Rob Pellow Encourages Artists to Celebrate Their Distinctive Selves

An always-positive problem solver with a background both client-side working at Dyson and then in technology companies before joining Armadillo, Rob Pellow brings his own experience of real client challenges, as well as a strong technical understanding on how to solve them.

Nothing imbues Rob with more energy and enthusiasm than when technology meets creative and strategy – especially when innovations provide an exciting opportunity to meet business objectives in a meaningful way. His passion for problem solving is matched only by his love of painting little plastic men.

Rob recently sat down with LBB to look back on words of wisdom that helped him become a stronger team player and understand his own strengths and values…

If there is one piece of wisdom from my career that's always stayed with me is that while I’m very good at gut feel/improvisation/flying by the seat of my pants, all of that becomes WAY more valuable if I let more people help craft the story, identify the key points and then let me improvise around them.

I have a history of believing I’m only valuable if I have ALL the answers on my own, so this was a real turning point – it was actually not that long ago when I discovered this.

Somewhere in 2020/2021, I was working at Armadillo and had been here about three years at this point but we were deep in the lockdown strangeness. Part of that strangeness was that we’d been through some fairly major re-jigging of how the teams were set up and how our roles needed to evolve in this new world and that had left me very reflective and needing to find new anchors to better understand my own value.

The actual conversation happened just after we’d delivered a pitch. During that process we’d spent more time physically together as a pitch team than we had in months (lockdown/tiers – remember those!).

We also were quite a lean pitch team so I was firmly involved in a few practical bits of creating the literal story with working web apps/emails/creative and hadn’t had much time to think about how I was going to present.

The day before we had a run-through that didn’t go well. I was assuming I’d just be able to ad-lib my way to glory but that had turned into a meandering beige. We stopped and picked apart the bits we were trying to get across, I forced myself to make notes, we ran it again three or four more times, really getting pointy.

Then when we came to deliver the actual pitch (other than our CEO getting harassed by someone desperately trying to deliver a parcel) it came out naturally and my improv instincts were never stronger because they had a focus.

The actual conversation about this was a reflective one directly after the pitch. It came from our CEO who was my manager at the time. I’d worked for him for a few years at this point and always admired his mix of strategic pragmatism and excited ambition.

This was the most direct and timely feedback I’d gotten from him; there was a lot of detail and, more importantly, tempered the validation of something going well with the specifics of where my specific value was added.

I think it struck such a cord because it was delivered so quickly and specifically, it helped me to celebrate that which was uniquely me with how that fits into a team. Considering the background, it planted a really visible seed for me in working out that I didn’t need to know or do everything to have value. It was a key driver for how I was able to embrace more people around me to lift what I can bring, while being a member of a high-performing team.

The belief that I’d carried most of my career, that I needed to be the one man-band to be successful, had started to really erode any sort of direction or focus for me. This wasn’t the only way nor the only person that started to help me understand that wasn’t true, but it is the one that sticks in my head when I find myself feeling I must have every answer. It’s helped me find the best people to surround myself with, to seek out more opinions and to focus my strengths where they can have the biggest impact.

As I’ve progressed in my career, I re-evaluated this piece of advice all the time – it’s a constant battle to sit on my hands and let everyone else bring their expertise and reminding myself I don’t have a point to prove! At its core, this was about finding the right point to have an impact vs trying to impact everything.

This is advice I am very happy to pass on to others. Seeing ourselves having impact is the way we understand the value we bring. If, like me, people aren’t seeing that, it can lead to that sense of flailing around trying to solve anything and everything. In nearly every case, starting with the unique talents we all have is the best foundation. Someone else helping provide the focus and the right feedback in a timely manner is the way to shape that into long term value and that’s now the impact I am trying to have for them.