In this episode of Design Leadership in the Boardroom, Jim Prior, former Global CEO at WPP and Chair at Design Bridge & Partners, Superunion shares 25 years of experience leading some of the world’s most influential creative companies.
Hosted by Ekaterina Solomeina, Co-Founder of Future London Academy, this warm, honest conversation explores how creativity drives business performance, and what every designer should know to influence decision-makers at the highest level.
The knowledge economy is over. If previously you could hire McKinsey to share obscure knowledge, now you can chatGPT it. For Jim, this means that the business advantage of proprietary knowledge no longer exists, since information is now easily accessed.
Instead, the advantage today lies in the creative economy. Business growth and distinction will come from human ingenuity and "leaps of imagination and thought that machines can't make."
Giving a voice to different opinions, thoughts, and experiences means allowing space for creativity to bloom. It is with this diversity that a better environment is created, where people can do their best work and, in turn, make an organisation better.
Jim believes that the generation of leaders emerging now are already creating companies with this principle at their core, celebrating and embracing people as themselves and keeping a fabulous culture at their heart.
Board members do not like to be surprised with new ideas. When presenting ideas to the board, make sure you do the work beforehand: have one-on-one conversations with each leader, build alliances, and ensure alignment.
An important insight from Jim is that to influence senior leaders, you should never present anything where the answer could be ‘no’. By the time you’re in the room, the presentation should simply confirm what’s already been agreed through your pre-work process. While three out of ten board members might say no to the idea, the other seven should already be on board and will ultimately mean the results are in your favour.
Senior leaders often freeze at open-ended brainstorming. When running a creative workshop or strategy session with senior leadership who can be naturally risk-averse, do not start with a blank slate.
Instead, Jim says to use a method like ‘triangulation’. Present them with vivid, contrasting futures showing different versions of the company, with examples being: culture, products, and press headlines.
This approach allows leaders to react, refine, and define direction through tangible options instead of abstract ideas. They can express preferences ("I like that bit, but not that bit") and their desired direction within or around the three proposed futures.
Great CEOs aren’t the smartest, they’re the most decisive. The key requirement for sitting in the CEO chair is the ability and willingness to make decisions. Even with imperfect data, decisions must be made.
Jim advises using a decision-making framework based on three questions:
Design Leadership in the Boardroom is a series, where we speak with executive leaders across architecture, product, AI, branding and psychology to unpack the strategies, practices and frameworks that help them succeed at the highest level.
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