Jen Maclennan on Scale Her Up: leadership, cultural nuance and going far together.
Our Group Managing Director Jen Maclennan joined Dr Brenda Hector on the Scale Her Up podcast, a show for female business owners and leaders. The conversation covered Fifth Ring's international reach, what cultural nuance really looks like in B2B campaigns, and the leadership lessons that have shaped her last decade at the agency. It closed on a line worth keeping.
"If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together."
A career that didn't run in a straight line.
Jen came to Fifth Ring through an unconventional route. She trained as a journalist, then moved into PR with the ambition of learning more about how brands and organisations communicate. She joined Fifth Ring almost ten years ago, at a point when she had just been made redundant during the middle of an oil-industry downturn in Aberdeen. When a previous employer offered her the safety of a route back, she chose the harder path forward instead.
That instinct, to back her own judgement when the safer option is the obvious one, recurs through the conversation. It is also a useful reminder for anyone weighing a senior step. As Jen puts it on the podcast:
"Don't let fear decide."
The leadership advice she keeps coming back to.
When Jen first stepped into a leadership role at Fifth Ring, she asked a learning-and-development colleague what she should be reading and training in. She expected HR policies and management techniques. The answer was different.
"You need to know yourself better than you have ever known yourself before. The higher up you go, the less of a network you have around you, and the more you need to be aware of where you have gaps and where you are adding value."
Years on, having moved through regional director and into the group MD role, Jen says that piece of advice has only become more true. What worked at the previous level is not always what works at the next. Self-awareness is the discipline that lets you keep up with that change rather than be blindsided by it.
Cultural nuance is not a tickbox exercise.
A lot of the conversation lands on what Fifth Ring's international footprint actually requires day to day. Jen tells two stories that make the point.
The first is about a routine assumption that almost went out the door without challenge. White studio backgrounds are standard for corporate headshots in the UK and US. In some cultures, including parts of China, white can carry strong associations with mourning. The kind of detail a Western team would not naturally think to question, until somebody on the ground flags it.
The second is about Norway. Jen describes Janteloven, the Norwegian cultural reluctance to make outsized claims. A Norwegian-headquartered company entering a US market where competitors are loudly outdoing each other has a real strategic question to answer: how do you stay true to your culture and still get heard?
The job of the agency, Jen argues, is to find the parts of a brand that travel and the parts that need to be carried differently. The BBN partnership is a big part of how Fifth Ring stays honest about that, with practitioners across 32 countries who can run cultural checks before a campaign goes live.
Outcome obsession, with creative cut-through.
The agency Jen leads is, in her words, "outcome obsessed". Every piece of work has KPIs attached. The risk, she is quick to note, is becoming so data-led that the work loses its ability to actually be heard. Her radio analogy: turning up static is not the same as finding the channel. The data tells you whether the message is landing. The creative is what makes the message worth landing.
The collaborative version of growth.
The closing line of the conversation is the one we are taking with us.
"If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together."
It captures something Jen returned to throughout the hour. Behind a leader who is doing the role well, there is rarely just one supporter. There is a resilience coach. A business coach. A family backing her judgement calls. A team across three regions doing the actual work. A BBN partnership of practitioners around the world. The "go it alone" version of leadership is fast. The collaborative version is durable.
Watch the full conversation on Scale Her Up above or listen on Spotify, and follow Dr Brenda Hector for more interviews with female leaders.
