Agencies who retain ‘toxic’ staff lose right to claim they are value-driven, trainer says

What Mr. Wentworth-Ping fails to realize is that often the most ‘toxic’ and disruptive people in agencies are the CEOs themselves. It’s probably why they got hired in the first place – by people higher up the food chain who are even more ‘toxic’ and disruptive…

Lets face it agencies only care about the ‘culture’ – if a person is willing to get pissed at the pub with the rest of the team, and can get along with reps.

At my old agency it was completely acceptable for someone to bludge, stream sports all day on their 2nd monitor and be all the phone all day to reps scabbing tickets to events…….. because they were the agency clown and added to the overall “culture”. So pathetic!!

SPOT ON Richard – brilliant !!

For the last 10 years I have been horrified at the piss poor (as you stated) diligence that the recruitment process is given and the way toxic management is allowed to thrive in agencies (and media suppliers also) . “Ah the clients likes them” – yes but the staff turnover is appalling and the agency (and indeed media suppliers also) suffer incredible $$ in the long term.

Further its unfortunate that our industry which espouses innovation and tackling clients campaigns differently do NOT tackle their own hiring and staffing and retention with the same focus.

Wise words from Richard. It doesn’t have to be complicated. When the focus becomes what there is to gain in staying true to your values, a happier, more cohesive and productive team is the guaranteed reward.

“The boss of a training firm…”

“We need to be a lot more discerning about who joins our businesses…”

Our businesses? The business I work for is nothing like the business you work for, Richard.

Often in my industry, Richard, one has to be “disruptive”. And thank god for that. I fear the day I’m asked to “synergise efficiencies” or “apply best practice” or any other such jargon-laden, meek, ineffectual bullshit.

This is not a phenomenon unique to agencies – many client side staff members I have encountered have just been amazingly incompetent and yet somehow continue to be promoted.
HR is a complex issue but any staff retention and promotion needs to be due to performance, not who you are mates with.

@Toxicity is right, so often the CEO is toxic and doesn’t therefore see it in others. Too many inherited their way to the top, or got there by other means, not by being decent people who are good at their jobs.

This toxicity often starts at the top. There are some horror CEOs and MDs in the media and advertising industry operating private fiefdoms, surrounding themselves with a ring of privleged managers. It’s this style of management breeding toxicity. Employees inevitably end up being in two camps – those that are part of the inner circle, and those that are there to serve.

Having worked both sides, I’ve noticed it’s usually the lifers that have been in the same job in the same agency for the majority of their career that are most toxic.

Thankfully with Linkedin, it’s now easier to see who to avoid – my advice is look at who’s there, who they have around them, how long they’ve been there and what they’ve achieved in their time.

Nice one Sue….. Keep that “native advertising” for Dynamic Visions pumping through 🙂

@toxicity… I worked with a CTO once (Chief Toxicity Officer) who was and remained the festering wound; you can usually tell them by the fact that (a) they “identify” a problem (fictitious usually, or of their own making) and then they ride in on their stallion to “rescue’ the mission and (b) they claim creative status because they are not. Simple as A, B, and of course the all important C

This is not agency specific it’s every industry. Relationships at client end are powerful in every workplace and those with them are often given leeway when it comes to some ways of working

Richard is absolutely right and it extends to the recruiters who continue to support aberrant and often recruitment practices. I can’t begin to tell you the number of coffee meetings disguised as interviews and the number of agencies that fail to even follow up with the courtesy of just a “thank you but no email”. I was recently working with a recruiter for a director role and had to flatly refuse the offer of a followup with the agency (having interviewed with them twice) because they simply didn’t know what or who they wanted. And don’t get me started on the same old faces on the agency merry go round. Innovative hiring practices, employer of choice – excuse me.

“don’t tell me you are a value driven organisation”

Well they’re obviously driven by the value their employee provides…

Too true, and anyone in agency-land has suffered at least one of these people.

On this topic, this is also worth a read: https://medium.com/@mutlu82/why-talented-creatives-are-leaving-your-shitty-agency-6f4ec6f70fbe

What an unsetting and narrow minded opinion – I hope you only said it for clicks.

Imagine thinking of people as toxic and wanting to eject them for their toxicity.

Imagine applying that to a country a society a community?

I doubt any good leader in business would support this point of view.

It always makes me laugh when an agency refers to its staff as family.

Creative departments are toxic. You’re either one of the anointed or you’re two pay checks from freelancing. Creative Directors surround themselves with toadies, and the toadies love it; they lap up the creative directors ideas, run with them and then win an award or two having never had an original thought themselves. They become Group Heads and then Creative Directors and the whole cycle repeats itself.

Everyone knows but no-one wants to say anything because it’s such a small industry; if you stand up for yourself you’re black balled by recruiters or labeled as ‘disruptive’. In effect you become the surrogate ‘toxic defender’ and the rest of the agency turns on you to protect their own asses.

Agree to a point. I find the issue is nobody is allowed to address the toxic behaviour. When account service agree to an impossible deadline without consulting the creatives, who is more toxic, the creative who calls account service incompetent twats or account service? In my opinion, both.

An agency only really works when you have a process and stick to it. People need rules and boundaries. And that has to start at the top and extend to clients.

An agency that won ‘culture of the year’ or some similar award from a certain internet only marketing and media news publication (although I can’t mention which one) has lost almost three quarters of it’s staff since. Most resigned. And it’s all for the reasons I mentioned above.

A Nus, you sound like one of the incompetent suits who like to ‘bend the rules’ which leads to peoples lives being destroyed and incredibly bad work. Our job isn’t to suck our clients phallus, it’s to deliver them the best results for their money. That’s the only way to gain their trust and respect.

I think A Nus scored a hole in one.. Excellently put.

Thanks for all the responses. I thought it worth picking up on a couple of your points.
1. Completely agree that sometimes it’s the people at the very top who are the issue. If they own the company, no one is going to remove them but many good people will leave. If the agency is part of a group, it is perhaps only when financial results suffer that something gets done.
2. Being disruptive in a good way is not the same as being toxic. We will all have different definitions of what that means: for me it’s treating people badly, bullying, being political etc. Jargon doesn’t come into it:. It’s simply being a decent human being.
3. LG’s comment – absolutely the comments are true for any business in any sector. Agencies I think are better than many sectors.
4. To clarify, I was talking about values driven organisations, not value driven (in the sense of financial value/client value). An important distinction.
5. Adam’s comment – agree you could not do this for a society, community or country. However that’s not apples with apples. Every CEO/MD or senior manager will have moved people on in their career for various reasons: poor performance, misconduct, bad cultural fit. Perhaps you have never got rid of someone.

It’s been said by a few people, but ‘The path of least resistance makes all rivers, and some men, crooked.’

This applies not only to passionately delivering great work that gets great results, but also to passionately counselling and dispersing the bullies who, often, are too busy protecting their jobs to be doing anything useful to our clients.

BTW A Nus sounds more like Ad Ick than A Nus.

The footprint on society that ad agencies have is 2nd to investment bankers (it is very low indeed). Representing fast food, fossil fuel guzzlers, greedy banks and the like. Do you honestly think that non toxic people want to be managers for such shameless companies?

Scum breeds scum – this has and always will be the case.