Open Book: How Talented is Redefining an Employee First Culture in Advertising
In this episode, Deepak, Sujatha and Amoolya speak to Gautam Reghunath and P.G. Aditiya, the co-founders of Talented, about the agency’s promise to positively transform the employee experience, through openness and transparency, leading to second order effects on creativity and client satisfaction. Ad agency culture in India has a reputation of being demanding, competitive and sometimes toxic, and through the open handbook, a living document published on the collaborative workflow platform, Notion, Gautam and Aditiya are attempting to change this reputation. They talk about their work experiences that led them to starting Talented, the vision and mission of the agency, what are some of the non-negotiable aspects of the approach they are taking, and how stakeholders, including clients, are responding.
Image Credit: David Zawila @ Unsplash
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About Talented
Pic: The Talented Handbook
Talented - the Agency has a simple mission statement: ‘Do great work. Get great sleep.’ This alludes not just to the fact that a good night’s sleep is a result of working hard and feeling satisfied with your efforts, but also to the demanding and sometimes oppressive work culture at ad agencies requiring long nights, no weekends or personal life, especially when you are starting off in your career.
Gautam and Aditiya, co-founders of Talented, etched the company’s vision in a handbook, including what kind of clients and talent they wish to attract, but also the details which will guide their day to day operations and conduct of business. The aim of making the handbook public is also to maximise transparency and demonstrate that it is not a static document of the past but a living artefact which will change and evolve through practice.
Resources
The Handbook: https://talentedagency.notion.site/Talented-Handbook-d0b7a11bb6f143729ea79862902e3ba4
Talented’s Posts on LinkedIn (includes some of their ad work): https://www.linkedin.com/company/t6d/posts/?feedView=all
Gautam’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gautxm/
Aditiya’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/buildingtalented/
Transcript
SPEAKERS
Sujatha, Aditiya, Deepak, Amoolya, Gautam
Deepak
So PG got a moment to kick start our conversation today because I read a blog or you said somewhere that we didn't want to start yet another ad agency. But you started one and you started one with an intent to be different, at least for the experience of being an ad agency. So could you tell us a little bit of the history of that, you know, the origins of talented? And of course, the open handbook, of which we will talk more in detail. Yeah,
Gautam
I mean, PJ, I go way back, we know each other for more than a decade, we've been in advertising even more. But I think both of us agree that our careers really kick started from our roles at web tracking, which was led by a very dear friend of ours who's no more so that. And I think I guess the webshop the cultural doing things put us both in positions of leadership much sooner than we anticipated. We ended up the last few years, each of our decades as CEO, myself and PG as the chief creative officer, we had this unique vantage point with that role to understand really understand how the business works and how creative people were managed. And of course, that certainly was part of the larger sort of dental network, and was an amazing ride. We met a lot of interesting people who still work with us. But somewhere along the way, I think we had ideas for the creative industry that we felt needed a fresh start ideas and how creative creative people need to be organized, then those two worlds are at odds with each other right creativity and efficiency or organization don't really sort of, you know, they're at odds with each other as well. So the idea is that our heads I think, what, two experimental to execute at a at an organization that was already 300 plus people so we wanted a fresh start. That's really the origin story of talented and yeah, that's that's how we hear I think,
Aditiya
also, for those of y'all who are listening to this, we're from Bangalore, the airlines hotel road had a lot to do with a lot of these origin stories. I think we spent like Gotham and I had a around a six month long notice period. So I think very ethically man,
Gautam
and and an inordinate amount of butter, paper masalas which is the rest those are in Bangalore, for anyone that
Deepak
is going to set up a completely different conversation.
Aditiya
This was also like, I mean, the timing of talented itself as a bevel, dramatic, like the last campaign that we did identify chutney as one song, so to speak, is the one that got the agency, the only agency of the Year title that any Indian shop has gotten at Caroline, which you had mentioned earlier, the book as well became India's most awarded piece in its history and so on. So we exited on a really, really high note in that sense. And we I think all of us who are part of it kind of felt that You know, it was, in fact, we had a choice at some point, you know, into the initiation of the campaign. I remember Gautam, and I having a chat on saying, Should this be our last campaign at Dentsu or our first campaign and diluted like, how should we, you know, time this so to speak, I think we decided to go with the former simply because that felt like that's how we wanted to exit a place that you know, had was a huge part of our life for about a decade or so there was a, I think any of us who are working in a, let's say, are 200 300 Plus person shop would kind of known that there are not about 15 to 20% of your organization 25% of your organization, if we are in a very good place, our folks who you think are like, you know, at the top of that game, right, like, the bigger the organization, like the fewer the number of people who who are really that creme de la creme type, folks. So I think in the chatni, we kind of believe that there is a dream team of folks who we all and I think all of us kind of felt a sense of destiny to be able to give a real shot to what, you know, all our powers combined. Are we Captain Planet? Like? Is there like some sort of a collective energy there? Can we set up something which could compete with will will our heroes today be our competition tomorrow, we want to kind of see if we have that in us. And this is why we we exited web chatni on June 30 2022, started talented February 1 2022. And I mean, in hindsight, we keep talking about weather wouldn't have been wonderful to have a three, four month break, you know, go and do a founder's iOS car trip in the in the Amazon, you know, rekindle, like everything that is, you know, understand the meaning of life all over again before we start an ad agency. So there's a certain school of thought, which kind of says that you know, that sabbatical that break deadlines, get things back to so that would be wonderful. But the truth is that, like autumn said, we were in the CEO CCO position. For a while, we had so many ideas that we just desperately wanted to execute. And we had momentum on our side, we were at the receiving end of a lot of pleasant attention by folks in our own industry, by prospective talent and so on. And which is why we decided to start ASAP. And it's a start along with with our founding team ASAP, a bunch of colleagues from chatni, who chose to build this cutter two years later, here we are.
Sujatha
So this is where the story is, right? Really excited about the fabulous work that you guys were doing and that chatni you're coming over Hye, won the award at cancer started talented, literally steaming with ideas, right? Because there wasn't even a break. You just left and you jumped in. I'm sure the head was passing with. What should an ad agency be that is not an ad agency that has been before? And never these bunch of ideas that were in your head? Yeah. What are the top three? When you started thinking about a new kind of agency? Where does this whole idea of an open handbook or people first come from? And was that the first thing that you wanted with? I mean, I guess most ad agencies bursting with creatives would be all you know, we got to go and get the best account possible. You know, let's make the sexiest world has ever seen. So where did the idea comes from? Like, what will your top three
Aditiya
lovely question In fact, the first time Gautam spoke to me about going independent, and I was I was very naive about this, I still am to a huge extent, but so I thought we could, you know, like, I thought we could just by web shut me by ourselves. That was a stupid idea with you. I was like, yeah, what are the days we'll take a few groceries by ourselves? And he's like, no, no, no. We're gonna we're gonna start something fresh. And first thing he kind of said is that, in fact, in the same breath as a sentence of let's go independent was let's make it employee owned. Right. And so chronologically, that was the first idea.
Gautam
I think, I think the doesn't sort of make me happy to say this, but the standards of I think advertising industry in general, are so low, you know, especially with regards to employ policies, that anything would have been radical, you know? Yes, please write. I think the open handbook was an idea. We originally wanted to launch the handbook and our founding day, but I'm glad we didn't. We took a year and launched it after a year because we found that the handbook itself sort of evolved over time. And a lot of these were sort of early principles that had not yet been tried and tested on the floor, right? So the lot of iteration and sort of learnings on the floor. So I'm glad we didn't do that as we began, and it's still in living sort of handbook. So that was one I think the equity piece is huge by The sub competencies, it's not, it's not news to our sort of, you know, friends who work in tech, but it's huge for the NC business either. We can't think of many agencies in the world with an employee pool. And it's such a simple thing to do, especially for work that feels more personal than most other work, which is advertising and creativity. That was a no brainer. Through our equity allocations. And through the softball, I think up or 20% of the company is employee owned. And we're seeing the effects of that and our work and how people feel about the company and want to build it with us. So that second, the third sort of guests kind of manifests itself through the what do you call it deeper third agency tagline or no, the motto, right? do great work get great sleep, I guess captures another sort of thing that we hold near and dear. Over the last few years, it's been known as a not a very nice industry to work in, still with, there is mental health problems in our line of work. And often regarding sort of breakdowns with work that almost seems unimportant most of the time. So that seemed like a good place to start and how we were consciously and loudly talking about our workday itself can improve. And the hours that you spend at work and how and how we can make those better. So there's not a focus of that, as well. So yeah, these are three things we
Aditiya
do. Yeah, yeah, I think, yeah, so not just on the ISA pace a little bit, right. Like, the joke we kept like, repeating was the reason why most legacy agencies are named after their founders is also because that reflects the financial structure. Right, like the name on the door is the one that's the owning the company. And its source. That's, I mean, unfortunately, like, we don't have a factory, we don't have a supply chain, we don't have raw materials, we're not, you know, the macro economic trends affect us to a certain level, but we're not like, you know, at least our size right now is not one where, you know, we need to keep closely watching the news on a daily basis to figure out if our business is going to go up or down, etc. So amongst all of the industries that say they are people focused, we're the only ones who are actually like, what actually says that like, so it's kind of telling that the idea of Aesop's didn't really or rather, the idea of like a fully employee owned structure, etc, that we didn't start it, because the agency business has given the rest of the general white collar corporate work, you know, this thing, the world ecosystem, we've given them a lot of good ideas. For instance, Friday, casuals, that's an advertising agency idea. Table tennis at the workplace. It's an advertising agency idea. coffee machines, chess boards, just don't be a little relaxed, like, don't just have like former chairs have a sofa in the middle of
Sujatha
the first open office in the world was JGR started with this whole, you know, bang around fabulous architecture. And
Gautam
you know, it was a by Nokia shaped office.
Aditiya
Right, yeah, yeah. So we've given the rest of what you say the the way that the rest of the white collar corporate world, a lot of good ideas over the decades, we've stopped doing that. It stopped seeing ourselves as the author of how we think the modern workplace ought to be. And I think that's also why we're not probably like, we don't see ourselves as a really high risk, high growth industry and Aesop's exist in a world, which is high risk, high growth, it comes from a place of sacrifice that comes from a place of you know what, okay, cool, I will sacrifice short term returns for long term gains, because I believe there are going to be long term gains, how many of us believe there are going to be long term gains in the business in the first place anymore, right, especially in creative industry. So having Aesop's not only reflected like or other was, finally, it was the correct answer to give a, let's say, an employee on the floor, who is showing a lot of promise from home, let's say we're expecting, we're expecting a long term relationship, etc, we need to give her a shot at long term wealth also, and outside the purview of appraisals year on year, which is why I think this made perfect sense for our industry. And they I think it also gave us the kind of confidence therefore in order to be able to implement a bunch of the other ideas, right, because when this as as kind of a fundamental now it felt like we could build on top of it. Now we could do other experiments, because the base was so clear, including the part on doing great work, getting good sleep, etc. It wouldn't have been even possible to like kind of similar, because we knew that we have a moat. By
Deepak
the way, your employee handbook is only an employee handbook ever read, including the ones I've employed with? At least one person has read Rando Sujatha and Amelia advisor and three people have read your handbook. Not anybody. That is the
Aditiya
fact that a lot of folks who are not traditionally from an advertising background are seeing value and it only goes to show that this is so the none of the things that US setting that up probably like Gotham said, right? Like, it's not, we're not inventing fire. It's not that new in that sense. But most companies, when they start, they either outsource this part or rather not outsource or they either delegate this part to someone outside the founding team, which means that your founders are pretty much in meetings, just, you know, listening to a presentation about the mission and vision. The job, like what do you do? So it's either that, or they just talk about it, and nothing is written down. So in the agency business as well, we're very guilty of seeing all of this, but it said during smoke breaks, it said during Friday nights, where Pierre is, you know, happening, etcetera, etcetera. So, nobody's just written it down. That's pretty much it. But then come like,
Gautam
I like I like beer is Happening. Happening.
Amoolya
I do feel that it's so much like a living document, like you know, how you also put it, that it starts a conversation rather than coming from the top down telling you Okay, these are the rules, you can't violate these rules. It's more like, hey, you know, we're in this together. Right?
Gautam
Right. You don't know. Yeah, no, that's exactly it. us saying it loud and making it public. It's not like we're a tenant and on all of the things that you're professing or any of that yet, in fact, we lose our yearly sort of, I think every once in a while, do the little WhatsApp Hold on, hey, where do you guys think we're at this particular principle on a scale of one to 10. And we call this principle called no follow ups, which is like, like everybody sort of focused on their work. No, you don't need reminding from someone else a whole lot of efficiency, inefficiency, and that sort of process. Right. So the first year when we first asked this question, I think we read it ourselves four out of 10, which was both, I mean, it was disappointing. And we did it again earlier this year during our founders leak oxide. And I think it's our margin even after six months, six and 10. So it's not a good tenant on on any of these. But the mere fact that we are saying it publicly is makes it very clear what the goal is. And maybe I'll start
Aditiya
so interesting, one of our colleagues was trying to convince us that a client who, like Gautam, and I felt that we should fire this client, basically, our colleague who ran that business felt that no, no, we shouldn't fire them, I have a different way. I think I want to approach it, etc, etc. So he pretty much scrolled through the handbook, and made a case for why that client should be retained using the handbook is like, these are the pros, as we have defined here, here are the cons. But we've also said this, therefore, if I'm to follow these rules, this is how we should work with them. And we're like, okay, cool, we can't really like can't say no to the Constitution, right. So
Amoolya
on that, actually, there is one part of your handbook that really stood out to me about in the agency business, our Mo and Achilles heel, both happen to be the things we do in the name of impressing the client. And one significant line that says we will aid each one of our talent to form the vocabulary for confrontation and giving clients tough feedback when needed. Again, along with the no follow up rule this one. And even if I'm thinking about it, like you have a very, you know, liberal and trusting policy in your time off and calm compensatory, of, you know, part of your handbook, where you say that it's about trust your team leaders are trained to trust. I think, again, that's radical. In India, generally, the work culture such that you're almost it's extracted from you, right, the work and you're treated like a resource. So just how hard is it to really implement these things in practice, because you know, you may want to have a different agency overnight, but clients are not going to change overnight, they have these expectations, they have these ways of working and ways of asking you for things. How do you handle that?
Aditiya
No, thank you for that. I think the person who like there is a people leave her name is a rancher, she has a huge role to play in all of this, because we can't hire the wrong people and expect them to do these things. Right. So 90% of the job is just to make sure that the people who work you're talented, know what they're signing up for. They know that they're already on board a lot of these things, and they're not on board, there's a discussion to be had about that, etc. So by the time the person is in here, they're already signed up for like, most of whatever is here. So there are not too many surprises. I think there's a lot of unlearning that some of our talent has discussed with us that they've had to do from some of their previous jobs, but there are no surprises in terms of especially this confrontation part, etc, etc. It's, it's fine. They know that's what is supposed to happen. No, just
Gautam
on the client. But again, you know, there's so many more nuances behind the ramonja and more services industries, there is a power imbalance, right? Typically, over the last few decades, that same power imbalance or it has sort of permeated through. It wasn't I don't think it was at least from what I've read and consume media. It was never like this, let's say 50 years ago, but now there is a certain power balance between the client and the consequentialist. Sure. So first, you got to deal with that. You're also supposed to come up with new things every day and present and get feedback. And that's a lot of hard effort and work and add that to nuances like the disparity in pay between both sides from other clients and versus let's say the creator who's actually saying that it was possibly significantly more underpaid, typically, visa vie, the client that they're talking to all of these nuances sort of factor in into what he said. So there are simple things that we can sort of effect in each of those are nuances which might make for a better working environment for creative people.
Aditiya
Yeah. The second part of that question was, when was on the client, same
Amoolya
time offs, and you know, compensated and the trust part of things? Like, have you come across any challenges? Or how has it been really running this 100%.
Gautam
So I guess the best way to sort of put this is that the default is trust, you know, so it's only like, maybe imagine it like a battery that sort of depletes or sort of recharges Right? Like trust, as a battery is a nice little always get confused between metaphor and analogy anyway. So metaphor, I guess. Yeah, so um, the system was actually quite unique. If anybody wants to go live, we have an all hands group on our spaces. You say, Hey, I'm off for this, you can contact that person for the you can contact that person. So there's, there's almost like a sort of format templatized sort of message format that is proxy for leave. And because it's public, I guess a lot more again, nuances sort of come into play, everybody's aware, does that sort of aid the process of hurt the process, as of now, it seems like it's aided the process of transparency and, and the general sort of trust building amongst the group as a whole, we're still about 60 people. So we do not have data on how the scales, right. But at this size, it's been working on
Aditiya
this year in our air off site, again, we were kind of discussing if I think there was about 20 25% of the floor felt it was time to kind of automate this process overall, that they were comfortable having. But they were basically having some piece of customized spec telling them that, okay, cool, 17th, you can take off it, but 18th, the 19th, you can take off, and so on. So we're prototyping something on that. We'll see if our time is there. Then again, like we got to test couple of these things on the floor to see if I think on the face of it, managers would benefit more than the employees with an automated system. But are you really comfortable? Let's say applying for a leave? And hearing from a machine to say no, your leave has been rejected. Right? So it's just I think there's more psychology at play over here than we'd like to admit. Absolutely. So slightly tough one I think are Yeah, would you would you
Gautam
rather hear no, from a machine or your boss? Yeah, like, or would
Aditiya
that No, be a unfortunately 17th Looks like or whatever, by 20/21 possible in case you want to follow this, right. So, so much of this is just kind of like, you know, playing around human nature. There's a reason why even chat bots that be friendlier than others are bound to get whatever. So as we move into, like, if we need to automate this, at some point, we better have a very, very customized tool that kind of understands how we work, rather than, you know, some some sort of plug and play type system, eg
Sujatha
Gotham. I've got two questions. I think they are interconnected, but may not be right. So we'll see how the first one, I want to go back to the question of power and trust cotton that you alluded to the last time a bit. All right, the previous one that Malia was asking. So one is, and I want to take this outside of advertising alone, because power imbalance is something that is, like we say, ubiquitous, it is present everywhere, right? So I work a lot with nonprofits. And if there is a sector in which you can experience power imbalance, it's between funders and fundies, right. So you can imagine I'm receiving money from you to do something. I'm not equating to a client creative equation, but it's something similar, right? You are, in some sense, mentally preparing yourself to please the funder in so many ways, even though your heart might be saying something else. So so there is power imbalance, external internal. There's also tremendous power imbalance within organizations, right? I mean, we know all of us know of organizations where the CEO comes in and starts speaking, everybody shuts up and the conversation dies. Right? So this power, the second one that you said is trust, right, that a lot of the processes that actually lead to reducing power imbalances requires trust, because if you don't have trust, then control and command mechanisms come into play. Right. So the first question I have for you is this in your experience, as you've been trying to deal with power and trust in a variety of spaces internal and external And you're no follow up is one example of that, right, that brings agency back to the person, but also trust and etc, etc. To what extent has transparency been a way forward in negotiating power and sort of building trust, right. And although we use the word transparency, it's a big word, because it means so many things to so many people, right? That decisions behind closed doors versus open door decision, that transparency, that if I come and talk to my boss, or my manager, he or she is going to treat it with a certain degree of respect and confidentiality, and not here, this trusted transparency at so many layers. So I challenge it. What is your experience with transparency? Right, and what are you pushing? And what are you struggling with? Right, so that's my first one. And then I'll come back to the second one, maybe.
Aditiya
Thank you for splitting this into parts is a wonderful, heavy question. To answer that properly, like,
Gautam
I mean, yeah.
Aditiya
I think no, we do struggle with this part from time to time, because the joke is that indecisive leaders are really transparent. We want someone who doesn't make decisions, who's whatever, they'll keep telling you everything that's going on in their head. Right. And that transparency is usually a tool to continue being indecisive. It's a nice little disguise, almost to having this positive. You don't move? You know,
Gautam
I think, how I'd like, or I think we've been fairly decent at this, how transparency needs to best manifest itself in the service scenario is by no employee or colleague of ours, having to second guess where they stand in the organization. And that's especially tougher for newer joins, there's this probation period and this period of confusion. Okay. All right. Let's say they moved on, and they confirm I mean, if there's still the sense of, Okay, do I really belong here? Am I going to be backed? If I make the decision, our best hope is to create a transparent enough culture where no one sort of worried for where they stand and they have, they're empowered enough to make decisions. And that comes with also having information and clarity of communication from your team leads and your management and stuff like that. But I'd like to think we're fairly decent. The
Aditiya
thing is, you know, it's, I think I'll address a little better than what you Sujatha what you asked, it's like, where do we struggle with right a little bit, I think our founders by a sort of founding teams bias, so to speak, is that we care more for this than anybody else. It's the thing that most founders struggle with, whether they admit it or not, because they also feel like they've sacrificed the most. And when in doubt, they will, you know, everyone can do a flashback to jab him today, when, in the first three months, like automatic and always tell ourselves every time we need to make ourselves feel better, we can be like, Yeah, dude, you and I went without salaries for like, half a bloody year, man, we know what we're doing. Like, we can tell ourselves that we can give ourselves that everything and even our founding team can be like, Yeah, we, you know, we sacrificed so much, and Bharara etc. Like, we all mean, there's a bunch of us who are really, really left with very, very comfortable jobs, like super in its own corporate world view, hiring glass ceiling, couriers and so on, and chose to kind of start from scratch, right. So I think, that can have the power to make you challenge transparency, and communication, and getting everyone in the mix together and making that has the power to challenge the other ideology, so to speak. And I think, oftentimes, we just have to be a, you know, so So if I feel like he's in that mode, I need to kind of tone him down. And if he feels that I'm in that mode, he needs to turn me down, so to speak, happens with everyone in our founding team and happens to anyone who's spent a long enough time in organization where they kind of believe that they have more at stake, they've sacrificed more, and therefore, why should I include 10 other people? And why should I tell everyone how I'm feeling and include them in the process, and so on and so forth. Right? I think that's human nature. And we have to kind of ensure checks and balances are maintained by talking to each other about it and not letting hubris get in the way. But what we have kind of seen is that this has been a fairly rewarding approach. So far, it has meant that we need to kind of trust first principles a whole lot more and do it, let's say eight or 10 times we probably chose, communicate, talk about it, see how everybody feels get consensus, make decisions basis that rather than you know, make it behind closed doors. I don't think we're good at making decisions behind closed doors. Let me also admit that there are people who are very, very good at like, shutting the room, thinking to themselves, let's just talk this 4000 person organization and there'll be two people who decide you and I ultimately know how this works. Let's figure we
Gautam
do. We do polls and votes for In the silliest of things to the most serious to fate, and oftentimes,
Aditiya
like I think that does make us also kind of, you know, because the general the folks who are founders, founding teams, etc, all of that they're supposed to be this, you know, I can see the future type people, right? Like that kind of mindset is the algorithm rewards that
Sujatha
PG got the both of you, you're bringing up this issue of biases and mindsets. And you're talking about this as something to be aware of, I'm just going to ask you this question to maybe push you guys a little bit to help us think through how talented would is looking at these issues, right? I want to take the issue of diversity, equity and inclusion, right? You hear the E is everywhere. Until then you don't know what D is all about. Right? Like there's these are words that are policy statements about di we have to be inclusive, this gender, there's cars, there's class, there's everything. But if you truly want diversity in your organization, you cannot have diversity until biases still fess up, right? Because people are quite okay to be politically correct in conversation. But deep down biases do exist about belief systems, right about, you know, who I want to work with, who's included, whose voices heard, etc, etc. Right? I know, one of the things that you guys do talk about in your handbook is two things. One is respect. The second is non harrassment. And the third is to build a truly diverse an organization that values diversity of ideas as well. I mean, how can you be creative? If you're not challenged with your thinking? Is there a mechanism Do you think that talented is experimenting with, which allows for people perhaps to say things that are uncomfortable or say things that are different from mainstream opinions? Is there a way by which you are able to serve this? On set biases and perspectives? Do you guys lead it? In some ways? Do you say things that you get called out? How are you fostering this process, which is, I think, the toughest thing to do in an organization, right, it's, it's easier to work at the surface, but But you bring the ones below. Talking
Gautam
every year, like we've been doing this for 10 years. Now we're two years into offsides, every OpSite, we had a little exercise in the first one where we split about I think 30 or 35 was there. And we split people into groups of five or six. And we said, hey, you know what, meet your co founders. Now. And this is one year after talent is existed, right? Think of what you like from time to think of the things that you change. Now meet your co founders that activate teammates, and build your own agency? what would its principles look like? What would your colleagues look like? What kind of things would we stop doing? Right? What kind of things would we start doing? I guess, it sounds like a one off. But I think even exercise, frequent exercises, like those are signals that I mean, this is nothing is really set in stone, right? Every company belongs sort of begins with the espoused beliefs of their founders. But sort of until those sort of beliefs are sort of proven correct and successful, they have to be open to debate and change. Right. And it's when they're sort of met with sustained success. And you know, your values then sort of slip from this very consciously being sort of executed to the unconscious, that's sort of culture. So stuff like that, I think happen. Both are very, you know, once a year off site level two, I think, daily segments that we're trying to sort of push within the company, we
Aditiya
have a mental health partner who's been on board for over a year. Now, the name is kaha. Mind, I think they've had a lot to do with kind of just pushing us in the right direction and stuff like this. I think their scope for us includes, like work sponsored therapy at a one on one level workshops with the floor workshops with different groups who have shelves with the leadership, at least like you know, once a month, or sometimes once a quarter cetera, the kinds of topics that are in these workshops include like the data pretty much everything that you covered in your question, right, like I think we had a our last one was on confrontation or confronting constructively radical candor or that one before that was on identifying biases. I think a lot of this bringing yourself to work authentically etc. And the reason we tend to take these workshops fairly seriously is because I think a lot of us are actually very interested in it. Let me start like there I think a lot of us are talented are actually very interested in the idea of what does this slightly you know, functioning utopia of a workplace look like? I'm not saying utopian just some theoretical sense, which will last for a day and then Rome falls right like the functioning Utopia will also have its sacrifices. So I think we're very interested in figuring Okay, therefore, you know, if this then that Some type modules of what those experiments could probably look like. And they are all experiments in human nature. No, I think we're working in a creative industry. We're all like, mini anthropologists for 10 minutes a day. So I think it does come from a human interest standpoint, and I think AHA mind particularly have been wonderful partners. And in kind of helping us channel those thinking that that we have in introducing a bunch of new thinking, as well. Like, for instance, this one, like in the datapoint session on biases, we used to have this habit in the first year and a half of reading all of our work on time. Okay, it was a very simple, stupid exercise. But the point was, in the initial years of the agency, you needed to have creative discipline, you needed to have a common vocabulary for what good really means. And after a point, a bunch of our colleagues kind of felt that okay, cool. That practice has reached its expiry date, we don't need to rate work on time anymore. Okay, was it divided house, we finally ended up on identifying what the problem was, which is, evidently some of our colleagues felt that they were not, you know, entirely at ease to talk negative stuff about a piece of work when being asked, you know, read this on one time. So right, so publicly, publicly. So instead, there's this now anonymous poll basis, which they can right now, I personally don't like the idea of anonymous poll, because I come from the bias that, hey, why not just say whatever you feel, it's fine. It's feedback, Bill, whatever, whatever. Right. But evidently, that's not how everybody feel is still how the majority feels. That is not how everybody feels. And therefore, we've resorted to an anonymous poll situation. Now, for the life of me, I can't get myself on board with the idea that why aren't we discussing feedback as publicly as possible, but that's something that I'm just going to have to bite the bullet and kind of deal with for a while, until it kind of resolves itself right. So Gautham and I have probably the power to like just say a bunch of things and get on dictator mode, once in a while, etc. But we get cut to size a lot, as well. So grateful for that. Yeah, so
Deepak
I was going to ask you, but descent in the about the policy itself, and descending practices, how does digital manifest itself in the organization?
Aditiya
And then the last time they were I remember one of our colleagues over a call Gautam doesn't Scottish Rite. And it was like, she said something about what she thinks is happening on the floor. Oh, it was actually this only it was on this great work one time situation. She said something about how Yeah, you know what, not a lot of people feel the G not a lot of people feel very comfortable criticizing the work publicly. And gotten was like, No, man, you know, what, anything? That's how it is like, no, really, you know, I've discussed this with them on separate breaks. And they're just telling you, there's a little bit like, No, you know, what, that's not the values in the culture. And she's like, well, Gautam, then you're clearly not talking to enough people. Like slap on the face. Really brilliant, though. The thing is, that's how Gotham and I spoke to said, right, so we had a some super authoritarian relationship with the person who was who we've all reported to, we've had a very tight relationship. And that's how the work has improved a lot. So I think we get cut to size a lot. And it's important that they kind of see it publicly also, that you can talk to your founders like this, and it's perfectly fine. And deeper
Gautam
dissent is also very important in our work, work and creative work, right? Like, I think, without some voices of dissent, we're relying on the loudest in the room and the most are talkative as the best way forward. And that can really sort of give me a very biased sort of brainstorming room. And that's dangerous in our line of work. In fact, like,
Aditiya
there was one point, I think, if you're like, as bosses, right, like, you can be very happy when an employee proves you, right? You know, you believe in someone and they prove you right? It's amazing. Got to be even happier when they prove you wrong. Like, that's, that's really the point where you're like, Oh, my God, I didn't think you had this in your I thought this would not end up well, and it ended up well. And I think it's your job as a boss to kind of make everyone go like he he proved me wrong, she proved me wrong. Do you see what happened? I got screwed. Isn't that amazing? A lot of the people who we really really admire our colleagues and our people who've proven their bosses wrong in various ways.
Gautam
You know, this may have been a, you know, a nice enabler for dissent is this Bezos Amazon principle called disagree and committed, like it's okay to have differing opinions. It's okay for, let's say the CEO or a CCO or whoever else to have a different opinion to yours. But it's also equally okay for them to say, You know what, I disagree with what you're saying, but you're on the floor. You probably get this and you're more of a sort of a, you understand this maybe significantly more than we do. I disagree, but I'm gonna back you, you know, be like, that's a nice little enabler for good dissent.
Aditiya
The lines are into that, again, is I guess, like, you have to build a good vocabulary around, confidently apologizing, right? So I think a lot of bosses tell their employees like, make mistakes. It's good making mistakes. But the point is after you commit, and it turns out to be a mistake, what happens afterwards? More often than not, you go into a shell, because you're like, Oh, my God, I made a mistake. Or what do I did I turn around, the people are gonna come out of that are those who know how to apologize properly. In fact, for I think a lot of I mean, I can definitely see myself made a lot of mistakes in my work. Over the years, since as long as I've been working, I am excellent at apologizing, I mean, you will be waiting to forgive me. Because it is a human thing. People love forgiving each other. And if well, meaning well constructed, apology is all you need to get the other person to kind of be like, okay, cool. They realize their mistake, I feel good about forgiving them. They've made me feel good about forgiving them. And they are willing to learn and they're willing to move on, you should
Deepak
put that in the handbook on forgiveness is not there.
Aditiya
Currently Not there. In fact, we are updating the handbook at some point this year with a adding a few more sections basis experiences from last year. One on working with celebrities, one on the policy for the clients, maybe we'll add
Amoolya
this one too. So it's an experiment, right, what you're doing, it's based on your own work background, what you've seen and what you like from what some other people are doing. And it's definitely radical in this industry, you got them. You mentioned that, you know, dissent is important in the creative process. So we've talked a lot today about how you run the company, how you manage your employees and their expectations, a little bit about clients as well, in the work that you do the creative process, right? What if you were to find out, for example, there is a place where you say you don't owe talented more than 8.5 hours of work in a day. Right? What if you were to find out that in order to serve the creative process, you need to give so much more of your day or your life to this? Would you change the way that the company is run? Where does it stand in terms of your values? Is the creative output more valuable? Or the way the company?
Gautam
I think I totally get it, I think our thinking has already changed. Right? I think that's actually needs a little updating. I think the early intention of that section was to send a message as to how our thinking around overworking will be dramatically different from the the average in the industry at this moment. But it's changed. I think less than a good piece of creative work can happen in 10 minutes or you can be staring at something for like 10 days and come up with absolutely nothing right. So what we need to sort of box creative time because we also don't want to like another sort of problem with our industry, which have been talking about a lot these days is how we price we price basis man hours, how can you do man our pricing for creativity? Right? I mean, why? Why would you be penalized for something coming up with something quicker? Exactly.
Aditiya
The joke always is right, freelance writers cost per word, and then complain about brevity.
Gautam
Sorry, I'm only what was your specific question? Yeah.
Amoolya
I mean, what is what is the trade off?
Gautam
So I think things changed. I think we need to find a newer way to talk about how we spend credo time it is, again, it has to be based on trust between teams between manager and reporting, reporting, the 8.5 our number, I guess what a nice early signal. Sometimes your work can take you into weekends, I think something that we do amazingly well, which nobody in advertising does our composites compensatory ops. And we're very sort of loud and proud and transparent about it, including on that the all hands spaces group that I spoke about. The HR team, again, led by ramsha keeps track of she's the one following up saying hey, you do three days of calm Popeye and to taking it. Right. So be very good with stuff like that. And following.
Deepak
Following up. That's one place you
Gautam
don't mind following up? Yeah, no, but that's happening. Well, again, all of these haven't been executed at scale yet. A lot more learning over the next few years. And they're very okay to sort of adapt as the feedback as we go.
Aditiya
Thank you for that question. And I think a lot of where this results in right is kind of firm. So a lot of cynicism about advertising comes from this part of the problem. Right? And this is about a lot of industries come from this problem. Like I think people use humor to get themselves out of shitty whatever all the time. Someone leaves at 531 Day or are you taking half day off like all this nonsense cynicism comes from this as an issue. Now that Indians, I think, like, generally a talented thing, which is not the right audience, for a cynic. I think if you come in here and try being a cynic, or try having that kind of that Johner of humor, or that genre of like that kind of a colleague, you're not going to find people laughing at those jokes here, generally, because a lot of us have heard those jokes, not liked what it has done to our work. And we've opted out of that. So I think if you're, if you're spending longer than then an average day, the idea is that okay, cool. Take only as long as you need and GTFO. And, you know, try not to, you know, you don't need to talk a lot about it, you don't need to talk little about it, there's no, like, the needn't be an additional layer of conversation about that pit, just do what you need to do and, and leave. Right. So I think that generally as a culture health, so if you need to, whenever you're working above hours, finisher hours, get your compounds, be a little mathematical about it, make sure it's all like, you know, calculated those checks and balances are in place, then keep the wheels turning. Sorry, but I think you are
Amoolya
answering the example question about the number of hours, but I think there was a larger question about if you had to choose between the creative output or what what whatever it takes to deliver that creative output versus certain values with which you have to run your company? How would you draw that line? It's
Aditiya
very, it's a very tough choice, and which is why I think it is very, very important that people like what they are doing. A lot of this 95% of this comes down to people like what they're doing. In fact, the inherent bias in that question is that the project that you're working on is not something you want to work on, but it takes a long time. So therefore, so obviously, in that point, then completely prioritize the employee, because there's people don't want to work on that project more often than not, I mean, as long as that's one out of 10 projects, and nine or 10 projects are ones that you are genuinely excited about, it changes the game. So burnout, as we've kind of understood it is not having your time and your control is doing more and more things that you would rather not be doing a large part of our work is done, let's say very well managed, time wise type atmosphere staffed correctly, etc. But there is a lot of our work, which let's say there's a celebrity in the mix, right? Celebrities are notorious for not respecting, I mean, a group of celebrities. Latvians Bollywood, as we call it, notorious for their whole pricing strategy is dependent on making other people who work around them feel like feel horrible. In that kind of an atmosphere, you have an unknown at play. So, in fact, the updated handbook will cover this part a lot about you know, how are we choosing to work with celebrities have your general guidelines in place for that, so, but a lot of our work, which has involved celebrities needs to therefore be something that we are personally really, really happy with in order to think a little differently about it. And then the checks and balances kind of fall in place. So yeah, all of this banks if, if people don't like the work?
Amoolya
Yeah, that's true.
Deepak
How is the ecosystem responding to what you're trying to do inside clients vendors, compared to let's say, when you end up checking or other organizations, and you see, do you see a difference in how the ecosystem has responded to you guys?
Aditiya
Yeah, no, good only like I think the one of the things we've said from the from the get go is like, if we were to ask, this is true of any industry, especially advertising. But if you're an architecture, and if you were to ask a bunch of other people in the architecture, fraternity, what are three or four things that should improve about architecture? Everyone will have answers similar advertising, if we ask anyone in marketing, what are three or four things they should improve in the agency business, they'll all have answered, the problem is no one was doing it. Right. So this is basically executing ideas that have already been discussed in different in hundreds of smoke breaks in hundreds of Friday night VR happenings as they say. So in that sense, they're just chiseled down and sharpened, and etc. I
Gautam
think it has business impact to the market. It has direct business impact, our industry is a sea of sameness. All agencies look and feel and talk and the first 1020 slides of every pitch deck to a client looks the same. We're talking about same kind of work. Our people are this, right? So an industry of sameness, even how you're executing policies internally, could be a dramatic differentiator. And I think that sets us apart early on, that's allowed us to price differently. It's clear that we value our talent more than anything else in the country values, their talent. All of those have an impact on business. If people want
Deepak
to work with you, how do they get in touch with you? Some people want to listening to this may want to work with you. And you also get paid internships so it's
Gautam
no paid internships are the norm. We don't come on. They shouldn't be unpaid internship. We do paid interviews, interviews as well. So if anyone Yeah, I mean, that's a tiny little thing if anyone takes a test As part of your interview, and you got to go back and use some of your creative sort of time and effort that's compensated for that. Yeah, that's new paid internship should be unpaid intern, you should be banned. unpaid
Deepak
internship, it is the normal, unfortunately, because
Sujatha
we covered so many things. Right. So the first thing I want to say is that the employee open handbook, we open, the employee handbook is available, right for people to download. And I mean, anybody can do that.
Gautam
It's a notion link, it's there on our website. Yeah.
Sujatha
So people can look at it and just sort of engage with the ideas, because I think you're right. In many ways, a lot of these ideas exist, I think it's really when sort of, you know, the the execution part of it, that would be the differentiator. So I think there's lots of rounds we covered today. But I've been trying to think about all of the things we've talked about, but I'm not going to do that I come back to this one T. And I think that's the theme of value, right? And I'm talking about value in three different ways. One is, how do you establish and identify the values around which you build an entity? So many different people coming together? They're all creative. They're all metrics, in some sense, you know, and you still have to bring a cohesion around things that matter to people. And I think that's something important for all of us to think about, right? And I don't, human beings are very different than what we value, right? We all want respect, and we want. So there's that kind of values. But there's also the values have operational them straight, like what are those principles around which we'll organize ourselves? And I think you guys are doing some thinking and experimenting around. I also come back to this value that we place on human beings, right in an eminent the advertising agency, not them, you spoke about per hour rate, it's like this piecemeal rate that we put across, you know, across sectors, right? How do you bring this idea of value rather than price into an equation? I think that's a tough, tough conversation to have anywhere. So how do you value human beings? How do you value trust? How do you value transparency? You know, the first of doing that? So I think we spoke about it. And I'm really, I go back to that question, because I think that's one of the challenges today in the world. I think we price things, we don't value things. So that's really tough. How do you value all of these things you talk about? I think this is a fantastic experiment. Like you said, you know, it's a couple of years you're trying it out, but we would love to just sort of keep not try. But you know, come back to the story, maybe again, and see what what are lessons learned, right? What are things that are working? How do you keep this whole idea of open handbook alive so that it doesn't become just gathering handbook that once in a while people pull up? Right, but it's a live document? How are you building your vocabulary? How are you building your, these value systems? And is it making a change in the industry? Right, like he said, pushing at least advertising and not just advertising other organizations to rethink? For me, it's a value question, but rethink these ideas about human beings. So we'd love to sort of come back maybe a few months down the track 1218 months and say, Guys, where are you? Right? Like, what's talented up to keep this ideas flowing? If that could work, I'd love to come back and see what what you're up to. So
Gautam
course, course there's this Twitter profile called Remind me in your so when you see a tweet, and you're like, This is what I ate so badly, you sort of had to remind me now you're helping you, you're later saying hey, go back to that and see if it sort of makes sense to do that. Calendar.
Deepak
Calendar, so
Sujatha
thank you so much. Got the PG I know, we've sort of run out of timestamp questions, and we might write them to you and we'll you know, get some responses from you. And we will add that into the podcast if if we can. Okay,
Aditiya
thank you so much. No, it was a it was basically this. One of our one of our colleagues name is Ben ifer. He has this thing called the school it was called the Rosenthal effect, the Pygmalion
Gautam
effect. Rosenthal, Rosenthal, who some favorite,
Aditiya
yeah, we keep referring to this guy a lot. Like she's introduced us to him. He's basically like, if you keep if you tell a group that they are this over and over and over again and do the things that you know, then then there's a high chance and they kind of become that. So yeah, we it has that effect and I think a lot like knowing that we have that we will be disappointing. A lot of people if we don't get this right is a huge motivator for us to want to get it right. So thank you for this been wonderful talking to all of you. You will be reminded in a year
Deepak
Thank you so much. Thank you Sujatha Thank you, Amelia. Thank EPG technique autumn. For me, this is a wonderful conversation. I love talking about value systems, creating better spaces for people in organizations, but also what God was saying that it is getting. It's also acting as a differentiator for you in the market in a crowded market. And then seeing that values and principles also being rewarded. It's really hard for me, so thank you for for a great conversation.
Amoolya
It's really heartening just to see that there is an experiment happening and there are people who have come together to try to do something different. We will check in and chat about how it's going in some time. All the best with everything. Thank you so much.
