How this CEO cuts hour-long meetings to just five minutes

But it’s not really a routine for me. I report into management in the UK, so some mornings might be picking up late calls from them in the UK. I have a ferocious groodle called Dudley that demands that I get him out in the morning as well.

I’ll sometimes join my wife for a walk, or in the warmer months, a dip in the ocean. So there isn’t really a routine. My default is going into the office. I work across Australia and New Zealand, but I’m based in Sydney. I go into the office almost every day.

Patten: Are you a breakfast guy?

Graham: I love breakfast, actually. Often I have breakfast in the office or at a cafe near the office. Again, there’s not necessarily a routine about it. But the idea of having breakfast in the morning is important. If I haven’t done that, I feel like I’m chasing my tail all day.

Patten: Can you tell me about a pivotal moment that changed the trajectory of your career, or somehow changed you as a business leader?

Graham: In 2007, I was fortunate to move to New York and work for a large advertising business, BBDO at the time, and work on some global accounts. It opened my eyes to the role of creativity around business overall, [and] not just coming from creativity that I’d known from the Western world, but this extraordinary creativity coming from emerging markets.

Patten: What do you mean by creativity coming from emerging markets?

Graham: Doing business differently, and what’s important to people as they’re moving up through sort of different socio-economic chapters in their life, as well as thinking around what their practical needs are, what emotions they have around brands or products.

I was working on Gillette at the time, which is a very American-centred brand. It’s the largest male brand in the world. At the time, there were 800 million men waking up every day and using a Gillette product of some sort around the world.

The majority of those were coming from developing countries. At the time, it was China, India, Brazil. How to connect products that had come from quite a Western construct in those markets was fascinating.

The parent of Gillette, Procter and Gamble, is brilliant at [using] true human insight to understand how its products can better connect with people.

Once you launch a new product, it’s going to go to hundreds of millions of people as opposed to a million people. I found that invigorating,

Patten: What is the best piece of career advice you’ve ever been given?

Graham: When I stepped into this role, a CEO from one of our clients called me to offer congratulations. He said to me: “Leadership isn’t a sprint. It’s a marathon. And marathons require a lot of preparation, a lot of planning. When you get in there, it’s constant decision-making.”

From a leadership perspective, I find a lot of inspiration out of that. Being a great leader requires that planning, that preparation. Things are going to change very quickly, you’re going to physically and mentally be in a very different state every day to what you thought you might be, or what you were the day before.

Patten: So are you a planner?

Graham: Yes, apart from the mornings.

Patten: Are you constantly having to change your daily schedule to make sure you’re meeting your plan?

Graham: There are definitely not enough hours in the day to do everything. So there is a need for prioritisation almost hourly, definitely through the day, as you get to the middle of the day and think: “What am I trying to achieve?”

Someone in the office showed me a great function of Google, where you can colour code everything that you’re doing, [and see] whether you’re engaged with the client, whether you’re having downtime, personal time, whether you’ve got internal meetings, whether it’s new business.

That allows you to visually look back and see where you’re prioritising your time.

It was alarming for me around what I saw, versus what I thought I was doing overall.

My mornings are largely unstructured, [but] it feels like when I get into the work environment, it does become very structured, and actually we’ve got these tools now to allow us to do that.

Patten: How long should meetings go for?

Graham: I think somehow we’ve ended up in this world where meetings are done in half an hour, one hour slots. Often [we] don’t need to use that time, because it’s something that could have been solved within 15 minutes.

I talk to my team about this all the time. If it’s five minutes for a walk to solve something, that’s great. If we need to be more expansive in our thinking, let’s give ourselves a day.

I think people should be really clear what they want to get out of the meeting at the start.

Is it people walking around the block together for half an hour? Is it sitting in a room, in a very organised environment for an hour? I think it’s horses for courses.

Patten: Do you do a lot of walking meetings?

Graham: I think there’s that old thought around men in particular, don’t like to look it up at each other, certainly around sensitive topics. Often people feel relaxed, we can get into the nub of the problem by just walking side by side.

That’s not exclusive to men.

Patten: How do you create a positive culture in your company?

Graham: One of the big changes we’ve made over the last three or four years has been the introduction of a core set of values that we all align to.

One is to run towards the fire. We’ve got a disclaimer. If there’s actually a fire, please don’t run towards it!

Our values are literally plastered on our walls. We asked our creative people to visually refresh them every three months, based on what they’re inspired by. So the words don’t change, but the visuals change. That helps.

Patten: What do you mean by run towards the fire?

Graham: The thinking behind this is being more fearless in what people do. There are difficult conversations that have to happen every day.

There are often difficult conversations that happen with clients that people can kick the can down the road. If you’re running towards the fire, and identifying the things that you might be fearful of, and know that there’s another 400 people who are all running towards the fire every day, I think that will be phenomenal in our business.

Patten: What’s your pet hate in the office?

Graham: Silence. Some people will hate me saying that because they love silence in an office.

Music is a big part of how I engage through the day. It always has been. I have music on in the morning, or listen to music on the way into the office on occasions. In the office, it’s not just music, but I like noise around me. Maybe it’s a more old-fashioned approach, but it feels like there’s a buzz and there’s busyness.

My wife would laugh when she’s hopefully going to listen to this.

I’ve got three girls, so there are no problems with noise in my house.

I’ve got to respect people as well that they come into the office, and they need silence. It is definitely about a balance.

Patten: What’s your favourite type of music?

Graham: My favourite podcast at the moment is a podcast called 60 Songs That Explain the 90s. And because I grew up through that period, I feel like I am finding things out about myself that I wasn’t smart enough to know when I was a teenager through that period.

So I am, at the moment, very, very deep into 90s music. These podcasts go for up to two hours to investigate one song and all the influences around that one song.

Patten: If you had 12 months off, unencumbered, and you could do anything you like, what would you do?

Graham: I would try to get myself on Survivor (the TV program) go and sit there in the jungle and throw myself against the elements.

It’s the only reality program I watch. It’s the mashing together of all these people with different motivations and backgrounds in a space where they’re throwing themselves against the elements. And they’re just so evil and conniving with each other.

I think I would be out early, but I’d love to throw myself into it.

Maybe there’s something in there, around getting back to nature more and getting back to the elements.