How to make a Co-MD role successful for both individuals
Rationale grew out of friendship and a shared belief that work should be both fulfilling and fun. This is the central ethos of our business which has informed our decisions to date, and we are passionate about continuing to hold true to this in future. Co-running a business of course isn’t always easy, and what we’ve realised is not to take each other for granted. Svein and I are similar in many ways, but we’re also different in our approaches to things so, as with any important relationship, we come at things with mutual respect and put time and intentional effort into how we work together. I’d say we’ve learned that communication is absolutely vital because, even if you know someone very well, misunderstandings happen and perceptions can be wrong. Ultimately, we have fun together and laugh a lot!
How to grow a business from its Scottish roots to Stateside
The move from the UK to an international presence has been important for Rationale and again is a fairly pivotal element of our approach and outlook. Our base in New York was put in place very early on, as our first major client was based in Boston. We’ve never wanted to be a ‘Scottish’ agency and our client base continues to reflect this. We’ve found that our strategic, insight-based approach very much resonates with a US audience, and they also love our entrepreneurial spirit and understanding of the cultural differences in brand and messaging. The growth in the US has largely come from referrals – if you do good work, are creative and reliable, it’s a culture where people will recommend you to others and that moves pretty quickly.
The importance of prioritising people over profits in agency culture
We prioritise both people AND profit – not one over the other. And the belief that these two elements are intrinsically linked is what we feel makes us unique. Agencies are people businesses. If our team is happy and motivated and appropriately rewarded for doing great work, not only does our culture and sense of fun and fulfilment benefit – our clients benefit, our accounts grow and we create more profit that we can feed back into the people again. We took the team to Madrid this year for a combination of strategic planning and team building and it was incredible. We had a brilliant time and everyone came back fully engaged and motivated.
Why a working-class background shouldn’t be a barrier to being an MD: Rowan’s personal story echoes this
I am hugely passionate about people from all backgrounds seeing others ‘like them’ founding and running their own businesses. The more entrepreneurs I meet, the more I realise I’m in a minority having been state schooled and not privately educated and the biases against this have honestly at times been more impactful than those I’ve experienced as a woman. I did well at school, but dropped out when I was 16 and have fought hard since to get to where I am and have I suppose always been entrepreneurial and self-starting (and I don’t like to be managed!) – but I never for a moment had an ambition to work for myself, it was a course of events which led me to where I am now. We will all benefit from diversity in business leadership and I feel strongly the widest scope of opportunities and options should be open to everyone.
How to fail fast: recover and adjust to failure quickly
We launched six months before the pandemic with a proposition very firmly based around brand purpose. In some ways, this resonated very well in this time, with the unprecedented demand for organisations to show how they were treating staff and customers. That said, the backlash around purpose was real and we soon realised that, with client budgets under strain, we needed to adjust our positioning to speak much more clearly around ‘impact’ and the various ways that our services deliver this – for employees, customers, the community, society, and the wider world. We also adjusted how we used this start-up time to focus sharply on our own take on purpose and we began to work towards BCorp, developing policies and values which put us in a positive, forward-looking place for employing and nurturing a brilliant team.
About the author
Rowan Morrison, Managing Director and Co-Founder, Rationale
Rowan is a highly experienced agency leader, brand and marketing consultant and writer with a First-Class Honours Degree in Marketing and Publishing. She has led campaigns and consulted for a wide range of senior client stakeholders across global organisations.
