The Culture Wrangler

EPISODE 55

TRANSCRIPT

Note: This is an AI-generated transcript and may have transcription errors. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause.

Robert Berkeley 00:06

Hello and welcome to another episode of Inside Jobs, the podcast where we dive ever so deeply into the experiences and insights of the leading minds in the in-house agency world. I'm your host, Robert Berkeley. And as ever, today this episode is brought to you by IHAF, the in-house Agency Forum. And if you don’t live under a rock, you will know it’s the leading trade association for brands who know that they get the very best from having their creative minds closer. And also in association with EKCS, the experts in content production at scale for brands' creative teams. As many of you know, the reason I host this podcast is because I get to meet the most fascinating and interesting people. And today is absolutely no exception. Beth Anne Mandia, director of Brand and Creative Services at TruStage, is joining us. And Beth Anne has carved herself a bit of a niche in transforming creative services within a highly regulated industry. Going to hear some interesting stories about creative leadership and culture change. So, Beth Anne, thank you so much for joining us today.

Beth Anne Mandia 01:12
Great to be here. I'm so excited.

Robert Berkeley 01:14
Kick things off. Can you tell us a little bit about TruStage and what you do for them?

Beth Anne Mandia 01:19
Yes. TruStage used to be CUNA Mutual Group, and we deliver insurance investments and technology solutions designed to help meet a diverse range of needs for consumers in the United States. What I do for TruStage is I run the Creative Services department for the Enterprise B2B and D2C departments.

Robert Berkeley 01:39
Let's go right back to the beginning, Beth Anne. What kind of upbringing did you have? Tell us a little bit about your childhood and the influences you had around you and where you were from.

Beth Anne Mandia 01:47
Yeah, I grew up in a small town called Rutherford, New Jersey, which is right over the bridge from New York. My father was a credit manager at a steel company, and my mother ran some programs at my grade school. She worked at my school.

Robert Berkeley 02:03
You went to school where your mother was teaching?

Beth Anne Mandia 02:06
Yes. Correct. That’s right.

Robert Berkeley 02:08
Okay. Was that formative for you?

Beth Anne Mandia 02:10
It was the best experience, honestly. I loved having her around. It was awesome. Having her where I was growing up and being there for me whenever I needed her, it was great. Which leads me to want to be around where my child is, you know, so I’m constantly volunteering at school. It was great. Yeah. And, you know, we were really probably a lower-income family, grew up in a really tiny house. My two sisters and I shared a bedroom in an attic that was made over into a bedroom. My grandmother lived with us growing up. You know, we struggled to get by, but I think that was also really formative. I grew up really just always making things, doing things with whatever we had in front of us.

Robert Berkeley 02:49
I sometimes feel that children don’t seem to continue making things after the age of about 11 these days.

Beth Anne Mandia 02:54
Yeah, I agree. I totally agree. Maybe younger. As soon as they get a phone.

Robert Berkeley 02:58
It’s still very interesting that you grew up, you know, surrounded by, no doubt, sticky tape and bits of cardboard and anything, bottle tops and anything you could put together, right?

Beth Anne Mandia 03:06
Totally. Absolutely. And my house is full of that. Right. So I still love journaling and things like that. And putting. My husband laughs at me. Because he’s like, do we really need this box of old newspaper and magazine rippings? And I’m like, yeah, oh, we totally need that. I definitely need that stuff. And he’s like, okay.

Robert Berkeley 03:23
So you had a creative kind of background and upbringing, and is that what you went on to?

Beth Anne Mandia 03:27
Yeah, for film. I wanted to write for film. So I started off in film school at Temple University in Philly, and then I changed over to the English department. And I kind of had all these ambitions to just do it all.

Robert Berkeley 03:39
So you studied words, but then you studied pictures and all sorts of other things. Anything where your heart led you to. But I suppose at some point you had to earn a living.

Beth Anne Mandia 03:47
Yes, that’s correct.

Robert Berkeley 03:49
How did you tackle that?

Beth Anne Mandia 03:50
Yeah, it’s a real weird story. I was working at a retail store. One of my repeat customers, who came in all the time, came up to me as I was closing up the store. It was like a sporting goods store. And he came up to me after work one day and was like, you do not belong in retail selling sneakers. And he said, take this business card. I know a headhunter. She has a job right now that I think you’d be perfect for. Like, you got to get out of this, you know, silly job that you’re in. I was like, what’s the heck’s going on here? So I called this woman, and she hooked me up at an advertising agency for an interview. And I went and, yeah, I got the job in an advertising agency.

Robert Berkeley 04:30
How did you get from there to here? Because you started at this agency. I guess you were doing more account management.

Beth Anne Mandia 04:36
Yeah, correct. Managing accounts, sort of client management side. And, you know, when you’re. Again, this. I don’t even know if this happens anymore. At agencies in the 90s, right. You could kind of just do anything. You looked at what the guy was next to you was doing, and you were, hey, can I help you? What do you got going on? And you sort of just set your sights on what needed to get done, and you did it. And that’s how you moved up. It was a lot more. You had a lot more flexibility and ability to be nimble in a small agency at that time. And if you did the job well, you got the job. And so I moved around a lot while I was at the agency. I started producing TV spots. I mean, then I was producing $5 million TV spots for Nutrisystem for a while, just because that was a great opportunity. And so that’s what I did for quite a bit of time while I was at the agency and then started. Just started doing creative direction from that, moved on to some other things, and then when my time ran out at the agency, I moved to client side.

Robert Berkeley 05:35
Well, everything you’ve said so far has talked about one particular aspect of your character, which is curiosity, because you’ve clearly been nosy, curious, what are you doing, you know, looking at your neighbor, that kind of thing. But would you have said you had any ambition?

Beth Anne Mandia 05:51
Oh, yeah, obviously, I think my ambition was learning and seeking the next challenge. I get bored easily, and so if I’m staying in the same place for too long, it’s, what’s the next challenge? What’s the next opportunity challenge problem to solve? My biggest excitement, I would say, is solving that puzzle. So what excites me is dumping the puzzle out. And when it’s a big pile, that’s the big. That’s the best part of a puzzle. And I view every challenge at work, every challenge in my life, that way, is that excitement of dumping the puzzle for the first time and saying, like, wow, where are we going from here?

Robert Berkeley 06:32
And that’s a great way of looking at it, for sure. Yeah, you progressed through the agency, clearly, they put a lot of faith in you. Gave it back to them in spades, by the sound of things. They gave you a lot of responsibility, a lot of financial responsibility. You had to learn about finance along the way. I’m not sure you did many classes in accounting, did you?

Beth Anne Mandia 06:48
No, not at all.

Robert Berkeley 06:49
And equally management, too. Did that. Did they send you away on a management training course, or did you just kind of figure that one out, too?

Beth Anne Mandia 06:55
No, I figured that one out. And I’ll tell you, I learned a lot management from what not to do as well as for what to do. Right. Because you have a lot of negative experiences. Again, I think specifically as a woman, and you learn a lot on how to manage by being managed poorly. That’s the truth of it. I think, specifically in the agency world.

Robert Berkeley 07:16
You’re looking at ways people behave and deciding that is the wrong way to behave and will behave differently.

Beth Anne Mandia 07:21
Yeah, absolutely.

Robert Berkeley 07:22

How did you get to TruStage then? Through this. You were ambitious, you were creative, you were curious. What was the path to where you are at TruStage?

Beth Anne Mandia 07:31
Yeah, I mean, I was working, like I said. I made the switch over to client side and I was working with an organization, and I got a phone call from a recruiter that said, I think I have a job that fits your skill set really well. And they said, here's the catch. It's in Madison, Wisconsin. You live in Philadelphia. Is it something you’re interested in? And I said, well, my husband and I have been thinking about leaving Philly for a while, so let’s give it a shot. Let me take the interview and see if it’s something I’m interested in. Flew out, did the interviews. We stayed in Madison for a couple days, explored the area with my daughter, and we were like, could this be our next adventure? I think I really want to do this. And I left Madison after that trip thinking, gosh, if I don’t get this, I’m going to really be upset. Like, this is something we really want. All of us were like, we really want this. And then it took a while for the job to come through, and we were like, oh, man, I’m really, really worried. And when I got the call that…

Robert Berkeley 08:27
We got the job, you were desperately trying not to check out of your current job.

Beth Anne Mandia 08:30
Yeah, exactly, exactly. And then when I got the call, I was really excited. You know, here we are seven years later. So I really couldn’t have made a better choice.

Robert Berkeley 08:40
What did you think you were walking into from a professional challenge point of view?

Beth Anne Mandia 08:44
Yeah, I mean, I’ll tell you. I met with like seven people in one day, one long day of interviews. And every single person that walked into that room was smarter than the next. And I thought to myself, oh, this is a place I’m going to learn and grow and work with top-tier talent. And that was what I was really excited about. The talent level at TruStage is really, really amazing. So I knew I was going to walk into that. I knew I was going to walk into a company full of extremely talented people. The work that I was expected to do at that time was bring TruStage to the consumer, direct to consumer, which was something I knew I could deliver on. And that was exciting to me. We were looking to do something new in the organization, and it was something I was really excited for.

Robert Berkeley 09:32
You said you knew you could deliver on that. You hadn’t done anything quite like that before, though, right?

Beth Anne Mandia 09:37
I mean, I was great at direct-to-consumer business, and TruStage didn’t have that department at the time.

Robert Berkeley 09:43
So you felt that this was almost low-hanging fruit for you then?

Beth Anne Mandia 09:53
In fact. Okay. And the team you were impressed by, you started. And how long ago was that you started?

Beth Anne Mandia 09:54
Seven years now.

Robert Berkeley 09:54
And give us a whirlwind tour of the last seven years. You may, you can mention COVID or not as you see fit.

Beth Anne Mandia 10:00
So yeah, seven years. Started with a team of five at the time. Quite a bit. We were order takers. I did a lot of PR within the organization to get our team from just delivery to being business partners. My philosophy as a creative leader is a strategic partner. We’re a business partner, and we’re not just makers or doers, and we don’t just make pretty pictures and hand them over to you. We are business drivers, and we’re valuable to the organization. And it takes a little bit of time; it takes leadership to buy in and then help you proselytize that across the organization.

Robert Berkeley 10:40
Can I stop you there? Because this is probably the number one thing your peers ask me about when I speak to them. It’s how can I be a more strategic partner? How can I get to— the cliché is how can I sit at the top table?

Beth Anne Mandia 10:53
Yeah.

Robert Berkeley 10:54
Now you say you ran a PR exercise. You had to do that with a sponsor already in place, surely.

Beth Anne Mandia 10:59
Yeah.

Robert Berkeley 11:00
Who I presume was whoever recruited you.

Beth Anne Mandia 11:02
Yeah, yeah. I mean, it was my leadership.

Robert Berkeley 11:05
What advice would you give to someone in your situation who feels that they can’t get their voice heard? Based on your experience, you have.

Beth Anne Mandia 11:11
To explain to your peers, your leaders, why creative drives value in your business. Right. And so that is you spend a lot of time making decks. Right. Because that’s how your business partners speak.

Robert Berkeley 11:26
So people communicate.

Beth Anne Mandia 11:27
Yeah, it’s how they speak. So I could tell you I have 10 decks, one for each business partner. How do I speak to media? How do I speak to strategy? How do I speak to compliance? How do I speak to credit union sales? Right. And everyone’s different. It’s different. Why is creative important to you? And you have to have metrics with it. And you know, these are the things that as I’ve gone through the years too, you have to set up structures. And what am I going to do to set up those KPIs, those metrics, those things to ensure my business partners are brought along for that ride, right along the way. And those relationships are really important. You start when you start, you explain, and then you continuously foster those relationships and that engagement with hard metrics on. Here’s what I’m bringing to the table. Here’s how I’m making your life easier. Here’s how I’m delivering value for you in particular, not just for the overarching business, but for you and your line of business. And it takes a lot of time. It’s exhausting, but it’s valuable.

Robert Berkeley 12:28
You’re framing the conversation around them and their needs. As any good marketing person knows, that’s what you’re meant to do. But you’re saying it’s very, very important not to forget that within your own employer, you seem to be talking about money and cost as well, if not directly. It’s sort of on the list of things, but it’s not the main thing. But you’ll be talking to people who would be using external agencies that know their particular brand extremely well. They have a great working relationship. It goes back years. You’re asking them to take a chance on you to see the benefits, and clearly, you got that.

Beth Anne Mandia 12:56
Yeah, absolutely. And then you’re talking to your own team, right. And bringing them up to speed. Right. Hey, this is what my expectation is of you in every room you’re walking into, right. So you have to change the mindset of your own team, who’s now also been sitting there just being order takers for however many years they might have been there. And every room you walk into, you have to walk in with this mindset: you’re valuable. You have to understand the business. So sit in these meetings, be in this space, understand these things, cascade this information to your own team so that they understand what value they need to bring into every room, ask these kinds of questions. So you’re coaching down, you’re coaching up, you’re coaching sideways. It’s really a job.

Robert Berkeley 13:39
Did you know that what you had to do when you started and over the next five, six, seven years was to change the culture? Because that’s what you’re describing, surely?

Beth Anne Mandia 13:49
No, I didn’t.

Robert Berkeley 13:50
You’re in a very regulated industry. And so I’d love to learn a little bit about how you let the creative shine through in a heavily regulated environment, because clearly you do. So what’s your take on that?

Beth Anne Mandia 14:03
I know it's a hard challenge for folks in our industry. I will tell you, I believe we have the best compliance partners in the industry. I truly believe that we are a fairly risk-averse organization. But my team and I maintain a really strong relationship with our advertising compliance team and our legal team. We have a very open-door policy for discussion with them. We meet multiple times a week. I'm on the phone with my compliance partner at my level probably three times a week. We involve compliance early in the creative strategy process to ensure that our ideas are validated from the start and have the right oversight as we develop them. I've brought compliance and legal partners with me on TV shoots so that we ensure that when we capture testimonials, the sound bites are compliant. I would say we build really strong relationships with our compliance partners because it's the most valuable thing that a creative professional can foster. Right? I think compliance is the number one relationship you should be fostering as a creative person. We pre-approve a lot of things, so our SLAs go down in time.

Robert Berkeley 15:10
So you've got ground rules that you've pre-agreed.

Beth Anne Mandia 15:12
Totally. Our compliance SLAs are like three to five days.

Robert Berkeley 15:16
Wow.

Beth Anne Mandia 15:16
We have such good relationships. Yeah.

Robert Berkeley 15:18
And the relation... You keep mentioning this word, relationships. Relationships are built on trust, and trust is built on proving things. Right? You can't tell someone to trust you, famously. Right? You have to prove it. And again, this sounds like the journey, the culture change you've been on to get to this point.

Beth Anne Mandia 15:31
Yeah.

Robert Berkeley 15:32
When we spoke earlier, you mentioned this wonderful phrase about achieving creative excellence with a highly refined process.

Beth Anne Mandia 15:38
Yeah.

Robert Berkeley 15:39
And clearly getting this amazing SLA with compliance must be leaning heavily on doing that. If you fall, I will catch you. I will be there. There's a process for doing that. Right? But I think that also meant that you lent very heavily into lean. Is that right?

Beth Anne Mandia 15:54
That's correct. Yes. Yeah.

Robert Berkeley 15:55
So tell us about that journey, because that's something a lot of people are doing. They think about it, they've done it, but weren't happy with.

Beth Anne Mandia 16:02
Yeah.

Robert Berkeley 16:03
How did it work out for you?

Beth Anne Mandia 16:04
Yeah. Around 2019, we integrated Lean management into our processes, and I think we've refined it over the years to, as you said, a highly refined lean process. You know, I think as a philosophy, lean is aimed at minimizing waste. Right? As I think we know, and maximizing value. We are focused on streamlining our workflow, eliminating unnecessary steps, and optimizing our resources. That's basically what we're looking to accomplish. We review our processes quarterly to ensure we have alignment in our operational efficiency. We spend a lot of time discussing and dissecting our creative processes. We look at metrics twice a week, Mondays and Wednesdays, as a team. We look at our root causes for any projects that we miss. We look at our lessons learned on our projects that are missed that go above or below our baselines and discuss them. If there are themes that we come across, we then go and talk to either the agency or internal partners who, again, cluster around specific challenges you keep talking about.

Robert Berkeley 17:19
How big is the team overall, by the way?

Beth Anne Mandia 17:22
So today it’s 19 people, but we are going through an organizational restructure, so it will be larger soon.

Robert Berkeley 17:32
And when you say we go through these things twice a week, are you literally talking about everybody? Are they all aligned with this?

Beth Anne Mandia 17:40
Yeah, my whole team. Yeah.

Robert Berkeley 17:42
And to do this, you have to capture a lot of data, which may include timesheets.

Beth Anne Mandia 17:47
Oh, yeah. Everyone tracks time.

Robert Berkeley 17:50
Are they on board with the idea of timesheets? Because timesheets, instinctively, especially creatives, push against. But sometimes you have to explain, this is actually to enable you to focus on what you do best and make sure you are focusing on what you do best. Is that right?

Beth Anne Mandia 18:02
Yeah, I think it's a good question. In the beginning, the timesheet thing was really... There was some pushback, but we've found what's really helped us is when we have to say no to a project, I can pull something really quickly and go to our partners and say, we don't have capacity. When we need a new person on our team, there's no question from leadership that I can run a report and say, you know, yeah, we need this new person, or I need to backfill a role. When the organization asks what are the reasons you need to backfill? I'm not licking my finger and putting it in the air and asking because the wind blows to the west. I'm saying because this person does this much work, and this is how much money we'd have to spend if we had to hire another person. And the metrics are all there. Those kinds of things have been really helpful to prove out the reporting that we do on my team. And that came really quickly. So my team, I don't think, has any worries anymore of, you know, Beth Anne's watching every hour I'm putting in.

Robert Berkeley 19:04
Better make something up quick.

Beth Anne Mandia 19:05
Right? Exactly. It's not about that. Nobody's worried, oh, she's watching me. If I take a day off, she's watching me. If I leave an hour to go to my doctor's appointment. That kind of stuff isn't... That's not why we're doing this. We're doing this for the greater good of our team. To say if we have a challenge, we are able to pull the numbers to say we have a challenge if we need to say no to work. If we, you know, these are the reasons why we're doing it.

Robert Berkeley 19:28
I do get this sense that you've just kind of gone down this path you, Beth Anne, think is the right way to go, because this is the right thing to do. And what you've done is become a culture wrangler, which is probably the hardest job on the planet. And yet you've just sort of... It happened in your wake as you've moved forward within your employer. And you’ve... It does sound like you've transformed it. You've gone from seven people to 19. You've gone from order takers to strategic influence order makers. You've instilled a process that ensures that there's space for creativity. What challenges have you got coming up? I mean, what remains? What's the next thing you're going to wrangle? I mean, it's all about culture, by the sound of things, the way you've approached it. You know, where do you want to be moving forward to? There are plenty of challenges in the industry, right?

Beth Anne Mandia 20:15
Yeah. There's always challenges with prioritization. There's always challenges within any organization. Right? I think there's always challenges with the strategy. And what are the goals? What are the business goals that we want to focus on? I think for us and anyone in this organization, what are the MarTech tools that we want to use? I mean, our organization still has a lot of disparate tools we're using across the business. Could we do a better job of figuring out how to streamline some of our tools and make them more functional for the enterprise as a whole? There's a lot of that I think we can start looking at, and those are the things that I'm thinking about. As a centralized team starts to come in place, how are we going to start to think about that kind of stuff? Those are on my radar right now.

Robert Berkeley 21:06
Yeah, I can understand that, and it does make sense. So you've got big challenges ahead.

Beth Anne Mandia 21:10
Yeah.

Robert Berkeley 21:11
But it sounds like you're well capable of coping with them, given the way you've got everything set up. If a young Beth Anne was listening to you now, do you think she'd be excited by the kind of role that you're doing? And if so, what words of advice would you give her?

Beth Anne Mandia 21:25
Yeah, I think so. I think she'd be surprised, but I think she'd be excited. My advice is always going to be don’t say no to anything. Just keep doing, you know, always walk through that door that's open for you, climb through the window, go through that tunnel. Like whatever opportunity you have, take it. Because the exciting things are going to be on the other side.

Robert Berkeley 21:47
And you also fail at 100% of the things you don’t try.

Beth Anne Mandia 21:52
Yeah, absolutely. And I say that to everybody. I tell my team that. Right. If there’s an opportunity that’s opening up for you, take it. Because, you know, staying safe is never the way to go.

Robert Berkeley 22:04
Absolutely. You won't go anywhere. He who dares wins is the SAS motto.

Beth Anne Mandia 22:09
Yeah, that's right.

Robert Berkeley 22:10
So that’s been amazing. I think we could talk for hours. The sheer force of personality that has driven these changes with your employers, that has taken you forward. I’m so... I’m literally fascinated to hear what’s going to happen next in Beth Ann’s story.

Beth Anne Mandia 22:25
Me too.

Robert Berkeley 22:25
Thank you so much, Beth Ann, for joining us.

Beth Anne Mandia 22:27
Thanks.

Robert Berkeley 22:28
So this is the moment, unfortunately, I have to wrap up. I have to give a special thanks to IHAF and EKCS Life. There’s plenty more on ijpodcast.com and we move into yet another... Well, goodness me, there’s a lot there, a lot of inspiring leaders, all with their own story. Please go and have a look. Please subscribe, forward to your friends, and do leave a review if you possibly can. Stay tuned for next time. We’ll uncover more behind-the-scenes stories of these tremendous in-house creative leaders like Beth Ann. I’m Robert Berkeley. Till next time.