Cogent
A Creative Communications Agency
Cogent is one of the oldest and largest independent full-service UK creative communications agencies. Housed in a historic barn in the Warwickshire countryside in close proximity to Birmingham, it was founded in 1936 as a family-owned company. Bruce Hutton took over as Managing Director in October 2016 and there are currently around 90 employees based across two sites.
How did we help?
Leaders Lab worked with the executive team at Cogent during 2019 to build a platform for the future management of people and performance, with the aim of creating a significant and lasting impact on Cogent and underpinning the current and future success of the business. The process of working together to create this vital platform also acted as an induction process for new Directors and bonded the newly-formed team rapidly.
The work led to:
- the merging of the two top teams in the organisation into one Business Leadership Team.
- the creation of clear, distinct accountabilities for each member of this team, with clearly understood measures agreed by the job-holder and every other member of the team.
- cascading the process to every other team and individual role in the organisation.
- agreement on a clear set of company Values, each with specific statements of behaviour expected.
- the launch of a new home-grown performance management process combining:
- a clear objective-setting and review process based on each set of accountabilities
- a clear measurable process for setting and reviewing behavioural expectations based on the company values