As your agency grows, how do you build a culture that people feel, rather than just read about?
Parry Jones is CEO of The Specialist Works, a media agency for entrepreneurial brands. He joined when there were just ten people, co-led a management buyout in 2018 and now leads a team of around 120.
In this episode, Parry Jones shares how he:
- Makes passion, inquisitiveness, caring and knowledge part of everyday agency life, from recruitment calls to peer recognition
- Helps people recognise abilities they don’t see in themselves and take on roles they never thought they could do
- Learned to adapt his approach after discovering that pushing everyone into the deep end doesn’t always work
- Uses a senior client success role, independent of delivery, to hear what clients really need
- Helps his team use AI without losing the specialist knowledge and judgement clients pay them for
- Consciously gives more praise, having realised that other people want something he’s never particularly needed himself
Parry also explains why employee pride is a top-level business goal, and why the way he treats people will matter as much as commercial success when he looks back on his time as CEO.
