OMD boss Peter Horgan: I pushed my staff too hard
The CEO of media agency OMD has described the aftermath of losing the media account for Westpac in 2011, conceding that he made a mistake in the year that followded by pushing staff “very hard” to try to win new business to replace the $70m account.
In an interview with the Australian Education Times, which uses children as its interviewers, Peter Horgan speaks openly and honestly about the impact the account loss had on the business.
“The failures I look back on are where I let people down,” Horgan says in the video. “You become too focused on a new business target or a client demand and you push your team too hard and you forget the human side of the teams that are working for you and are doing their best.
“I think I could look back to a time in 2012 and we had lost a piece of business and we were pitching very hard to try and replace that big piece of business. And I would say we lost sight of looking after the humans at OMD, and things like culture, people and their work life is a very important thing to the make up of this company.”
Horgan told his interviewer, Maya, that he was forced to revise his approach after the business’s culture scores took a major dive the next year.
“It reflected on how the company felt and we measure every year how people feel about working at OMD, and the scores took a big dive,” said Horgan. “You could sense people were unhappy. People were working incredibly long hours and it had a big impact on the business.
“I look back on it as a failure and the learning was to be more mindful of looking after the people, nurturing culture within the business… and that fundamentally we are a people business.”
The CEO of OMD also spoke openly about his relationship with group Omnicom head Leigh Terry and how the two of them were joint managing directors for two years.
“When we went to talk to the people who own this business and suggested that it might be a good idea for me and Leigh to jointly run the business they said: ‘that’s crazy, all across the world we’ve three joint managing directors and it has been a disaster every time – they end up fighting and no one knows who is in charge’,” said Horgan.
“But we were lucky that the time we spent as joint MD was seen as a positive time for the people and for the business and I would say the fundamental difference that we brought was that we worked together for a long time and we trusted each other.”
The Australian Education Times is a new education magazine which launched earlier this year and interviews business CEOs as part of a monthly video.
Nic Christensen
Good to see an agency CEO recognissing that pushing staff to continually work very long hours is bad for business
User ID not verified.
FFS doenst a seasoned CEO like Peter Horgan know this stuff already?
User ID not verified.
Mea Culpa, mea culpa, mea culpa……Catharsis….OOps! Purgatio Purgatio Purgatio
User ID not verified.
It’s hard to understand the comments of Peter without knowing the context of losing Westpac.
Is the acknowledgement of the mistake of intentionally as in in cold blood decided to disrupt staffs lives by pushing them beyond points that are healthy or balanced or is it the acknowledgement of poor management by the leadership.
It is interesting in that the victors can always write the history. By this I mean that Carat for example probably flogged their staff harder to win Woolworths – but they won so no acknowledgement of this is delivered. OMD on the other hand have pushed people to hard – a gamble on winning if you will – but having failed to win business are unable to write history as victors and there acknowledge a poor strategy which is fair enough.
Beyond Peters comments it is sad that we operate in an industry where staff are seen as pawns to be pushed to levels that are not ethical and exploited for corporate financial gain.
User ID not verified.
Open question to Peter:
Have you compensated your staff mate?
Is it still happening?
User ID not verified.