❤️ Scaling Service x Nik Govier: building an comms business where people stay for life
The great resignation is in full swing, but Nik Govier has ambitious goals. She wants to build a business where people don't just stay for a few years, they stay for life. Here's how she's doing that
When Nik Govier left Unity, the agency she co-founded in her 20s, she took the opportunity to think through her options. "I didn't want to just naturally fall into setting up another agency, just because that's what I knew." She gave herself three months.
"I explored all sorts of options, from going in house to joining one of the big networks. I went for interviews for CEO roles, interviews with network agencies, all sorts. And I literally woke up on the day of the three months deadline, and thought: No, I'm categorically going to do this."
'This' turned out to be Blurred, the global strategic and creative advisory firm that Nik founded – alongside Stuart Lambert and Katy Stolliday - in 2018.
"I think I was always going to create something that pushed boundaries a bit. And when we launched three years ago, our proposition was really quite radical. When I tested it on a few people, and when my fellow founding partners did, quite a lot of people said this is really great, but I think it's a bit ahead of its time. But that hasn't been the case at all. We've grown at an extraordinary pace."
P is for Purpose
Blurred's work is centered around ESG — Environmental, Social, Governance — to which they add a P, for Purpose. As their website puts it, "we believe no organisation can have a credible, effective Purpose without first understanding the impact of its business on the Environment, on Society, and in terms of Governance." In practical terms, this means work that blurs the line between management consultancy and comms.
"In this ESG space you've got to ‘know it’ as well as ‘show it’. You've got to know that what you're doing as a business is genuinely credible in terms of carbon reduction, human rights etc. But knowing it is only half of the equation, because if your stakeholders - be it consumers, employees, the capital markets, policymakers - don't know about that, then you're not getting the credit you could and should do for being good." Which is why Blurred collapses the distinction
"If you just show it without knowing it, then that's greenwashing. It's superficial, and people increasingly know the difference. And if you just know it, but you don't show it, you're missing out. The power lies in both of those things - helping businesses ‘know it’ through management consultancy and ‘show it’ through comms.”
Naturally, this leads to great variety in the briefs that come Blurred's way. "It totally depends on the clients. Often we're approached with purpose-led briefs, and we say: you cannot credibly do that yet, because you've still got a lot of your own ESG issues to sort out first. Other times it could be the chairman of a major corporation calling us to say they need to radically improve ESG ratings. Our view is that we don't really care if the ultimate motivation is financial, as long as the work that we do is credible and genuine.
“The beauty is, regardless of the entry point, what we are able to do is follow right the way through. We’re unusual because we can support with supply chain audits, or a human rights review, bus can also communicate a social purpose to 14-year-olds or institutional investors. The heart of it is understanding the issues, the opportunities and the threats within this space."
How do you build a successful company culture?
With a distinctive approach comes a distinctive company culture. Blurred has a core team of "super-smart people", which is then "flanked by two cohorts of really deep experts, Consulting and Creative. It is literally everyone you could imagine that we might need to bring on board, whether we're delivering carbon mapping or a beautiful piece of content. We make it our business to know the best people in the business." Blurred "train people constantly," both for breadth of knowledge and to "help them become proper experts." And, Nik adds, "We're really big believers in DEI, and not just because it's the right thing to do."
Expanding on this, she connects it back to the core focus of the company. "We are helping businesses deal with some of the world's biggest problems facing humanity: facing us as a species. And these problems can't be solved by one set of people that look the same, think the same, have had the same life experiences. We really try and bring onboard people who bring diverse perspectives: not just ethnicity and gender, obvious things that are very important, but socio-economic background and also neurodiversity.
We've also this year rebranded to be blurred.global. And that is because we want the best people not just in this country, but in the world. Our last partner hire was based in France, and we're interviewing people all over the world at the moment."
“I've done huge amounts of work on myself in the last three years, and without doubt I'm a more evolved human being than I was before I started coaching”
Nik on her experience with coaching
Everybody at Blurred is hired not just on expertise but on values. "That's really, really important. If people don't meet our values expectations, then it doesn't matter how brilliant they are, they don't get through the door." And everybody at Blurred receives fortnightly coaching with a fully accredited coach, an innovation that Nik praises to the skies.
"I've done huge amounts of work on myself in the last three years, and without doubt I'm a more evolved human being than I was before I started coaching. You have to dig deep and do the work. It's super challenging, but the transformation is extraordinary. I wish I could put a tangible value on it in terms of the business, but I can't. All I know, in my gut, beyond all else, is that we would not be the company we are today without it."
Blurred's coach is integrated right into the operations of the company. "She is a non-executive director, and she chairs our board. That's how important she is. She was the first person we brought on board, because we're all about helping our people be their true, best selves." Nik views having somebody to hold the company to account as a key part of building "a values-based business." The coach is there to question "Is this in line with our Purpose? Are we doing the right thing by People, Planet and Profit? With any hire, she's the final interview."
Nik believes this helps Blurred find their people, then keep their people. "I think lots of people will be with us for life, because it's so deep. We talk about this in terms of 'reward', but 'reward' is not just what you pay people you’re your benefits. It's so much more than that. It's how you're treated by your colleagues. It's how you're treated by clients - how the company allows you to be treated by clients. We expect our clients to sign-up to the same stringent values and behaviours as our colleagues. All of those things create that sense of reward in the workplace. Whether you're allowed to be your true best selves."
And building it into the company from day one means, "it's at the absolute core of the business. If we were trying to retrofit these values now, I think it would be entirely different. I always bang the drum that it delivers profit, because I think that's a motivator for people, and it's important that people hear that. But it's also core to us as human beings. That's been the greatest gift of all, honestly, knowing that we do the right thing."
It's a little early to say whether people will indeed stay for life, but it's a noble ambition. And it's one that's already paying dividends: Blurred have been named 'Best Place to Work' by both PRovoke Media and PR Week.
What policies should I think about before setting up a comms business?
Asked if she has any suggested policies for potential founders, Nik replies that "you need to do some work before you do the policies. Values and behaviours work. When you know what your values are, what your Purpose is, and what behaviours you expect from people, those become the north star." She advises that prospective founders look at their commitments.
"If people want to look at our website, we have our commitments listed: to support those from disadvantaged backgrounds including financially deprived groups; to foster an inclusive culture; to set challenging DEI KPIs; to conduct our own due diligence in terms of aligning with human rights; and to six-monthly employee surveys. Now, we didn't launch with these commitments, but they fell out of our values and behaviours. And then a lot of stuff falls out of them: that's why we have gender transition policies, a menopause policy, a fertility treatment policy. Once you nail these things, everything then falls off the back of them."
“You do have to have balls of steel”
Nik on sticking to your proposition
Nik also advocates staying focused, in the early days, on the work you want to do. "It's really hard when you're turning down significant income from amazing businesses and brands, as we did in our first six months, because it's not the right kind of work. But we were acutely aware that you are defined by the business you take on in those early days. It is the easier path, to just take whatever and focus on getting your numbers strong. But often, by the time you've done that, you've ended up hiring people to service that kind of work, and then you can never become who you truly want to be. So we took a risk. I would definitely counsel that everyone should have that clear proposition and only do that kind of work. But you do have to have balls of steel.
Ultimately, "Blurred is all about the people, and the rest follows. It can't be all about the money. If you lean into that you end up being driven by fear and it's just not the right place to be. It's not about delivering brilliant work at any cost. We end every management and board meeting by asking: do we believe we've made the right decisions in terms of people, planet and profit? And we genuinely hold ourselves to account. If the answer's 'no', then we go back and work out what we need to do."
This benefits clients as well as colleagues. "If we support our teams with the best training and the best environment, then we can charge more, because the clients get more value from smart people who are invested in the work they do. Do the right thing by your people, and everybody wins."