Ep 193: Nils Leonard of Uncommon London - ”Re-Loaded”

Uncommon London was just named Creative Agency of the Year for the second year in a row, and Independent Agency of the Year. It’s the first time a company has ever received both awards in the same year.

Creative leadership is not a theory. It’s practice that happens in the real world.

And the reason this podcast exists is to bring the lessons of the best leaders in the world into the light where they can be learned form and applied.

This week’s episode is a re-run of one of my very earliest episodes. It’s a conversation I had with Nils Leonard in the summer of 2017.

Nils was on the show only a few weeks ago. But I’m airing this episode again now for a simple reason.

It’s a case study.

When we recorded this conversation, Nils and his partners - Lucy Jameson and Natalie Graeme - had just launched Uncommon.

They had big dreams. Big beliefs. And, as Nils realized at the end of our conversation - something else to support all that.

Hope sits at the heart of any creative endeavor. The willingness to try, the capacity to fail and then try again are all fueled by hope.

But if hope is the driving force, then the track that you lay down is held in place by the standards that you hold yourselves to.

If you take the time to listen to this conversation, or read the transcript, you’ll find evidence that when it comes to leadership, saying what you mean and meaning what you say matter a lot. Maybe more than anything.

And less than five years after this conversation, the company that Nils, Lucy and Natalie are building is proof that it is possible to predict the future - by inventing it.

What do you want to have built by 2027?