… that wasn’t universally supported by the agency leadership. It was a high risk strategy and unfortunately, it didn’t pay off. Having gone into the pitch in pole position, we didn’t win. It was a major blow, as the agency really needed a win.
In the post-pitch wash-up, I had a candid conversation with the group CEO, who was critical of my approach to leading the pitch. I was critical of hers, telling her she had tried to micro-manage us.
She responded by saying, ‘when I see a void, I fill it’.
I was affronted. Offended. How dare she?!
But it didn’t take long before I realised, she was 100% right.
It prompted me to reflect on my role and realise I had failed to lead effectively. I wasn’t sufficiently open to pertinent input. I had failed to realise I wasn’t just there to administer my own opinion, but to facilitate input from the many stakeholders in the business. I had allowed a void to emerge and inadequately occupied the significant space that is required when leading a big pitch.
That one phrase taught me a lot about what really was expected of me in that situation.
But I also learnt that sometimes, when the stakes are high, the right thing to do as a leader is to dive in and fill the void, not wait for the train to come off the tracks.
