By Samuel Marriott-Dowding
There is a familiar piece of advice given to ambitious professionals: work hard, keep your head down, wait your turn.
Eventually, someone will invite you into the room, and for many people, that advice works. For others, it never does.
Not because they lack capability, or intelligence. Not because they have not earned the opportunity, but because institutions, however well-intentioned, often reproduce themselves. If you come from outside those traditional pathways, you quickly discover that exceptional work alone is rarely enough.
You are expected to become more acceptable before you become more influential, and that is a trade I was never prepared to make.
Growing Marriott Communications in the North East, I was constantly reminded that the most influential businesses, the biggest decisions and the greatest opportunities happened ‘elsewhere’.
I have never believed there was anything radical about wanting to build something exceptional, or even be exceptional. I have simply believed that exceptional things can be built anywhere.
That conviction became the foundation of Marriott Communications.
It became an opportunity to build the culture I had spent years looking for elsewhere. Building your own organisation is an extraordinary education in leadership because it removes every excuse. Every success belongs to your judgement, and every failure belongs there too.
You build trust one decision at a time, you build reputation one client at a time, you build influence one relationship at a time.
The objective was not to become successful, it was to become consequential. The work became larger because our thinking became greater.
For myself and people like me, when you are ambitious, driven, know what you want out of life, and certainly ballsy enough to go and get it – we are labelled arrogant or contrarian – but in reality, we dance to the beat of our own drum overarched by the fact that our dreams are big, our ambitions bigger, and we possess a level of certainty that we are destined to do great things.
So along the way, I also realised something else. Many talented people spend years trying to gain acceptance from systems that were never designed with them in mind. I increasingly believe that is the wrong strategy. Sometimes the most valuable thing you can build is not a career within someone else’s institution, it is an institution of your own.
One that reflects your values. One that creates opportunities for others.
This is not an argument against established organisations, it is, however, an argument for recognising that leadership is no longer defined solely by the organisations we inherit. Increasingly, it is defined by the organisations we choose to create.
Looking back, I no longer see Marriott Communications as the business I founded, I see it as evidence.
Evidence that globally ambitious advisory firms do not have to emerge from Mayfair or Manhattan, evidence that strategic counsel can be built outside traditional centres of influence, evidence that geography should never become destiny.
I did not build this firm because I could not find a seat at someone else’s table, I built it because I realised my ambitions were always bigger than occupying someone else’s seat.
The future will not be defined by those invited into the room, it will be shaped by the people courageous enough to build entirely new rooms – and generous enough to leave the door open for others who were told they did not belong.
marriottcommunications.com