Crisis management

Argo own next

While most of us have been doing our best to forget the years of the pandemic –deleting the Houseparty app, burning those sweatpants and never again saying the word ‘unprecedented’ – there are some who have used it as a learning experience for what might be coming next.

James Burstall, CEO of UK- and US-based production group Argonon, is one of those people. His book, The Flexible Method: Prepare To Prosper In The Next Global Crisis, was published at the end of March, targeting anyone looking to future-proof their organisation against a similarly cataclysmic event.

What qualifies Burstall for this ambitious endeavour? Well, the former journalist shepherded Argonon Group – the business he founded in 2011 and consists of nine companies – through the worst of the pandemic while not only protecting its worst of the while not its revenues but retaining its values by taking crucial steps to put its people first.

Moreover, the Covid-19 pandemic wasn’t Burstall’s first rodeo. The credit crunch and the 9/11 terror attacks also sent shockwaves through the TV industry and provided him with lessons that he says were beneficial during the dark days of March 2020 when it looked like his business could collapse overnight.

“The book is very authentic and contains some very painful experiences. I dare to dig deep, which is critical, because in times of crisis, boosterism is completely undermining and doesn’t help anyone, frankly,” says Burstall.

Headquartered in London, LA, New York, Oklahoma, Glasgow and Liverpool, Argonon is an independent production group led by a board of creatives and entrepreneurs including Burstall alongside chief operating officer Laura Bessell and David Dugan, chairman

of Argonon-owned Windfall Films

The group consists of nine companies producing multi-awardwinning content for a wide range of major broadcasters, platforms and brands in the UK, US and across

By Nico Franks

Argonon Group CEO James Burstall’s new book aims to give business owners the tools they need to not only survive but thrive during the next global crisis, turning disasters into opportunities.

the world. The companies produce content across all genres and of all lengths, specialising in factual, factual entertainment, entertainment, drama, arts, comedy and children’s programming.

Companies within Argonon are responsible for producing hundreds of hours of content, including The Masked Singer UK (Bandicoot Scotland for ITV1), Attenborough & the Mammoth Graveyard (Windfall Films for BBC One), Hard Cell (Leopard Pictures for Netflix), Cash in the Attic (Leopard USA for Discovery+), La’Ron in a Million (Leopard USA for Snap) as well as the Forbidden History podcast (Like a Shot Entertainment).

Two weeks before the UK began its official lockdown on March 23, 2020, Burstall made the call for the 1,500 members of its team to work from home, closing its offices in the US and UK in order to protect its employees.

“A key message of the book is that you must listen to your trusted allies, even if they’re telling you stuff that you don’t want to hear. As a leader, it’s very easy to think you’re right or you have all the so s lutions,” says Burstall. “But in a crisis you don’t and you often actually get it wrong. So S if you’re smart you s surround yourself with very clever people, from very diverse

“

A key message of the book is that you must listen to your trusted allies, even if they’re telling you stuff that you don’t want to hear. As a leader, it’s very easy to think you’re right or you have all the solutions.

James

Burstall, Argonon Group

“A key message of the book is that you must backgrounds, who see the world from very different angles. And you make sure that you listen to them.”

An example of this was when BriteSpark Films creative director and co-founder Nick Godwin told Burstall in the early days of the pandemic he should consider setting up something akin to

Nick the early the government’s Civil Contingencies Committee, otherwise known as COBRA, which handles matters of national emergency or major disruption.

Having initially been concerned it could set off alarm bells and panic employees, Burstall picked five key people from finance, people turned off their cameras and took stock. One that companies within the Argonon Group did not the top of the organisation with different backgrounds across operations, and production.

With productions across the country shut down, the company, and countless others around the world, turned off their cameras and took stock. One of the ideas the team Burstall put together came up with was pivoting to current affairs – a genre of TV that companies within the Argonon Group did not produce but the only one that was allowed to be made in the spring of 2020.

BrightSpark set about making programmes for Channel 4 such as What’s It Like to Catch Coronavirus? and Coronavirus: How Britain is Changing, investigations that in those early – and, yes, unprecedented – days of the pandemic helped educate people at home who were genuinely worried for their lives.

A key takeaway to be had from Burstall’s book is that putting people first is vital to weathering a storm. The TV veteran says he has been active in fostering a connection between Argonon Group’s management and its employees throughout the company’s hierarchy, especially during the pandemic.

“I do know there are other organisations in our sector where there’s very little access and communication from top leadership. We had someone join from a major competitor who said she’s had more access to me and the senior leaders at Argonon than she’d ever had in seven years at the other place,” Burstall says.

The broadly positive reviews for Argonon on the Glassdoor website – often an eye-opener for anyone looking to gain an insight into how a company treats its employees – back up Burstall’s claims that the company is a conscientious employer.

The book also details how Burstall and his team went about finding global crews who could work in the various parts of the world that weren’t in lockdown, from South Korea to Sweden to New Zealand, to produce unscripted shows such as

House Hunters International, providing a vital revenue stream during an existential crisis.

Discovery-owned HGTV ordered a 13-episode series, proving that remote filming using different technologies and training crews in different parts of the world is a viable way to make primetime TV in a way that is much more environmentally friendly, cementing a sustainable production method that Argonon has rolled out across the group since 2020.

Soon after, the team developed what Burstall calls a “gold standard” of Covid health and safety protocols to allow filming to begin on Leopard Pictures’ Worzel Gummidge special for the BBC, which had told Argonon in March that it couldn’t see filming returning at all in 2020. After weeks of “cajoling and reassuring,” the BBC agreed to help Argonon fund the extra cost, making Leopard one of the first UK production companies to resume filming scripted drama in summer 2020.

“We’ve all been in the weeds and we’ve all got our war wounds. But if you can take yourself out of three years of pain and look back, there have been significant changes to the way we think, the way we work and the way we function as organisations and societies. Covid was a bitter pill, but in many ways it has changed us for the better and we’ve come out fitter and stronger,” argues Burstall.

Hopefully it will be a few more decades before we need to start dousing ourselves in hand sanitiser every five minutes again. But as the title of Burstall’s book makes clear, the next crisis is in the post. As Burstall writes in his introduction: “We live in an uncertain world where health emergencies, war, cost of living crisis, political and social unrest, disruptive technology and climate change are now a fact of life.”

The Flexible Method features interviews with people working in the worlds of health, fitness, hospitality, travel, events and non-profit organisations, all of whom have learnt lessons in the real world from their experiences of different crises. From pig farmers in Carolina having to deal with hurricanes to an Airbnb executive faced with wildfires in California, they demonstrate how disasters can be turned into opportunities.

CRIMES

A thread of optimism runs through the book and Burstall is keen to emphasise how, although painful, shock events can actually be good for us, turning “venom” into “rocket fuel.”

Underpinning this is the ‘flexible method’ Burstall expands on in the book, the key pillars of which are: consulting with your top people; making tough decisions; keeping all your people in place where possible; thinking laterally; supercharging your creativity; holding on to your values; and communicating and leading in a calm, purposeful way.

“Crises are inevitable. What is not inevitable is that you crash and burn. I’ve deliberately written the book in 16 very clear steps, which take you from preparing at the beginning for the crisis, all the way through the heart of the storm and coming out the other side,” he says.

“In the end, you must rest. You must also reward your people for helping you through the worst. And also review, because you won’t have done everything right. Nobody’s perfect. You’ll have made learnings and you must help build those into how you prepare for the next crisis,” says Burstall.

We may well already be in another, with real concerns over a global recession, while the TV industry continues to feel the impact of consolidation, as evident on pages throughout this magazine. Meanwhile, the climate emergency looms large and is perhaps the crisis our industry needs to be most mindful of.

Burstall feels that while there are exceptions, such as the BBC and Sky, few organisations are putting their money where their mouths are when it comes to fighting climate change, leaving the industry overall “pretty far behind.”

Argonon has set up its own internal climate action group, which sits alongside its diversity and inclusion committee made up of 30 volunteers from across the group in the UK and the US, the latter established in the wake of the murder of George Floyd in May 2020.

“We’ve invited people to come up with ideas. And it can’t just be talking, we have to have concrete outcomes and it’s the same with diversity and inclusion,” says Burstall, who with Climate Partner, a solution provider for corporate climate action, is in the process of going through Argonon’s business to find areas where it can change. The changes that have already happened include swapping Argonon’s pensions provider in the UK to one that is more sustainable, while Burstall expects it will need to change offices in New York to premises where it can switch its energy provider to one that uses sustainable power.

“It’s not a choice. It’s imperative that we have to do this, so we’re boldly going on that journey,” says Burstall of the audit of the company to help improve its sustainability efforts.

Could Burstall see Argonon one day become B-Corp certified – something that would make it a leader in the global movement for an inclusive, equitable and regenerative economy? “B-Corp is extremely difficult and a real gold standard. It’s an aspiration to get there,” he says.

The majority of Argonon’s prodcos produce for wellknown TV clients such as the BBC, ITV, Channel 4, Channel 5, Sky, Discovery, Nat Geo, HGTV, A&E and UKTV, while its content agency Nemorin’s clients include American Express and McDonald’s.

Burstall sees branded content as a huge area for growth as major brands look to partner with storytellers, particularly in the US, potentially providing a source of funding to top up those of broadcasters and streamers.

“Brands want to tell fantastic stories produced by high-end television producers. It’s an opportunity to collaborate. I’ve been banging this drum for 10 years because I’m completely agnostic about who funds a programme as long as we make something of quality and substance. I’m happy to work for the BBC or TikTok so long as the integrity of the programme remains and it engages a big audience,” says Burstall.

“Increasingly, brands are choosing to be on the front foot as the audience wants to know that they have values and stand for something. The notion that brands are nasty capitalist machines is very antiquated. Often brands have real integrity and credibility. It behoves all of us to always do our homework and make sure we know what we’re getting into bed with.”