How do you keep culture sharp, standards high and people engaged as an agency grows?
Jessica Hargreaves Paczek is CEO of Pretty Green, the creative comms agency behind global fame-making campaigns. She leads a 70-person team and has helped build an agency that’s been named a Best Place to Work for four years in a row.
In this episode, Jess shares how she:
- Uses EOS to give everyone clear accountabilities, quarterly priorities and a strong sense of where they fit
- Treats people, purpose and performance as inseparable (rather than seeing culture as a side project)
- Has turned their values into behaviours, giving teams practical permission to take smart risks and give clearer feedback
- Invests heavily in team feedback, from CEO one-to-ones to internal focus groups that surface issues leadership might otherwise miss
- Brings talent, onboarding, retention and social impact close together through a heavily resourced people function
- Runs the ‘CanCanLion’ Awards, to recognise and reward outstanding ‘less ordinary’ and creative work
Jess offers a thoughtful look at what it takes to build a high-performing agency culture – more clarity, more listening, more repetition and a willingness to keep tightening the system as the business evolves.
