A Sydney-based communications business keeps learning new lessons about how to communicate better with its clients - and itself. It has been a recipe for success.
| Entrepreneur |
Chris Gray (Managing Director); Phil Burfurd (Chief Executive Officer) |
| Company |
Icon International Communications |
| Business type |
Public relations and strategic communications |
| Founded |
2000 |
| Employees |
18 full-time (Australia); 4 full-time (Singapore joint venture) |
| Head office |
Sydney (headquarters), Singapore (joint venture). Affiliates in Melbourne, Brisbane and Canberra |
| Contact details |
www.iicpr.com |
Key Learning Points |
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Client rapport
Try outplacing your staff at clients’ offices, or having their staff at your office. It can quickly build knowledge and trust.
Value adding
Can you do more for your clients? Gray says: “We are trying to move from our clients’ marketing needs to their business needs.”
Decision makers
Always deal with the most senior person. Gray says: “If you only deal with the brand manager, you can’t take the bigger business perspective.”
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The Icon International Communications Story
It was the sort of moment that Managing Directors fear and yet know will define a company: the majority shareholder carpets you for "running the place like a kindergarten". That happened one Thursday afternoon in 2001 to Chris Gray, Managing Director of the corporate communications business Icon International Communications. It taught Gray important lessons about management and good communication. Gray, Icon and its clients have all benefited.
Gray's sandbagging by Icon’s 66% equity holder and CEO, Phil Burfurd, possibly had its roots in the foundation of Icon, which is now successful and rapidly expanding. Last year, Icon turned over $1.8 million and the head count passed 18 at its offices in Sydney. A joint venture in Singapore has since been launched.
Icon was founded in 2000 in a hotel lobby, based on a business plan put together in three days. It was a classic fly-by-the-seat-of-the-pants start - and therein lay the problem. By 2001, Burfurd, as the main financial backer, wanted a more definite strategy; Gray, who has a 33% stake in Icon, felt he had been leading it well through the early shoals of growth.
In hindsight, both men were right but Gray still felt challenged by Burfurd’s demands. Gray questioned whether he was the right partner to take the company forward. They broke away for the weekend after their Thursday confrontation. By Monday, they had resolved the problem - and learnt the importance of communicating better with each other.
Gray says: “[At that time], I didn’t like that communication and I thought there had to be a better way - and Phil agreed. But I did respect Phil’s honesty. People are OK here saying 'I don’t agree with this’. We keep open.” And so a communications business learnt the value of openness and good communications. That skill has helped Icon to service its clients better and manage its own rapid growth path.
Gray believes a secret of Icon’s success has been how it really gets to know clients. An Icon staff member is often sent to work at the client’s office, or an employee of the client may hot-desk at Icon. The outplacements help to rapidly and effectively build trust, rapport, knowledge - and communication.
The outplacements are also central to Icon’s positioning of itself as much more than just an ad hoc communications business. It is playing a more strategic role for some clients, helping them to frame business strategies with a marketing/communications perspective.
External success with clients has created its own internal pressures. In four years, Icon’s staff count has increased sixfold, new branches and a joint venture have been started, and a larger office found. Burfurd and Gray now debate issues such as setting up subsidiary specialist businesses or an advisory board of directors. As a result, the intimate family atmosphere of a start-up has had to be formalised with a layer of management, an HR specialist, and induction manuals for new employees.
Icon now has the framework for a bigger company and Gray says he is learning how to operate within it. “When there were three or four staff, they all came to me. I am still always wanting to dive back in to save a situation but I now have to let the responsible manager come to me with a solution.”
The management layers are functional rather than distancing. Gray says Icon has worked hard to create an internal culture with rules that include respecting others, valuing everyone’s ideas and being egalitarian. The approach has a very pragmatic basis: keeping good talent in-house. Gray does not want a workplace that bleeds good people because of a toxic culture. It is all a matter of good communications.
Gray says: “Treat your employees as your clients and your clients as your partners. Much of the rest will then look after itself.” Of his ‘kindergarten management style’, he says: “Today, I would probably agree with the view. Openly sharing our management styles has toughened me up and made the business more successful.”