“We’re all about trying to find simple, impactful solutions for clients. Ideas that are really easy to get and that help clients move forward.”

Rishi Dhir, Head of Strategy, EMEA at Siegel and Gale, is putting his simple yet strong ambition for the agency's output into words.

Simple but effective work that truly has an impact on the success of a business is that hard-to-find sweet spot, which is so crucial in proving the bottom-line value of the creative industries. Unfortunately, achieving simplicity is not always so simple.

Back to front problem solving

The career path of a good strategist is never linear. For Dhir, the path to strategy began at Capgemini. His background in management consulting has resulted in a unique approach to problem-solving that “combines logic with magic”. It is a strategic approach which places the business at the centre, focusing on understanding the opportunities and challenges in front of it, and the cultural and competitive context in which it operates. All while never underestimating the power of unexpected creativity.

At the core of this proposition is the idea of rational thinking. Dhir shares that management consultancies are great at “the logical underpinning to any work”, championing the power of research and data to inform strategy. Before skipping to a solution, understanding the needs of a business and the challenges it faces creates a robust foundation for creativity.

“At the very beginning of a project, [management consultants] use their experience, their wisdom, their gut instincts to imagine what the answers might be to a problem before they embark on the process,” says Dhir.

Dhir explains that the classic management consultant approach almost reverse engineers a solution. He explains: “They look backwards and say: If we imagine the answer could be A, B, or C, what would we need to believe for each to be true?”. They subsequently develop an analytical plan to test each of those ideas and then come up with recommendations based on the evidence. “This hypothesis-led, ‘right-to-left’ form of problem-solving not only drives efficiencies, it also frees teams up to think more expansively about opportunities for the client’s business from the outset, and allows them to be guided by their experience and instincts, whilst also being firmly underpinned by facts”, he adds. It is an approach that he encourages his team to use when solving almost any open-ended creative problem, as it drives healthy discussion and imagination, whilst being anchored on logic.

It is a rational and deep understanding of business that adds to Dhir’s client-focused approach. Being aware that managing clients and ideas can also be political, he shares that servicing clients is also about “managing people around the process”.

“We all realise that the best answer isn't necessarily the greatest idea. It's the greatest idea that will actually be accepted,” he adds. Dhir aims to take steps to ensure this is the idea delivered off the bat.

The power of thinking differently

As a more traditionally ‘left-brained thinker’, Dhir knows the value of surrounding yourself with people who think differently to you and the importance of diverse teams.

“There's never one way of cracking a problem. I personally love working with people who think very differently to me, especially at the outset of a project,” says Dhir. “I think you can open up the thinking in so many different directions when you're just chatting through a problem or an idea with someone who comes at it from a completely different angle.”

Speaking with others and seeing broader perspectives helps to fuel better work. “All of the consultancies and agencies that operate in our space tend to have very different thinkers in their businesses. Deliberately so, because it fuels creativity and gets you to better outcomes,” adds Dhir.

Embracing new ideas, perspectives and technologies, Dhir is also cautiously optimistic about the transformative and creative power of AI. “I think it's a game changer. I think it's terrifying and terrific at the same time,” he says.

He points to the potential capabilities of AI in augmenting services and streamlining workflows. Yet, in the race towards progress he is cautious about evolving, and potentially unrealistic, expectations from clients. “I think they will expect consultancies like us to deliver answers in shorter time frames because we’re augmented. They'll probably expect the price point to drop too, because it won’t take as much time to get there. So that will put even more pressure on the industry to deliver.”

Communicating the value of the creative industries

With client expectations changing, the creative industries face a communication challenge, to showcase their true value and business-transforming capabilities.

“I think it's in the way that we position ourselves as an industry,” says Dhir. “I feel like the more executionary end of the value chain is often undervalued by the C-suite because they see it as ‘marketing tactics’.”

“If we position and frame what we do as creating bottom-line impact for businesses, then we can command the kind of rates that we probably all want to,” he adds.

Pointing to building brands as an essential part of building a business, Dhir urges organisations to think about what creativity can really do for them long term.

“Brand is often the biggest, most important lever that a business has to drive its top and bottom-line performance,” says Dhir. He continues: “A brand needs to constantly be filled up with creativity, new ways of thinking and new expressions in order to be relevant in the marketplace.” He believes the challenge for the industry is how to better frame the impact of creativity on a brand’s financial performance.

Creating real-world impact

The value of creativity cannot only be seen in a business's bottom line, but also in its cultural and societal impact. While profit and purpose are often positioned at odds, Dhir acknowledges that in a world of socioeconomic unrest, the two can co-exist.

“I think there is a way of reconciling those two things,” he says, adding: “Businesses that truly have a strong and clear purpose that guides how they operate, and moves the world forward in a positive direction, can generate more profit.”

“We live in this state of perma-crisis. I think as a society there is a need for brands to create calm and order from the chaos to make people feel confident, reassured and optimistic. I do think brands play a significant role in influencing culture and society in that respect,” says Dhir. “Whether it’s Patagonia making the planet more sustainable or Nike encouraging everybody to see themselves as an athlete.”

By looking beyond the brief to add value through creativity, brand building, cultural impact or building the bottom line, Dhir underlines that there is no single approach to strategy. Sometimes recognising that there is not one single solution helps drive forward the most impactful and successful work.