By Michelle Sarpong, Head of Activation, the7stars and NDA’s regular columnist.
In recent months, the advertising world has witnessed significant shifts. Mark Read announced he will step down as CEO of WPP at the end of this year, closing a chapter on over 25 years with the company.
Simultaneously, the industry is buzzing with speculation about leadership changes amid the anticipated IPG–Omnicom merger. These changes aren’t just executive reshuffles—they reflect a wider moment of transformation across the industry.
Historically, organisations have relied on a top-down, hierarchical leadership structure. These clear-cut tiers of senior, middle, and junior management were designed to establish control, create order, and ensure accountability. They offered well-defined career pathways and consistency in decision-making.
But today’s world is different. Businesses now operate in faster, more flexible, and more globally-connected environments, where innovation, speed, and emotional intelligence carry increasing value. In this context, rigid structures often fail to deliver.
The limitations of traditional hierarchies—such as reduced innovation, siloed decision-making, and employee detachment from strategic goals—are becoming more obvious, especially as flexible and hybrid working patterns become the norm.
To remain relevant and resilient, organisations need leadership models that foster agility, collaboration, and shared responsibility—qualities that traditional frameworks rarely nurture.
One modern leadership model gaining traction is peer-to-peer leadership. This decentralised approach focuses on collaboration, shared authority, and mutual accountability. Rather than power being held by a few at the top, leadership is distributed across teams and individuals at all levels of experience.
At the7stars, we’ve embraced peer-to-peer leadership as we’ve grown from 150 to over 300 people. Rather than relying on a traditional executive team to make all decisions, we’ve formed cross-functional leadership groups that oversee key areas of the business, from training and development to early careers and future talent.
These groups are made up of people from different levels and departments, and their closeness to the team enables decisions that are more human-centred, responsive, and impactful.
This structure not only drives innovation but also promotes leadership as a learned and shared practice, rather than a fixed role assigned by title or tenure. It’s a core part of the winning formula: leadership that grows from within, not just handed down from above.
Even with progressive internal models, organisations will often need external support to embrace new ways of leading and to break traditional power structures. A core component of modern and successful leadership is diversity, not just in demographics but in thought, lived experience, and perspective.
Diverse teams bring creativity, challenge the status quo, and are more representative of the communities and consumers the ad industry seeks to serve. Diverse teams also make better decisions, and research consistently backs this up.
McKinsey found that companies with the most diverse executive teams are 36% more likely to outperform on profitability. Cloverpop’s study revealed that inclusive teams make better decisions up to 87% of the time and execute them more effectively. In practice, diversity drives not only representation but also sharper thinking, creativity, and better business outcomes.
Industry collectives such as MEFA, Outvertising, Digital Leading Ladies, Women in Programmatic and Women in Trading, have emerged to challenge the traditional power structures. Their impact is significant, helping companies address leadership gaps and build communities for underrepresented leaders to connect and grow.
Today’s most successful businesses are collaborative, people-driven, and purpose-led. Modern leadership must reflect this by being responsive, open, and grounded in a collective ambition to do better. Ultimately, the winning formula is not about any one individual at the top—it’s about creating the conditions where everyone has the opportunity to lead, contribute, and grow.
