Transcript

Dominic Horne: Hello and welcome to another one of our Talent Talk with Robert Walters podcasts, recording on a not so sunny Friday morning where I'm actually coming to you from our head office in Covent Garden. Over the coming months we're going to be hearing from leaders across the Robert waters UK leadership team, along with industry guests discussing their career successes, advice and also to get their quick take on what they're seeing in the market. I’m Dominic Horne, I manage the tech, media and telco team here at Robert Walters London and joining us today we have Deepa Shah. Deepa is an award-winning CFO, including the 2020 technology CFO of the year and the 2018 CFO of the year from the Woman in Finance Awards. Deepa trained and qualified in industry with Hall & Partners before she played an active role in their sale to advertising and media giant Omnicom. There she continued progressing through to become CFO of the APAC and EMEA regions before further progressing in her career to become the UK CFO of Publicis Sapient, who are a well-known leader within the digital transformation and service industry, who are also part of the Publicis Group. Deepa, welcome. Good morning. How are you?

Deepa Shah: Hi Dom, I'm really well. Thank you. Thanks for having me. I'm really excited to talk to you today.

Dominic Horne: Perfect, me too. It's definitely a slightly different circumstance to what we would normally do, obviously It would be much nicer if we could be recording in person, but I suppose needs must.

Deepa Shah: Yeah, I know, I know, but we've got to make do with what we've got for now, and hopefully the next one will be in person.

Dominic Horne: Hopefully. So, I was quite keen to kick off with a little bit around your career. Obviously you were part of the bigger corporates, but actually recently you've gone it alone and started your new business Lab Eight. I was quite keen to get your take on what it was like doing that in the midst of a pandemic?

Deepa Shah: Well yeah. Lots of people looked at me at the beginning of April going are you nuts? The background to me going into Lab Eight is last year I got to a point where I felt I'd been in the holding groups for too long. I wanted to go out and see what the independent agency world was doing. I think when you're in holding groups you're in a bit of a bubble and you're quite protected and you don't really get to see everything. I felt I got to a point in my career where I was feeling I was missing something. I needed to go out there and grow and challenge myself a bit more. So, I resigned from Sapient in the beginning of the year and finished up there in April and that was in the middle of lockdown. So everybody was like, what are you going to do? I'm just going to carry on with what I what I started off thinking about anyway. Get on with Lab Eight, because I don't have any other alternative. It's not like I can go back to Sapient, or start looking for another full-time job because the world is in a bit of a fix at the moment. So I thought, you know what, I'm just going to keep going and I'm going to see what happens. Yes, it's been tough because I thought I'd be going to networking events in London to meet people face to face, tell people what I'm doing. Obviously I've had to do everything online. All my BD has had to be online and that makes it so much harder. So, it's been it's been tough, but at the same time. I've met some really incredible people along the way, who have been super helpful really supportive and the fact that it's all been done online is also incredible. You know, some of these people never even met me before, but have been kind enough to pick up the phone or get on a zoom call and tell me about what's going on in the independent agency world. I'm really lucky that i've been going for almost six months now and I'm lucky to be working with a few clients, which is really good. I've done some project work. Now working with clients on retainer, but you know, I've learned so much in the last six months. More than I have done in the last two to three years I'd say, and I think for me, it's been about resilience and to keep going because some days, it has been really, really hard, where you're just like, oh my god, what have I done. But then you get the days where you do some really cool work, or you have a really good meeting and you think, no, I know I'm doing this. For me the reflection of the last six months is about, I wanted to get out of the holding groups to learn to grow and I've been doing exactly that. So I think I made the right choices as tough as it's been, it has been a really, really good thing for me.

Dominic Horne: Good. I'm so pleased to hear that it's going well and I think it's one of those where you'll probably look back on this and it might actually be a blessing in disguise, that it's made you adapt and come at things from a slightly different angle. You've gone and done something that was so totally new and fresh, and almost a little bit alien to you, and you've had to do it as you say, effectively on steroids. As you're saying doing everything virtually, I think it will probably deepen those relationships, much faster because everyone's in the same boat. You’ve probably got a lot more in common with people, as opposed to going to a random networking event here or there, and having multiple conversations

Deepa Shah: Absolutely. And like you said, I've always worked for a company for 20 years and for me to go out and do it alone, that’s been really tough because you don't have a team to support you. You don't have somebody else telling you what you need to do. You’ve got to figure it all out yourself, every day and that's been really interesting. There are some things that I've got right, there's some things that I've got wrong, but it's all part of learning. You've just got to learn from what works and what doesn't. So far it's been really interesting. It's been challenging, but i've really enjoyed it as well.

Dominic Horne: Good, i think that fluidity is something that a lot of businesses are now having to either develop or utilize if they have it in place already. I've heard stories of companies who have had to go out and buy 3000 laptops overnight, just to get everybody set up at home. I think it's very fortunate that we were already a fully agile business and it was a case of, please don't come in tomorrow. That was six months ago, basically. I think that will be a very very consistent theme over the next few years. I think the businesses who are able to change and adapt and overcome whatever this pandemic throws at us will be in a much better position going forward.

Deepa Shah: I think so, just another part of the whole Lab Eight model. The way that I've positioned it is that there's lots of independent businesses out there that are not big enough to need a full time CFO, certainly somebody at my level and can't afford a full time CFO. For me, it's going to be working with start-ups to the SMEs on a part time basis. So all the clients I work with at the moment I work with them anywhere from one to four days a month. Now at first I was thinking, are there going to be businesses that are going to want to take me on like this, but actually what I found is there are businesses out there, there's definitely a market for it. So for me that's really interesting and you know as I was saying, just talking about the laptops and the way that business models are changing. I think there are going to be more and more businesses that realize that they need flexibility, particularly on senior people. I think that's going to be interesting. I've actually been approached recently by a business who is thinking of moving to part time senior positions and approached me about the finance piece, but you know they had full time people in their company up to now at those levels, but, senior people are not cheap, they’re expensive, and I think now the way that business models have changed. Not every business model, but a lot of them have had to change because of COVID. I think they are thinking about the way that people work. I think that the next couple of years are certainly going to be very, very interesting in that space.

Dominic Horne: Definitely.One thing I wanted to touch on was you've grown and adapted throughout your career. I was going through your profile, I noticed that you've made it through the.com bubble popping. You made it through the financial crisis and now you’re successfully setting up your own business throughout a, to quote an unprecedented pandemic. What do you think your best advice would be, just to anybody listening, who is worried about keeping their career on track at a time like this. Being able to get the most out of it because, like myself, I'm sure a lot of people are going through something like this for the very first time. If they’re anything like me, thought it's probably the end of the world back in March and April. And actually, we're starting to come out of it a little bit now and seeing a little bit of light at the end of the tunnel.

Deepa Shah: Yeah, and I would say, first of all, it's not the end of the world. The world will continue to spin. The .com bubble, that's when I first started working and I don't remember it well enough, I think, I just started working, I was quite young, I actually didn't even really care about it, to be honest. I think I was too young to care, but I do remember the last one back in 08. I think what I've learned through the experiences is that you shouldn't be afraid of change. Things are changing all of the time. Sometimes they are less obvious, and sometimes they're more dramatic, like the financial crash, like Covid. Thinking about keeping your career on track. I think the two things are don't fear change and the other thing is just keep learning, you still need to grow, you still need to learn, you still want to continue with your career. If you're ambitious, you want to get better and take yourself to the next level. So I would say work with the changes and adapt. Don't be afraid of it, things are going to change all the time. I think we get used to the routines. We get used to doing things the way that we know. The minute something extreme happens we're like, oh my god, what do I do now? But actually you know it's like I said in the beginning, the world is still spinning. There's still work out there. There's still jobs out there, but I think that some of these periods in our lifetime, have made us realize that the world has evolved. The world continues to evolve over time and we have to as people, have to do that as well and businesses have to do that so we always have to think about, okay, what's next. I think in careers it's always important to keep learning so that you can broaden your skills. You can broaden your experience and you become more valuable to business. I think the ones that stay very traditional in their methods in their ways of working, the ones that fear change, the ones that are really stuck in their ways are the ones that are going to struggle, longer term. And one of the things that I'm not afraid of doing, as you know, is I'm not afraid of change. I embrace it, and yes I'm scared of it as well. I'm human, but if I don't embrace it. What's the alternative? You can just be stuck. I don’t want to be stuck.

Dominic Horne: I couldn't really agree more. I think it's definitely going to be something that over the next 18 months, two years as we go through the recovery phase, and what ever else is going to be thrown at us, I think being adaptable to change. I think we know it's going to going to happen again things probably not going to stay quite how they are now, forever. I think it's you know, coming back to what we were saying about businesses needing to be fluid and adaptable. I think it's going to be the traits which everybody needs. I think if they don't have them, they'll be left behind, or they won’t do as well as they could have done.

Deepa Shah: Well, exactly. I think it's so important. The whole change piece is important. I know people talk about transformation quite a lot. More importantly, it's about change and embracing it and not fearing it, but we're all human at the end of the day we fear the future because we can’t see the future. We don't know what's happening. We wouldn't have thought 2020  would have turned out how it has. When you're in it, you have to just make the most of it and try and see the positives, and take the positives as opposed to the negatives because the negatives are just going to keep dragging you down. I think it's about what can I do with this situation, how do I change it? how do I flip it? so it works for me. I think that's the mindset that people should have.

Dominic Horne: Definitely, definitely. It's quite a refreshing point, I quite like that. Speaking of changing and adapting. One thing that I think you've been pretty good at, pushing through in any business you've worked through is diversity and creating a more diverse and equal workplace. I know you've been involved in running networks, setting up networks. What would be your take on how you've seen that change and evolve throughout your career?

Deepa Shah: It hasn't evolved fast enough. I think in some areas, it has. If we look at, you know, gender parity across the industry I work in, it has got better. It isn't the best yet. It's not at the place that it should be, you know, there certainly needs to be more senior women across the industry. There aren’t enough. I would say the real struggle is around race and ethnicity, and disabilities as well across the industry which need a lot of improvement. It needs a lot of work behind it and for me I try and do whatever I can to help it now. There's a lot of work to do and it's going to take years. I honestly believe it's going to take years but the positive from it is that there are so many people getting involved, that want to see change or helping to drive change. The more people involved, the faster that transformation will be and the faster those positive changes will be in. The faster we will become more equal across the industry. I think anything that anyone can do that's working in the industry or even allies of the industry is going to be incredibly important. You know the holding groups are doing great jobs and now i'm seeing it as I'm working with independent agencies how they're building themselves as their focus around inclusion and diversity and some of the things that they're thinking about. I do think there is a great movement happening. But I do think it's going to take a long time to see to see real change.

Dominic Horne: I think it's such a deep rooted, complicated issue and I think for so long, my view of it is that people have almost been afraid of having the conversation for not wanting to be perceived as something that they're not, or you know offending somebody. Whereas I think actually now in the last few years, everybody's kind of said, well, okay, let's just understand A, we have this issue here B, we all know that we want to deal with it. So let's all have a conversation and get everything out onto the table and let's try and try and fix it and I think we're at the beginning steps of something really meaningful happening. I think it's quite nice to see, and it certainly, from our perspective, we're seeing that a lot more businesses are trying to play an active role and actually gender balance shortlists. And actually, we’d really like to hire you know a senior female so that we can even our numbers on the board. I think even just being able to have those conversations is a massive, massive step in the right direction.

Deepa Shah: I completely agree. It is like you said, it's all well and good having the conversation. It's also about well how do we then drive the change, and that goes back to things like how we are recruiting, where are we recruiting from? how do we retain staff? how do we make sure that we see women promoted? and how do we help develop them throughout their career, so they do make it to that senior position? how do we create more role models at certain levels so that other people can see that it is achievable, and it is doable? But it's all those things and you know it goes back to something that a friend of mind said, who's quite senior in D&I in Omnicom and he says to me, you can't be what you can't see. So I think that's so important in terms of driving the change and I really believe we will see change happening. But I think the pace will be quite slow. Hopefully, I'm wrong, I've seen some progress, but it's been slow progress.

Dominic Horne: I suppose it's one of those things, it’s better than no progress, but equally will be nice to see something happen a little bit faster than it is happening now and I think I think it'll be a bit more like a snowball effect. I think once more and more people get on side and I think with the younger generation coming through. I just don't think we’ll tolerate anything less. I think as they get into the working realms and they move into management positions I think things will start to naturally become better and better. I think it's one of those where for people who have struggled through for the last 20/30 years it's probably not going to come as fast as they would like.

Deepa Shah: I completely agree, I'm excited. I'm also excited for after all that’s happened this year. It's really helping push what we really need to push. So i'm excited for it and i'm always very happy to work with people and businesses on their D&I agenda and what that looks like. It’s such a vast topic as well, what do you prioritize? where do you start? How do we then put some structure around this? what does it mean for the business? does it mean behaviour change? Does it mean culture change? There is so much, but there's also so many good organisations out there that can help you with some of this stuff as well, so it's not like businesses just have to try and figure it out on their own. There are some really good businesses out there that support with this space and are professionals and know what they're doing and are passionate about it as well.

Dominic Horne: Hopefully, hopefully it brings more change around and further opportunity that comes with that. What would your advice be to a business who wants to set up an internal network, a diversity and inclusion network? Anything along those lines, who knows they need to be doing more and can do more.

Deepa Shah: I think it depends. Firstly, on the size of the organization, if you're pretty small you will have a think about how you want to grow. What does that look like in terms of the kind of people that you want to bring in? think about the different kinds of talent, the experience. What do you want? what do you want that mix to look like and why? how is it going to add value to your business? and I think larger organizations that want to build a team that can really champion and include the rest of the business to promote. Think about who those individuals are, maybe bring in some of these other organisations, there's a fantastic organisation, run by two fantastic women that I know called The Other Box, they literally come in and help build teams for you. And there's another one from a friend called Ali Hannon called Created Equal as well, and they're brilliant, they'll come in, they'll assess your business or will help you build plans and help you build teams around driving some of these changes. It goes back to what I said before, don't feel you're on your own and like I said, it's a vast subject. Some agencies will just not know where to even start. But there's professionals out there that can come in and help advise you and help you build proper D&I plans. So really think about that i’d say, get the right support rather than just amble along.

Dominic Horne: For sure. Hiring somebody who lives and breathes this day in day out can probably point out things in which you haven't even thought might be an issue or a consideration. And it's the same as that's why advertising agencies exist because not everybody can do it all themselves, you go to an expert. Not everyone can do all of the recruitment themselves, that’s why they come to people like us for example. So I think this is one of those of I suppose, know your limitations and don't be afraid to ask for help. If we then flip that, if you were say an individual who wanted to play a bigger role in that within a business and not necessarily say from either the chief exec level just say somebody in the finance team. What would your advice to them be?

Deepa Shah: I'd say put your hand up and do it, I've done it. I know that my last big D&I role was for Publicis in the UK. But before that, I was just getting myself involved and just trying to make a difference, however small ways that I could, even doing things like mentoring. Mentoring other young women coming up through their career, I just kind of took it upon myself and I thought well i've had some great mentors. So why don't I just give back as well. There’s so many things that you can do to get involved and don't wait for permission. Because if you wait, nothing happens. Just be active, put your hand up, people will see your passion come through and want to be a part of it. So you'll realize you just attract more people that want to help and be a part of this movement. So I think just get on with it. Drive the change that you want to see, if you aren't involved, if you aren't part of it. It's not going to happen, there needs to be more people that do put their hands up and get involved.

Dominic Horne: It takes a bit of courage, stand up, be counted and hopefully a few others will stand up with you and it creates a bit of a movement and hopefully can effect some change within any business, no matter the size. We touched on the agency world briefly earlier and I was quite keen to get your take on things because obviously they're being squeezed from every single angle, left right and centre. It's a race to the bottom on rates. Businesses are suffering with Covid. The marketing spend is one of the first areas that we normally see cut because it's quite easy just to chop it, what is your take on the future of the agency world and how it looks?

Deepa Shah: I think that the future of the independent agency world is looking a lot brighter than the future of the holding group agency world, currently. I think that i've been quite honest about this for quite a long time. I think that the agency world in holding groups has been quite traditional for a long time. I think holding groups have not embraced change as fast as they should. I don't. I feel they haven't transformed as quickly as they should. I think there's a bit of a block at the top at times. From there I've seen agencies that have wanted to invest, wanted to transform, but are unable to do it because their hands are tied. Whereas the independent agency world is doing all of the things that the holding group agencies wish they could do. I think that that whole journey around being able to be agile, nimble, change quickly, transform, think about your agency proposition and actually, is it still relevant?  even for the Covid times. A lot of agencies should be asking what we were selling before to the client is that even relevant now? is that proposition relevant and if it isn't anymore. How are we going to change? what do we need to do next? where's the added value?. Throughout this time, throughout this year, people have been talking a lot about digital transformation about the agencies that aren't digitally savvy are not are not going to survive. But the fact is digital, tech has been around for ages. It's been around for years. It’s not a new thing. I think the future of agencies, the ones that are going to survive, are the ones that are going to be able to adapt, and are going to be able to answer their clients questions, faster, quicker but the ones that are also so embedded with their clients that they understand the changes that the clients are going through. Clients have been through a process this year, just as agencies have, with Covid, with new ways of working and actually maybe we were spending too much money here and really do we actually need that because we've realized last month, we don't need that. Being nimble being agile, being able to invest, being able to innovate are all really, important things. This is my experience and my personal view and I'm sure there's lots of people out there that probably disagree with me. I have not seen agencies within holding groups being able to adapt as fast as I've seen the ones in the independent agency world in the last six months. And so I think that the strength is now in the independent world. I really really do. I think there's going to be some really, really cool businesses coming out of it. The other thing with holding groups is, clients have been paying a premium to work with agencies and holding groups because of the overhead costs. All of those things that are attached or the independents don't necessarily have that. And particularly, now you know with a lot of the overheads going down, and the way that they're re-thinking about working I think they're going to become a lot more competitive. So yeah i think that the future of the agency world, I question mark whether the future of the agency world is within it within a holding group in the traditional holding group. As much as I love them and you know I've had a wonderful career in in them. I just think from a transformation perspective, I think in terms of being agile, in terms of really delivering value, and being able to adapt to the client's needs. I don't know if they're if they're quite there yet, but I have seen it on the other side. You know, I have seen agencies, they're constantly doing it and they're constantly challenging themselves, but they have that independent freedom to do it. And I think that makes such a big difference.

Dominic Horne: I think so I think it's a case of if we suddenly decide that x isn't working. And we need to go and do y as of tomorrow because it's just for the best of the business. We can do that. You know, we were working with a business at the beginning of lockdown who actually said lockdown was one of the best things for them because it made them pause and think about actually is, is what we're doing the right thing and they actually thought. No, no, it's not. They had four or five days of meetings and decided right ok now we are going to go over here, totally flipped the business model. They have now kind of exploded and it’s amazing to see. I think that's the real benefit of the independent agency world, that I think going forward in a very, very fluid landscape that we now see ourselves in. I think you need kind of agency partners across all walks of life to be as fluid as you as a business. And if you're not, if you're too rigid and have set parameters you know you won’t win the contracts, you won’t win the business, I don't think

Deepa Shah: Yeah, and I think that's where the holding group agencies struggle with, you know, they have set parameters and you know they have to hit a certain margin, they have to deliver you know certain level of profits and that all feeds back into rate cards and you know there isn't a lot there isn't a lot of space to to maneuver. Independents can do that very quickly, very easily. And so I think that the future of the agency world is going to be interesting. I think it's going to change, it has to change. I think not just from a business perspective, you know, client perspective but also from a cultural perspective. You know, the way the world is going to work now is going to be very different to the last 10/20 years. So I think new cultures are going to be born from it. And I think new better cultures stronger cultures and then definitely, you know, feeding that whole D&I piece into it as well. Yeah. I think we're going to see some really, really exciting agencies growing.

Dominic Horne: I couldn't agree more. What a positive note to end on. And in a crazy time like this. Deepa I just wanted to say thank you so much for your time. I appreciate. It's obviously been very valuable and I really, really do appreciate your thoughts and your insights it has been a fascinating discussion and I'm really, really looking forward to catching up with you, face to face, at some point, as well.

Deepa Shah: Thank you so much for having me. I’ve loved talking to you. And it was a really, I thought, I thought was really good conversation. So thank you for having me.

Dominic Horne: Definitely. Thank you very much.