Last week, the Alliance of Independent Agencies ran their ‘Festival of Happiness’ and during which, Google’s fire alarm went off mid-keynote. Not because of an actual fire (we later found out…) but probably in fact because Co-Host of the ‘High Performance Podcast’ Professor Damian Hughes was delivering content around purpose so hot, that even Google’s systems couldn’t handle it

 

And in a way, it was the perfect metaphor for an event that kept proving the same uncomfortable truth; the difference between high performance and burnout isn’t your tech stack or your productivity hacks. It’s whether you’ve got people around you who care enough to say the right words at the right time.

 

A feast of festival highlights from me (so cheesy, even AI wouldn’t have penned that, and maybe that’s how you know now?) below:

 

Professor Damian Hughes: Culture Isn’t What You Say, It’s What You Do

Before the fire alarm evacuated us all, Damian was seriously impressive; (possibly not surprising when you note the eight books written), culture isn’t your values on a wall – it’s the behaviours you reward and the ones you tolerate. His work on high-performance culture with England FA and others cuts through all the corporate theatre about “our people are our greatest asset” and asks: Are you being intentional about creating the conditions for them to thrive?

 

Having since read up a bit (seeing as Google’s fire-alarm and subsequent evacuation ended his talk way too early) I’m really (as are Mostly Media) aligned, particularly to the point about fear mindset versus thriving mindset; Damian spoke of the feeling of dread he felt when faced with Jamie Peacock (ferocious Rugby League star) about to tackle him in to high heaven as a prank and the instant feeling of despair. Most agencies are operating in fear, fear of losing clients, fear of AI replacing us, fear of saying no to bad work. But high performance doesn’t come from fear. It comes from clarity, trust, and the psychological safety to take actual risks. And Mostly Media say ‘no’ to bad work (the first piece of new business I bought in was declared unachievable by the media director, so out when £100k). He was right. And Mr Peacock didn’t smash the good Professor in to the sky, instead that was a prank also.

 

If you don’t know the High Performance podcast, check it out. Big fan.

 

Sharon Baker: The Power of Flow (And Why None of Us Meditate Enough and Should and Brazil – what are you doing in my head?)

Sharon Baker PCC‘s workshop on FLOW took me somewhere I didn’t expect to go on a rainy Thursday morning in Central London. She guided a willing group of us through a meditation designed to recall a moment when we felt truly capable, when we achieved something that felt impossible – possible.

 

Mine took me back twenty years to Rio de Janeiro, playing guitar with the brilliant local legends, ‘Azymuth’, genuinely terrified that my playing would get me deported. But I found the zone where fear disappears and you’re just present, capable, performing. I wasn’t deported, instead I was recorded and realised in that moment that I was capable. But here’s the thing, I only thought that then back in the FLOW state with Sharon, on a wet day in London, in Google! Pretty far from Bomba’s Recording Studio in Rio. Now – what that does is start to bring an altogether different and new purpose to the self. Better thoughts and fresher perspectives. A proper mental palette cleanser. Pitch doc – I’m ready for you now.

 

Sharon’s point: we don’t access that state enough. And in agency life, where we’re drowning in Teams messages (other stressful messaging systems are available), client panic, client urges and imposter syndrome, we’ve forgotten how to get there. FLOW isn’t about working harder; it’s about clearing the noise so you can work smarter. Massive shout to Lisa Plummer who was there and had to be on that journey with me.

 

Sharon’s session was a reminder that high performance isn’t about doing more. It’s about doing less, better, with intention – being present and making decisions away from fear and towards a genuine intelligence, backed with self-belief that you can.

 

Spencer Gallagher and Tiffany St James: AI Won’t Take Your Job If You Remember What Humans Are For

Out of everything Tiffany St James and Spencer Gallagher presented (in their first duo-presentation, which was seamless most impreeively) the point that I held on to was ridicule; Spencer opened by telling us he was laughed at 25 years ago for getting involved in an internet business. “The internet.” People told him it was a fad. That it wouldn’t last. That he was wasting his time. Literally laughed at. AI isn’t going to take it all away people.

 

His point about AI wasn’t that it’s overhyped or that it’s going to save us all. It’s that we’ve been here before. New technology doesn’t replace humans; it changes what humans are valuable for.

 

Tiffany St James took this further in their session on human-centred AI. She’s Liverpool City Region’s first Chief AI Officer, and her work is about embedding AI in ways that enhance human capability rather than erode it.

 

The gap isn’t technical. It’s whether you’re creating the conditions for your people to experiment, learn, and integrate AI into their work without fear of being made redundant.

 

And, along with every tech challenge and change, where there is change there is fear and there is also opportunity. It will be ok.

 

Kenton Cool: The Doctor Who Changed Everything

Kenton Cool has summited Everest 19 times (20th coming next year). He’s lost oxygen repeaters at 8,000 metres with Ben Fogle; “can you imagine losing a national treasure? And it was being filmed for TV….”. He’s guided Sir Ranulph Fiennes up the North Face of the Eiger. His stories are objectively insane, and they put most of our professional anxieties into sharp perspective. Constant FLOW state!

 

But the most outstanding moment of the entire festival wasn’t about Everest. It was about a doctor.

 

Thirty years ago, Kenton was told by consultants that his damaged heels and ankles I think (?) meant he’d never play hockey again, never walk without a stick, never climb. His life as an athlete was over.

 

But a doctor, whose name he didn’t even know at the time, pulled him aside and said: “Oh, I wouldn’t pay too much attention to the Consultant. You can achieve what you want to achieve.”

 

Yesterday, Kenton brought that very Doctor to the audience and declared it was the first time they had met since, 30 years’ later! And he told c.180 agency leaders that those words, his belief in him when the experts had written him off were the foundation of everything he’s done since. Safe to say, Kenton’s stoicism wavered as emotion took hold and not many dry eyes were left.

 

Not training plans, not goal-setting frameworks, not performance metrics.

 

Words. Caring, supportive, human words, and as Neil Young so wonderfully sung, “words, between the lines of age”.

 

The Point of All This

The Festival of Happiness wasn’t about beanbags and ping pong tables (shame actually, I rather like ping pong). It wasn’t about “wellness initiatives” that HR rolls out to tick a box. It was about the mechanics of high performance including how you build cultures where people thrive, how you lead through change without burning everyone out, and how you create the psychological safety that lets people take the risks that matter.

 

And what linked every session, from Damian’s culture manual to Sharon’s FLOW, from Spencer and Tiffany’s AI insights, from Kenton’s Everest summits to that wonderful and sage Doctor’s words thirty years ago for me was this:

 

High performance is mainly built on human connection. On caring enough to say the right thing at the right time. On creating the conditions where people feel capable, supported, and trusted.

 

This connects directly back to what I wrote after the Festival of New Business; businesses either remember that humans drive growth, or they automate themselves into irrelevance. Yesterday reinforced that the competitive advantage isn’t the tech, the process, or the efficiency gains.

 

Kenton’s Doc didn’t have a framework. He didn’t have a growth-mindset certification (or actually, maybe that’s exactly what he had? No matter, point’s the same); he just cared enough to tell a young man that he was capable of more than the experts believed.

 

Credit to the Alliance of Independent Agencies- especially Terry Martin Kirsty Honer Graham Kemp, Martin Woolley and the team for curating an event that mattered. And to every speaker who brought substance over fluff, beautifully hosted by the brilliant and funny Gemma Greaves (shake it off).

 

If you’re leading an agency and you’re not thinking about how to build high-performance cultures that don’t burn people out, you’re already behind. Because the agencies that will win are the ones that understand happiness isn’t a perk. It’s a performance strategy; that doesn’t mean you all clock off early, far from it, you’re up late wanting to find the nugget that brings the win for the agency you love, because you do.

 

Lovely to meet / re-connect with you also Jack Ellis 🌻 Marc Webbon Abigail Morrish York Tom Claydon Jason Neale Richard Smith and apologies to the brilliant David Meikle whose talk I missed; but know it was excellent.

 

 

Credit: Alex Pilkington, Director of Growth