Leading with creativity
With over a decade of experience at innovation consultancy Bow&Arrow (later Venture Studio at Accenture Song), many of my most meaningful contributions came from leading internal initiatives – often as impactful as the client work itself.
This page outlines a selection of leadership challenges I encountered across people, projects and partners, and the approaches I used to address them.
For people
How do we make our new joiner experience more consistent and scalable?
Archers Alphabet
Launched an A to Z guide of all things Bow&Arrow, from a who’s who to what to expect when you’re new. It helped newbies get to grips with the basics of the business much quicker, in turn enabling mentors to focus on the more personal side of onboarding.
How do we keep the team inspired and motivated?
Big Days
Orchestrated our annual offsites where we set the big vision for the year ahead and celebrated the big year just passed. Hosted in new and inspiring places, including Ibiza, Berlin, Hvar and many more. Made sure the team felt valued and appreciated, these moments were the heartbeat of our culture.
How do we build a future that everyone is excited about?
Growth manifesto
Co-created a 3-year vision with the team, rather than a top-down strategy given to them. An empowering approach that led to high engagement and allowed us to quickly pivot our proposition, expand into Europe and define a new team structure.
How do we incentivise the behaviours we want to see?
The Values
Crafted and championed our guiding principles that weren’t just seen, but lived. Baked into every corner of the business, from informing strategic decisions to scoring performance reviews. Enabled teams to collaborate with high trust and encouraged risk taking, vital to our creative output.
For projects
How do we increase our launch rate of innovation that makes it into market?
CrossBow
Codified years of collective wisdom, trusted processes and best practice examples with an internal digital tool. Guided hundreds of projects to successful outcomes and achieved an 81% launch rate. Key IP that drove high valuation during acquisition.
How do we continuously raise our creative quality bar?
Creative Review
Hosted quarterly full-team design critiques to review all our latest work. Developed the team’s working knowledge with candid group feedback, shared lessons learnt and new tools/techniques. Established a culture of constant improvement and learning.
How do we upskill the team in venture building?
The Range
Developed an immersive and hands-on training programme that ran every quarter. Giving a selected small team a safe space to practice and experiment with the progressive techniques involved in venturing. Became a client offer and ran multiple cohorts for Liberty Global.
How do we create and land the best briefs possible?
The proto-pitch
Developed a client-first recipe for winning pitches using the art of the possible – grounded in the client’s strategic priorities, dressed in their clothes and brought to life with interactive prototypes you could put in their hands. Led to 78% pitch win-rate (average at time of acquisition).
For partners
How do we attract more fearless C-suite clients?
Bow&Arrow by...
Designed a unique video-led website that shared our story via real clients and people – so you don’t have to take our word for it. An approach that resonated with C-suite clients and supported 20% YoY business growth whilst live.
How do we ensure our impact is seen and felt?
Partnership portfolio
Proactively created showcase microsites to help key clients socialise the impact of our work around their business – this example led to securing time with the board of BMW. An important tool we used to develop many long-term partnerships.
How do we make CEOs spend more time with us?
Office design
Created the consulting equivalent of the McLaren factory at 25 Soho Square – a home for innovation where you can think clearly and act with precision. The space we designed positioned us as the premium choice for CEOs and helped us create a 79% C-suite client base.
How do we find the best acquisition partner to fuel our future growth?
Tip of the spear
Defined a target acquisition model that acted as a filter for the win-win partnership we aspired to create – white space venturing briefs for us that generate large-scale pull-through implementation work for partner. Led to successful acquisition with Accenture where we achieved an ambitious 3-year business case with 3.5x revenue growth.
