Ep 379: Brad Simms of GALE Partners - "The Values Leader"

Fearless Creative Leadership

Here’s a question. How do you say goodbye?

This week’s guest is Brad Simms. He’s the President and CEO of GALE Partners. They describe themselves as strategic storytellers.

GALE was founded in 2014 with seven people in Canada. Today, the agency is 734 people across 11 offices. It was this year named #5 in the Ad Age A List, and as Adweek’s Breakthrough Media Agency of the Year.

GALE has above average talent retention rates. But over the course of nine years, something like 1,300 people have spent time at the agency. Put another way, almost 600 people have left the company since it started.

The creative industries are a case study in dynamic organizations. Change is not just inevitable but essential. It is both the fuel and the consequence of creative thinking and innovation.

In that environment, people will come and others will leave. And that is as it should be, both for personal growth and for the growth of the business.

There are two variables in that equation. When they leave, and how.

The question of when is for another day.

The question of how is as important. And often, significantly more so.

For many years, the view was that four or five jobs in a thirty-five year career represented a reasonable timeline. Time to learn, time to influence and to impact. A win-win.

Back then, the idea that you would return to a company that you had worked for before was limited only to those few who realized that leaving had been a mistake, and raced back to the safety of the known. Often within days.

Today, creating the conditions in which employees can boomerang is a practice so common that it has an actual name. And companies with a proven ability to rehire former employees gain distinctive competitive advantages. Institutional knowledge, cultural fit, team casting, and speed of impact being just four.

Today, when someone leaves, the question of whether you, as the leader, are respectful and grateful for the time they spent at your company, will have more impact on whether they want to come back than anything that you do while they are there.

And more to do with who else might want to join you in the first place.