Adweek reported The Richards Group—seeking to rebound from its founder’s flub—hired a DEI consultancy. Of course they did. After all, what choice did they have? Adweek labeled the consultancy—Do What Matters—as a “leading firm.” Of course they are. Despite only being in business for roughly four years, the place certainly has a deep pool of potential clientele. Of course they do.
“We’re committed to doing 100% of the work,” said The Richards Group CEO Glenn Dady. “Come back in three months after our audit. It will be interesting to see [where we are].” Um, not really. Is an audit truly necessary to assess The Peaceable Kingdom? Simply surveying the agency hallways—or Zoom meetings—should suffice.
To Forge Its DEI Future, The Richards Group Partners With Leading Firm
Do What Matters has worked with Periscope and The Martin Agency
By Doug Zanger
For Lauren Tucker, founder and CEO of strategic management consultancy Do What Matters, an analogy of using GPS to find an agency’s way forward is apt.
“You don’t use GPS to find out how you got lost,” she said.
Tucker, an honorary fellow at the University of Wisconsin, where she earned her PhD in mass communications, knows all about the idea of keeping momentum pointed in the right direction. In the past, her consultancy helped The Martin Agency and Periscope navigate flashpoints in their histories, digging in to find root issues that prevent agencies from addressing inclusion shortcomings.
The next project for Tucker and her team: The Richards Group. Last October, the agency was embroiled in controversy after founder Stan Richards remarked that a Motel 6 campaign was “too Black.” The blowback was swift, with several clients—including Motel 6, Home Depot and others—leaving the staunchly independent shop.
Shortly after the incident, Richards resigned from the agency he founded and Glenn Dady, who joined the Dallas agency in 1980, became CEO. After some time and reflection, Dady is focused not just on healing the agency but becoming a beacon of what’s possible.
“This is, by far, the biggest challenge I’ve ever experienced at the agency,” Dady said. “And now we have a chance to reinvent ourselves. Everything changed when Stan resigned and with this, I’m hoping that a year from now, our industry can look at us as a case study for getting it right. And I’m excited to work with Lauren and her team.”
Tucker is critical of the industry’s efforts in diversity, equity and inclusion, pointing out that not much has changed since she started in the business at Leo Burnett in 1987. The issue, she said, is focusing on diversity management, which is largely related to data. Tucker’s contention is that success comes from inclusion management: building and integrating DEI efforts into each agency’s organizational strategy.
“That’s the only way we’re going to get it to be sustainable,” she said, noting that the agency-by-agency approach is more effective instead of being a holding company mandate. “Chief diversity officers are lovely people, don’t get me wrong, but it can’t be bolted on. It has to happen with everybody in the agency being committed to and connecting inclusion to drive growth for the agency and its clients.”
Talent above all
At its core, the most crucial agency asset is talent. Dady said Tucker’s assertion that talent is “at the center of everything in our business” energized The Richards Group leadership.
“I was 100% sold at that moment,” recalled Dady.
According to Tucker—who spent over 11 years at The Martin Agency and left as the shop’s director of decision sciences—mismanagement and lack of investment are fundamental problems. Additionally, opportunity hoarding, which comes in the form of cronyism and nepotism, holds agencies back and can create a culture that looks inward instead of outward at possibility.
“Inclusion management is about [getting] the right people into the right jobs, continuously leveraging those relevant differences to provide clients with the work that speaks to an increasingly multicultural audience,” Tucker said.
Indeed, the culture at The Richards Group started and ended with Stan Richards. Long known as a powerhouse creative shop, Dady points to what he termed “Stan-isms,” referring to some of the founder’s policies or behaviors.
“He had reasons why he put those in place, but all of those are up for review now,” he said. “We are examining every aspect of the agency’s operations and culture. Nothing is off the table, up to and including a name change [for the agency].”
Part of the issue at The Richards Group, and any agency that either faces challenges or struggles with talent, lies in what Tucker called “ghost rules,” actions and behaviors that are hardwired into a culture that prevent it from moving forward. The theory, by organizational consultant Todd Henry, is that these invisible limitations are put into place for no good reason.
Some ghost rules related to talent include falling back on what’s comfortable, like moving quickly to hire the same people for projects over and over. Conceding that keeping some rules is useful, Tucker said transforming The Richards Group will involve short-circuiting the rules that everyone relies on.
“I don’t talk about anti-bias training,” Tucker said. “What I do talk about is how biases help us navigate the world with fast thinking. We need to change that muscle memory to pause and rethink how those rules affect the business.”
Tucker said “inclusion nudges” will be built into the recruiting, hiring, evaluation and advancement of talent at The Richards Group. This includes a more inclusive interview process that places less importance on a person’s past work and focuses more on what they believe they can bring to the agency. Hiring will also aim to cast a wider net, rather than just the pipeline of portfolio schools or university programs.
“[Talent from other backgrounds] can add something—a different dimension—to the work and make it more salient for consumers,” Tucker said.
Navigating a positive commitment forward
Despite the high profile of clients leaving The Richards Group, some, Dady said, were “brave enough to stay.” Then, some clients were on the fence; Dady said those conversations were based solely on the agency’s commitment to making significant changes. It may feel like a business development purgatory of sorts, because progress needs to be made before the agency gets back into a consistent flow of consideration.
“There are some consultants that won’t put us on a [search] list right now,” said Dady with candor, noting that the agency continuously speaks with its existing client base to keep them informed of developments and progress. “The clients need to see this [change], and the industry needs to see that we’re 100% committed.”
Dady points out that since The Richards Group is independent, there are fewer barriers and the direct line to leadership is swift. To Tucker, it’s not as much about independence but the commitment of the leadership team. One of the significant signals about whether or not an agency is committed is when leadership passes Tucker and her team on to HR.
“That’s a signal to me that they’re not invested [in change]. If they only see it as an HR function, then we’re starting off on the wrong foot. I require a relationship with the CEO and the leadership team before I will take on a client,” said Tucker, noting her continuing relationships with leadership at The Martin Agency, Noble People and Periscope.
In the end, though, Dady understands what’s at stake. After some reflection, he is entirely focused on bringing The Richards Group—or whatever the agency may be called—into a brighter future quickly.
“We’re committed to doing 100% of the work,” Dady said. “Come back in three months after our audit. It will be interesting to see [where we are].”
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