AKQA Co-Founder on the Lessons Behind a $550 Million Agency | James Hilton

0:00James Hilton:Hi, I'm Ekaterina from Future London Academy and today we are doing something different. We travelled a few hours outside of London to visit a very special person, James Hilton, the legendary co-founder of AKQA, the iconic digital design agency that currently has offices across 19 different countries and employs over 6 ,000 people. You'll definitely enjoy this conversation. Come with me. How are you doing James? Hello. Hello. You having a good day? Wonderful, thank you. How are you? Very good. I will start with a big one to intrigue our audience with a sale of AKQA. That was a long time ago. It was a long time ago.

0:49James Hilton:It was a big one. Yeah. Allegedly, at the point of sale was valued at£340 million, according to Google. something like that something like that a lot of money yeah a lot of people dream about building something big and one day getting a big payoff from selling something so you can i don't know do all the things you ever dreamt about yes how did you feel when you sold it when you felt like okay the do is done did you feel anything was it a relief excitement not really it was um this is going to sound terrible but I was kind of indifferent I was more interested in what is that going to do to AKQA and I remember having um I remember having a discussion with Sir Martin and you know and I say look this is that's cool but this is what I'm worried about um and he was very clear with me he said look there's no point in buying a supercar and taking the engine out and putting like a Ford Cortina engine in it, is that, you know, it's like, I'm not, I'm not here to reduce your capabilities.

2:05We're here to add, you know, robustness to some of the areas that you, you know, you require help with, you know, financials and things like that. So really just augmenting what we already have with uh WPP's um capabilities and so it was kind of okay fine it was never going to be I was I was I was not in a position to be able to sort of like stop the deal or anything like that I mean it was obvious that it was it was going to go through um but I was um I was more concerned around you know how is this going to affect AKQA how's it going to affect the people how's it going to affect the work that was that was it really I mean of course you know it would be stupid to say you know I wasn't pleased about you know the financial side

2:53James Hilton:of things um of course did you buy anything straight away some dream dream object or something no no did you go on a big holiday no did you do anything to celebrate it no why not because it was never about money it was about work and it was about all the all the time that Jars and I spent together it wasn't ever it was never about being the biggest it was about being the best being the biggest actually isn't you know terribly difficult um being the best is incredibly difficult because you can't diminish your benchmarks for one second and that take and And to be that relentless takes an enormous amount of effort and work and personal sacrifice.

3:47Not just for me, of course, but for everyone involved, you know, the entire team of people. It's like I was only I was like a small part of AKQA. It's like AKQA was an idea and I was very fortunate to be part of that idea.

4:08James Hilton:So what do you think made it successful? Because there are so many companies that started around that time. They don't exist anymore. There are so many companies that never grew to that size, whether we judge by revenue or amount of employees or amount of offices that you had across the world. or the scale of the projects you were doing. By all measures, you were incredibly successful in all areas. So why do you think you succeeded to that level while others didn't? I think we led by example. We loved, I don't want to say we, I mean Ajars, Matthew, Dan, myself, the guys that started it. We loved what we did in an obsessive, all-consuming way.

5:03And we wanted to find people that loved it as obsessively and compulsively. When you build like that, then you end up one day with a company full of completely obsessed, compulsive people who just love doing the work um and you're still part of it and and i think that you have to be in the craft whatever craft that is whether that's you know strategy or you know um business relations or whatever you know as a as jars was or you know like technology consultancy as matthew was or as you know just technology and engineering as dan was or you know design and creativity like I was, you still have to be doing it with everyone else.

5:55It's like you can't step away from it. And you cannot ask anything of anyone that you can't do yourself or you wouldn't do yourself. And, you know, I remember doing all sorts of shit jobs. that I didn't really want to ask anyone else to do. I remember when we got Sainsbury's as a client and you literally had to, in Photoshop, cut out the packets to put onto the web. And there was days of cutting out packets of peas and just packaging and stuff like that so it could go onto the website properly.

6:44James Hilton:What size of the company was then when you were doing that? I think we were like 70. Why didn't you delegate it to someone? Because they were doing other things. And it was, you know, I mean, was it a great use of my time? Probably not. Being at the top of something doesn't mean that you get the best jobs. It actually means you get the worst jobs. Because, A, you're creating a platform that you want people, you want people to be able to do the best work of their careers in this platform that you've created but also shit travels up not down right and because you want people to do the best work they can't always be doing the grunt work they've got to do the work that excites them you know it's balance it's a balancing effect that if i was just going around cherry picking all the work that I wanted to do and getting able to do my grunt work, then I wouldn't have had many people because everyone just got fed up.

7:46You know, it'd be a dick move. So you need to be able to spread the joy as much as possible and give everyone an opportunity to work on cool stuff so that they can prove themselves, not to me, but to themselves and to their peers. And that's how you grow. It's like, you know, I know it's an old cliche, but, you know, the rising tide that lifts all ships. It's like, it's got to be all the ships. It can't just be my ship. You know, there's no fun in that. My experience is that a lot of founders suffer from smartest person in the room syndrome. Like, they think they're the smartest person. They think they're the cleverest one there.

8:27And for the most part, they're not. They just happen to start the thing. and if you're going to surround yourself deliberately with people who you perceive to be less smart than you well then you're never going to get to be the best are you you're just you're you're only ever going to be as good as yourself and that goes against another kind of thing that's always in my head which is is this the best that we can do or is this the best that can be done and they're different things. And it always needs to be, this needs to be the best that can be done. Not just, this cannot be limited by our abilities.

9:14James Hilton:I have a follow-up question on so many things that you said because I agree with how you approach things. Now, the problem I've seen, and I personally experience it, there is this paradox, as you said, of a founder versus scaling a company where on one hand you're very you start a company you start something because you're very passionate about what you do you want to do it all the time and yeah you don't mind doing all sorts of different things that maybe that you hate doing as well it comes with a job on the other hand to grow to scale to kind of have the bigger vision you need to step away you can't be in doing the small task all the time because someone needs to be focusing on what's next for the company how do you grow it for sure so how do you find that balance between being stuck in the things that someone else can do versus doing the things making the most out of where you place the best no absolutely i mean obviously i didn't spend my entire time they're cutting out bags of peas but um it's balance right and the my job was essentially divided into three portions inspire our clients find the next generation of talent drive the work that was it so on any single day a third of it was going to be spent talking to clients helping clients helping them understand you know working with them a third of it was going to be trying to find the next people or identify the the people within the company already who you know needed to rise or who needed some help.

11:05And then a third of it was spent doing work, you know, not just sort of like flouncing around the studio saying, make it green. You know, it's just like that's that wasn't what I was about. You know, you kind of you have to you give your feedback. And I was accused quite a lot of being fairly blunt with people.

11:25James Hilton:I've heard the comment that you were well, actually you said it about yourself that you're not necessarily uh leading with empathy when you give feedback not really um so how did you learn to make sure that again while you attract the best talent they don't leave you because you are blunt with them or maybe well because i think I always try to reassure people like you're not shit it's shit two different things um but then you don't you don't go it's shit and then just walk away you go it's shit how can we make it how can we how can we make it not be or how can we make this better or how can we continue to look at it and so you try and work with people um and and while that can be blunt and some people find that a bit off-putting.

12:21When it's good, you have to be equally as blunt and equally as effusive. I go, that's brilliant. It is brilliant. And so they know there's no ambiguity. And I've just never, I don't, I hate ambiguity in any, in any area of my life. It just drives, it's the one thing that drives me up the wall. I don't want to be pussyfooted around when it comes to being told about my work. You know, I don't, yeah, it's really nice. It's like, what does that mean? You know, it's like, you either like it or you don't. Be honest. Because it's only about making the work better and ultimately about making us better as designers and engineers and whatever, right?

13:14You know, I don't think I was ever rude. Possibly people at AKUA might disagree with me, but I don't think I was ever deliberately rude. And if I was, then I'm ashamed of that and I'm sorry. But I think I've always tried to be fair.

13:30James Hilton:Did you feel like some people did not want you to give feedback that way? I don't know. I mean, I know I upset some people, but I think it was just sort of like the way I was brought up. I remember when I was at college, we'd have crits, like critiques, and all the work would be up on the wall. And it was brutal. You know, I mean, it was like a pack of wolves going for your work and and it was pretty hard to listen to sometimes as well right but it was invaluable because there was no debate it wasn't you didn't end up with mediocre work because of it you always ended up with better work and I think that the people that grew around us at AKQA also had that experience because I was always, you know, I mean specific, you know, some of my old colleagues from there like Tina Bjork, you know, possibly one of the best UI designers in the world, right?

14:44And I'm very, very fortunate to have Tina at AKQA. she'll she'll she'll still tell she'll still give me feedback you know if we if we you know sometimes we get the opportunity to do projects together now and you know her you know she's far ruder than i am to me and i don't know maybe it's revenge but um i just think that that's how we were brought up we were brought up with each other we brought each other we you know we all brought each other up in this world where we saw ambiguity as the enemy and all that matters was the work. So I don't know. I mean, the empathy thing is sort of, I'm not very good at empathy anyway.

15:30Apparently I score low on empathy.

15:32James Hilton:But if you like to give that type of feedback, you need to establish some sort of level of trust. Yeah, you need to be trusted in order to be able to do it. Absolutely. I mean, And it's like if people don't trust you, if you don't trust people and you don't respect people, then you're not going to give a shit what they say or how they say it. And if all you're doing is chastising people, then that's not going to go well for you either. There has to be legitimate concern. any the response has to be appropriate to the to the to the level of seriousness and i've seen people like lose their shit over the smallest of things and it's just it's not appropriate and it doesn't help that person and i think anything that you do or say as as any form of leader needs to be unambiguous but it needs to be fair and it needs to be done in a way that not only progresses the work but progresses the team going back to the idea of why you succeeded one thing that i remember you mentioned a year ago was that you always over delivered so one of the reasons why clients would come back and would stay with AKQA for a long time which is the nature or rather which is the goal for any creative agency or any service in general that people keep coming back to you because you always over deliver it and what you're saying about the best that can be and creating the work that always exceeds the expectation sounds like this has been always the philosophy of this over delivering.

17:23Was there anything else that you felt like made your company grow faster or in general grow to the scale?

17:33James Hilton:Because you grew to how many offices you have at the point? 12 or 13. Something like that. OK, so and thousands. Oh, yeah, like 4000, I think. 4000 people. Yeah, something like that. That is a lot. Yeah, it's a lot. And I think just being good can take you only to a certain level. And there are unfortunately many creative companies and creative founders who are obsessive, who are good, who do over deliver, still don't become a financial success with that scale. So what do you think was another ingredient that enabled that growth and scale? Again, I think it comes from the founders and who they were.

18:17I mean, Ajah was a very astute businessman and was very good at understanding, you know, how to run a tight ship. And, you know, he passed his knowledge and his experience and his way of working onto the people that he was hiring. And, you know, and I did likewise from a design and creative point of view. And Matt and Dan did likewise from a technology point of view. And so you grow up surrounded by subject matter experts. And that's not luck. That's through design and hard work trying to find these people and hard work trying to pass the knowledge on to people so that they understand the point of view that we had.

19:12Yeah, but you're absolutely right. You can't just sort of like, you know, we're going to over-deliver constantly and make loads of money. No, because it works the opposite way, right? You'll just burn through money. And the point of saying over-service, over-deliver, you just want to become the go-to people for that client so that you become their absolutely most trusted advisor. It's like if somebody is going to solve this, it's going to be these guys. If somebody's going to get this done, might be a suicide mission, these guys are going to do it. You're just top of mind all the time.

19:53James Hilton:Can you give an example? What did you do for the client that made them feel that way? You're thinking about them all the time. You're thinking about their business. You're not just reacting to their briefs. You want to help them as much as possible. And so you're proactively going to them with, we had these thoughts, we had these ideas, not in order to upsell. We've had these ideas and it'll cost you X in order to be able to see them. But it's a genuine, authentic interest in their business and making their business improve. And I don't see that much anymore. I see upsell reaction to briefs I don't see much I don't see much of that way of thinking anymore disappointingly it's just sort of I won't say bare minimum but it doesn't it doesn't remind me of the way that we were I'm not talking about AKQA really you know I don't actually know a hell of a lot about AKQ anymore but um my just general experience working with other agencies over the years as a client because I'm a client most of the time now which is interesting in itself um but I wouldn't say lazy at all that might be too harsh but I would say they could be more interested.

21:34James Hilton:Do you think that's driven by the financial situation of majority of agencies? Probably. Margins are very low. You actually physically can't over-deliver because your team is already overworking and... I mean, probably. I mean, it's like, you know, the more people you've got, the more mouths you've got to feed, the larger your office is, the more rent you've got to pay. I mean, it's like, you know, and price is just going up and up and up. But I think there is an attitude and an aspect to it as well. Everyone keeps talking about work-life balance, and I'm feeling like such an old curmudgeon. You know, it's just like, no, there is no work-life balance, just work.

22:13And I get it. I mean, you know, people shouldn't burn out. And I don't think I'd wish my early career experiences on people, because it was hard. But I also think people are too quickly take the most convenient route. You know, what's going to maximize our return rather than what is going to maximize the success of our client? And that's just how, I mean, again, maybe it's just how we were brought up. Maybe it's just how we thought.

22:48James Hilton:So how did you make that balance happen of delivering? Well, but also the financial side of it, you said I just... Well, it was a constant tussle. I mean, Giles was the one that was always wanting to over deliver. You know, I mean, you know, he was... But also we recognised that we weren't at art college either, right? And I think some of our contemporaries at the time who no longer exist, they forgot they were in business. And we always knew we were in business. There was no doubt about that. You know, yes, over-service. Yes, over-deliver. But we're in business. And so there is a tension, an obvious tension there.

23:35I mean, the joke was that, you know, at AKQA London, our landlord would save the children. Right. So we lived at it. You know, I think the offices are still there. Right. in the Save the Children building. And the joke was there's only one charity in this building, and it's not us. And it's funny because it's a truism, right? And we were always very sure about when to charge and how to charge, and people would accuse us of being a bit expensive. But it's like, well, you get what you pay for. Our services are premium. but look what you get you know you get effort and you get care and you get love and you get attention and you know you don't get upsell you know we'll you know we deal with people as if we were part

24:25James Hilton:of their company as much as we could be but you know you're you're right it was it was a tension and luckily I didn't have to deal much with the tension you know that wasn't really you know my focus had to be you know elsewhere um but um you know i remember many conversations with you know the financial directors and and people like that why have we got so many people working on this project and it's like well because it needs to be the best this project because there was always it needed to be a strategic reason why we do it we wouldn't just like blindly you know put 12 people on a project that had to be a strategic reason why we were doing it.

25:09Because if we do it well on this one, then the next one gets a bit easier or this is a door that we want to open. Everything is a stepping stone to the next thing. But you've just got to make sure that the stepping stone that you're on is polished and looking amazing so that you can then go to the next stepping stone. It's a weird analogy, but it sort of works. Who joined? The guys that ran AKQA San Francisco, who founded what was Citroen, Hannigman, Berkare, Tom and Kirk and Matt, just inspirational people. And Tom stayed at AKQA and became chairman and unfortunately died last year. but an absolutely inspirational man.

26:05Very, very lucky to have met him.

26:08James Hilton:Was it an easy choice when you were deciding which companies to acquire, which ones you should go for? Well, again, it was Accenture that came to us with the deal. We've identified these companies. It wasn't the first off. We were always getting approached, but it was the first time it was like actually this this makes sense because the people in dc what used to be called magnet interactive uh just just levels of of quality work that you know just like astonishingly good and so you could you could see that there was a a shared understanding of quality, which is the hardest bit. It just made sense.

26:58James Hilton:Let's shift the gears from AKQA life to... It was a long time ago, right? Well, it was a big part of your life and I suppose formed some sort of vision for what you like and you don't like and you want to do. So after you left AKQA, you also started your own projects. You did Death Machines of London, which is an incredible motorcycle company that just blows my mind. They can go in a different direction. You were part of Native, which is another fantastic creative agency. So you tried lots of different things and now you're doing even more incredible things in the world of medicine and medical devices.

27:45James Hilton:So I suppose, how did you think about your choices after AKQ? Because I assume you didn't really need a job immediately or maybe ever. So first of all, why do you pick projects? what what's your decision making process now that maybe you don't need to prove anything to anyone or you don't have any other considerations that maybe in your earlier career you had to think about well okay lots of questions where do we start how do you make decisions how do i make decisions oh god tea leaves um let's start when i left um why did i leave i think it was just the right time I think you know I'd done it for 20 years and there were just other things that I wanted to do I wouldn't I wouldn't say this was the I wouldn't blame this client for me leaving but I remember I was in a meeting with a client talking about a Christmas campaign that was you know coming up having an argument about the shape of a fairy's wings and i just caught myself and i was like no can't do this anymore this is not for me anymore i wasn't sure what was for me but i knew that wasn't it um and you know i was fortunate that i could think like that and i was fortunate that i could go you know do you know what i think i'm done you know it's like that line out of point break you know you're about to jump out of a perfectly good aeroplane how do you feel about that well i don't think i'll ever forget you know telling you know telling a jazz you know and it was just it was probably one of the one of the hardest conversation one of the top five hardest conversations of my life because it was like there was no falling out there was no like you know big fuck you moment um it was just like I think I need to go and do something else now, mate.

29:52How did he react?

29:53James Hilton:Was he surprised? I think he knew it was coming. I mean, it was just, I think it was hard for both of us. You know, just, yeah. Did he try to convince you to stay? No, he didn't, no. Because it's just like, what's the point? You know, it's like, if somebody wants to leave you, you don't try and convince them to stay. it's just like if you want to you know you want to leave it's your life you know you got to do what you got to do right was it the first time you felt like you want to leave or there were moments throughout oh there were plenty of fuck you i'm out of here moments you know for in 20 years but you know they're only kind of they're just sort of emotional moments aren't they and then and then you kind of then you go on the high again and and you forget all about it but you know it was just it was tough and it sucked and but you know that's something that's got to happen sometimes if you want to if you want to do something new right um and we're still friends you know and so it's all fine but leaving was weird because um i wanted i had this weird idea of making furniture i wanted to make furniture uh and i wasn't very good at it but you know i sort of had a go and had some ideas and I think it was just like my rebound relationship I started doing bits and pieces of work for for other for clients um and then the motorbike thing was literally just sort of a hobby or or an idea of a you know I'd like to do something interesting with that with my mechanic and so we started doing that and it was a hobby it wasn't a company it would be uh a vast overstatement to call it a company but we had lots of fun doing it but it was very it was just leaving and then suddenly finding yourself out there on your own was uh fucking terrifying because you realized that you know for 20 years you'd been protected by this machine and you had this machine around you to to do things with and if you had an idea um you know you could you know you could sort of like send a quick email to andy hood you know who's like this you know this amazing creative technologist you know saying andy i've got this like this madcap idea can we put something together oh yeah yeah because he was like as mental and as excited as we were you know and and then suddenly you didn't have any of that and it was just you and you know I realized quite quickly that you know it didn't really matter that I'd been you know head of AKQA for however long I was completely wet behind the ears um and so you know you had to grow up quite fast did you regret no uh well I think initially I think I don't think I regretted it I think initially um I was just worried that I'd done something really stupid you kind of play a thought game and the thought game is for a whole week you think of you're going to go back and then and then for the following week you think that you're not going back right and then the week after that you you kind of you know you you tabulate all your thinking and then at the end of those two week cycle you look back and you kind of which one do I want to do how did I feel during those weeks and usually the picture becomes clear and it's like you know once you got through week one of thinking I'm going to go back and then week two of I'm not going back I'm doing this there was a sort of a palpable relief that you're not going back and so it's like well that tells you everything you need to know doesn't it doesn't it doesn't matter that you're nervous it doesn't matter that you're worried that suddenly the future looks uncertain.

33:55The future has always been uncertain, it's just that you were under the illusion that it wasn't and it's quite a grounding moment but it's also a self-affirming moment because now you realise, okay well let's do it.

34:10James Hilton:Are you good at differentiating that emotion of excitement about uncertainty versus resistant because of uncertainty? Basically, it's very easy with any new decision, you're always nervous because there is uncertainty. And very often, a lot of people don't make that leap because it doesn't feel right. It actually feels better to stay all the other way around. It might be better to do something because it's more exciting. Are you good at really differentiating what is a long-term good decision and emotion versus right now it feels not right because maybe I'm scared or I just don't know the next step.

34:55Yeah, good question. I think I have to know as much as possible about something before I can make a decision. I'm not one for making particularly rash decisions. I can make a decision very, very, very quickly as long as I'm fairly sure of the risks and the environment. I don't really faff about in that respect. The really big ones, I get this feeling in me. I'll feel it rising up in me a month or two before I make the decision. and it's not even something that I knew I was going to have to make a decision on but I'll feel it rising up and it will get to a point where it is inevitable. Yeah, it's very difficult to put into words but it's just like this...