Bossing It: Knowing Which Battles to Fight with Briony McCarthy
Chief executive officer and co-founder of SuperBloom, Briony McCarthy is a brand builder, business leader, global marketer and media communications specialist - and make no mistake, her name is pronounced Briney. She was president of PHD New York when the Omnicom media agency giant was awarded AdAge Media Agency of the Year and Adweek Global Media Agency of the Year.
Briony later fearlessly bailed the corporate C-suite to take the reins as president at Hecho Studios where she introduced a “media first” approach to content creation for brands such as Google, Pinterest, MailChimp, and TikTok. She believes true creativity comes from championing alternative creative voices, and to that end is leading SuperBloom’s efforts to bring together different creators with different experiences from diverse backgrounds around the world, giving brands access to a new breed of creative talent.
LBB> What was your first experience of leadership?
Briony> In my former life, or I guess you could say, in my mid 20s, I led the national “innovation” team inside a media company called Nova Entertainment back in my homeland of Australia. It was a first of its kind, “this has been made just for you” type of role, which I have since come to learn is the exact right place to put a weird shaped toy and have been playing games ever since.
LBB> How did you figure out what kind of leader you wanted to be – or what kind of leader you didn’t want to be?
Briony> It took me a long time to feel confident in ALL of myself, meaning I wore a lot of aggressive business casual and power pumps as a shield to self doubt. It wasn’t until I was part of a leadership team (at PHD), a team who all relentlessly believed in one another that I learned the best thing you can do as a leader is to orient people towards their superpowers, and believe in them, hard core.
LBB> What experience or moment gave you your biggest lesson in leadership?
Briony> I started a new job in a new industry, and in awe at all the opportunity, I drank from the firehose. Ignoring every ‘first 100 days’ business book, diving head first into change, instead of taking the time to feel the vibe and get to know the people. In doing so, I set the wrong stage and disrupted the culture and learned that radical change isn’t always the answer.
LBB> Did you know you always wanted to take on a leadership role? If so how did you work towards it and if not, when did you start realising that you had it in you?
Briony> I sometimes think that a big chunk of my career has been something that has happened to me as opposed to me making it happen. This was definitely true of my first big role. When your name gets thrown into the ring by someone you admire, you got to go for it, right?
It wasn’t until I was actually in the room 'auditioning;’ for the job, did I realise that this is what I really wanted to do, but it was the nudge from someone up top that made me a believer in myself and set the wheels in motion.
LBB> When it comes to 'leadership' as a skill, how much do you think is a natural part of personality, how much can be taught and learned?
Briony> Knowing which battles to fight is a skill learned only with experience.
Perseverance and resilience are not exciting traits, but man are they super helpful.
Also, both history and science has shown us that a good head of hair can be powerful too.
LBB> What are the aspects of leadership that you find most personally challenging? And how do you work through them?
Briony> Being a leader but also CEO and co-founder can be all consuming if you let it. My friends often joke that no matter the topic of conversation, I seem to always articulate myself in business speak which is just straight up embarrassing and must be so boring. Everything can start to look the same so I try to shock my system as much as I can by getting out into the world, consuming anything that doesn't directly relate to business and by committing only to ‘sporadic’ social media use.
LBB> Have you ever felt like you've failed whilst in charge? How did you address the issue and what did you learn from it?
Briony> Too many times I am “too busy” to see or “too focused” on the end game that I have made assumptions that were incorrect. Not everyone processes or receives information in the same way so learning to have more “catch a breath” type moments vs meetings and “catch ups” has helped to see and hear things more clearly. I am also a massive fan of just owning it outright and sitting in the mess for a minute.
LBB> In terms of leadership and openness, what’s your approach there? Do you think it’s important to be as transparent as possible in the service of being authentic? Or is there a value in being careful and considered?
Briony> As someone new to therapy (why did I wait so long- gah!), finding the right language to articulate different things for different people is totally new ground for me.
I am a big pre-planner, pre-gamer or tailgater in business but not in life. Whether it's a visualisation exercise, or jotting down some thoughts, knowing that everyone receives information differently and crafting a conversation with this in mind, can make every interaction real, and more without compromising truth and transparency.
LBB> As you developed your leadership skills did you have a mentor, if so who were/are they and what have you learned? And on the flip side, do you mentor any aspiring leaders and how do you approach that relationship?
Briony> Instead of mentors, I’ve been lucky enough to have a handful of awesome workmates - people who have you back, believe in you but also check you big time when you need it. I have current and past work mates as my mentors.
In terms of mentoring others, one of the things I love most about being a boss is bringing people together. You start to get a good sense for “pairings” - who will play well together and who has potential to make each other better and maybe become mates in the process. So much of what we do is casting - creating an environment for alchemy to happen.
There is a little bit of magic and a little bit of science that happens when you build the right team for a pitch or cast the right PODs of people to swarm around a client business- chemistry and collaboration is what it is all about.
LBB> In continually changing market circumstances, how do you cope with the responsibility of leading a team through difficult waters?
Briony> It really helps to be in the work with the team, on the early morning calls, and kicking down the walls, to muck in and show it can be done, together.
Maybe it’s being Australian or at least having started my career there but culturally, there are no real swim lanes and less of a focus on hierarchies, so staying in your lane and handing things over once your part of the job is done still feels foreign to me. We have fashioned the way we work at SuperBloom around this same philosophy of no handshakes and handovers - it's one team together from the start to the finish. That's how we make it to the end.
LBB> As a leader, what are some of the ways in which you’ve prioritised diversity and inclusion within your workforce?
Briony> Our industry is facing an inflection point, where advertising just isn’t working the way it used to. There is an entire generation who actively choose not to engage with ads and don’t see themselves in brands or in media. This is because the same people have been telling the same stories. At SuperBloom we have more women in creative roles at every level and as a result are starting to become known for working with more female forward brands to tell more real and specific female stories. I am so proud of that.
Our Creative Collective, a membership community of diverse and alternative creators, who partner alongside our creative and production teams, also means we have the gift of accessing a multitude of different points of view, and cultures across all kinds of creativity - from film directors, writers, journalists, screenwriters, YouTubers, photographers. It’s not just about what they do but where they are from, the experiences they have had and what they are most passionate about.
This brings a different lens to the work we make and has broadened the landscape of the creators we work with beyond traditional forms of advertising and we are only just beginning.
LBB> How important is your company culture to the success of your business? And how have you managed to keep it alive with increases in remote and hybrid working patterns?
Briony> Starting a new company in early 2021 in the midst of the pandemic was actually an opportunity to intentionally build our culture one person, one client at a time. In the early days it was easy to build comradery, because it was all new and we were just a bunch of renegades trying on different hats and shoes everyday. It was the most fun you could have at home.
I am grateful that in these early days, we established some company rituals and rewarded team mates based on values and how they worked together vs individual output. This has manifested into a real high five type of culture where we openly acknowledge how our workmates are blooming vs stealing the spotlight for ourselves.
LBB> What are the most useful resources you’ve found to help you along your leadership journey?
Briony> Having great business partners as champions and confidants helps to keep you human, humble and hungry all at once. Also daily meditation... and many other things beginning with the letter M, if I'm honest.
