Page 45 - AdNews Magazine Jul-Aug 2020
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 www.adnews.com.au | July-August2020 45
      Working remotely during the pandemic, Graham asked his leadership team to move to twice-weekly meetings
“My weekly email is probably more focused now because people are very keen on the updates,” he says.
“We’ve also had almost weekly Zoom calls with 400-500 participants providing updates around, leadership changes, new work coming out, what our plan is around reentering into our geographical footprint.
“I don’t want to be the person that just talks about silver linings the whole time, because I also know that it’s been very difficult for many people and there’s some very real challenges around loneliness and capacity to work.”
Graham, with three children under ten years old, and his wife had homeschooling duties during lockdown.
He also went into the Sydney office once or twice a week to stay on top of all the changes.
Being a CEO
Graham has always enjoyed leadership.
“I’ve done that from a school age all the way through university and into
the work environment,” he says.
“I certainly didn’t think I’d end up in advertising. I didn’t really know
that the path to this could happen through starting as a curious strat- egist in my mid-twenties in advertising.
“I do look back and I realise I’ve always been fascinated by the com- mercial and the magic, and that intersection of creativity and business is
Justin Graham at the M&C Saatchi Christmas party (top right).
something that has been a part of me for my whole career.”
Graham enjoyed school, natu- rally gravitating towards visual arts as well as business.
He did a Bachelor of Business at UTS here in Sydney, majoring in Marketing and Finance.
But he only ended up there because he unexpectedly landed an academic scholarship. His first choice was the College of Fine Arts in Sydney.
“I don’t know where I would have ended up with that... I dare say a very frustrated artist,” he says.
“But that was certainly my passion coming out of school and it somehow flipped, and I ended up with a finance degree.”
His first job was as a manage- ment consultant. He says he was fortunate to have some brilliant mentors in the now defunct firm called Arthur Andersen.
When he tells the story of the former leading professional ser- vices firm, few of the younger staff members know anything about it.
“What Arthur Andersen? What happened with that?”
He replies: “Well, have you seen a movie about Enron called ‘The Smartest Man in the Room’?”
And they say: “I thought that was fictional.”
Graham: “No, that’s actually what happened.”
The collapse was extraordinary and, for Graham, difficult to go through in his first career.
“You’ve been in the job for four years and the whole business col- lapses around the world based on some fraudulent activity that hap- pened in the US, but you go through shocks that set you up for later in your career,” he says.
“And I certainly feel now is a challenge like that and needing to adapt and understand exactly what you do and why you do it has helped me now.
“But I loved management con- sulting. I love the art of influence and understanding really the core of corporate strategy and how consultants can advise and offer a fresh perspective.
“I increasingly grew frus- trated with the lack of creativity in that environment, and really went on a search to try and



































































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