The culture lesson I learnt from MCB
It started with a simple leadership ambition: break down silos, encourage people to step beyond the boundaries of their day-to-day roles, experiment with innovation, and learn how to turn ideas into structured solutions.
What I particularly admired was the willingness to make that ambition real.
Kudos to Allan Freed, Group Head of HR, who was prepared to go beyond good intentions and actually create the space for it to happen: dedicating Friday afternoons to cross-functional projects. And so the 90/10 initiative was born.
Nadaraj Mathuvirin, MCB Organisational Design and Change Lead, then brought structure to the journey, and I had the privilege of joining what became our “Baywatch Team” (now that’s another story ) of coaches, alongside Michael Marti, Charles Crowl and Matthieu Delache.
Watching the teams evolve was fascinating. It was not always smooth. There were setbacks, difficult conversations, ideas that had to be reworked, and moments when people had to stretch well beyond what felt comfortable.
But that was precisely where much of the learning happened.
People became more curious, more resilient and more open to different perspectives. They learnt to work across functions, challenge one another constructively, navigate constraints and turn ideas into something tangible.
My biggest culture lesson from this experience?
If you genuinely want people to think and behave differently, don’t go at it half-baked.
Creating a culture of innovation takes more than encouraging people to “be innovative”. Leaders need to create the time, space, structure and permission for people to experiment…and then stay the course when things become messy!
