Alastair Turner found a useful lesson in executive behaviour while editing his children’s homework. His twin sons had each made a news report about Icarus, with filming help from their sister. Their father handled the edit. His verdict on that particular production assignment was brief: “never again”. The Greek mythology proved more durable. Here was someone who became a little too pleased with his own altitude. Turner recognised a familiar business character.
He recounted the episode in 2022 while reflecting on Aspectus, the communications agency he helped build with Bill Penn. A company selling publicity has an obvious incentive to celebrate itself. Turner was interested in the point at which celebration becomes self-delusion. He wanted the business to grow, while keeping its people sufficiently grounded to do the work that made growth possible.
That tension gives his career its shape. He is a former broadcast journalist who became an agency leader, a cricket enthusiast who writes about management, and a promoter with a recurring suspicion of swagger. His public writing keeps returning to a practical question: how do you build confidence without making everyone around you endure a performance?
A first employee, then a difficult promotion
The early relationship was straightforward. Turner met Penn while Penn was starting an agency and became his first employee. By 2016, Turner described their working relationship as approaching two decades. Penn remains Aspectus’s chairman; Turner is its Group CEO. Their partnership predates the 2008 founding date attached to the present business, a reminder that a company’s formal chronology can be tidier than the relationships behind it.
Turner’s recollection of becoming a managing director is unusually unvarnished. He was 30 and, by his own account, “completely ill-equipped”. Leadership required learning on the job. There were mistakes and periods of disorder before he began to find a rhythm. The retrospective contains no miraculous morning routine, no suggestion that a title instantly supplied the judgement required to use it.
Writing in May 2025, he described persistence, work and learning as the ingredients that helped him through. His account makes room for uncertainty without treating it as a permanent excuse. The executive who later encouraged other people to stretch beyond familiar work had experienced that discomfort himself. A promotion can be flattering right up to the moment someone expects you to know what to do.
“completely ill-equipped”
Turner on becoming a managing director at 30, recalled in 2025
The newsroom travels with him
His earlier work in broadcast journalism shaped his approach to clients. In 2012, he described trying to bring a newsroom’s energy into the agency and to understand the pressures journalists faced. His morning began with the Today programme, followed by overnight messages from North American and Asian colleagues and a reading list that included the Times, Telegraph and Financial Times. News was already moving before the London day had properly started.
That background suited the markets Aspectus chose: financial services, business technology, energy and engineering. These subjects reward fluency. The persuasive story often depends on understanding a system well enough to explain why a change matters. A handsome adjective is unlikely to do much for a reader trying to understand financial infrastructure.
Turner described writers preparing material that gave journalists something useful to work with: research, figures, contacts and a developed story. He also saw social and mainstream media as connected parts of a campaign. The underlying discipline was editorial. Establish the idea, make it intelligible, then work out how it should travel.
Give the specialists room
As Aspectus grew, Turner’s people argument became visible in the organisation of the business. In November 2020, Ellie Jackson took a new agency-wide role overseeing client service and strategy. Turner highlighted her contribution since joining in 2008, including work across several sectors and helping establish the New York presence. He was giving an experienced colleague a wider remit built around work she had already shown she could do.
In April 2021, Laura Iley and Michael House became joint managing directors, with responsibilities divided between commercial success and people. Iley had led the energy team; House led technology. Turner connected the appointments to the ambition to become a $15 million revenue business. Expansion required people with authority to run the place, as well as people capable of winning the next account.
The arrangement makes his philosophy more concrete. Career development involves deciding who gets responsibility, what that responsibility covers and whether the organisation can make room for it. The first employee eventually has to build a business in which other people can lead.
Client service and strategy gain an agency-wide leader.
Joint managing directors take commercial and people remits.
Turner marks a business of more than 100 people.
The equation has people in it
By the April 2023 brand launch, Turner was describing an agency of more than 100 people working across three continents. Its proposition combined sector insight, international experience, execution and creativity. For him, the difficult part of that equation was giving talented employees enough freedom to make those capabilities useful.
He wrote about sharing ideas and rewards, and shaping careers around individual strengths and interests. That is an appealing promise with demanding consequences. It requires managers to notice differences between people and find useful places for them, rather than expecting every employee to climb an identical ladder. A larger agency has to organise variation without making collaboration impossible.
The commercial context matters. Aspectus recorded £12.92 million in global income for 2024, up 12% on the preceding year. Its commercial model emphasises charging for outcomes rather than hours. Clients included CME Group, Wealthify and McKinsey & Company. The Aspectus Academy, a two-year apprenticeship programme, also offered a route into the business for underrepresented groups. The agency’s development depended on both experienced specialists and people beginning their careers.
Aspectus global income in 2024
Kindness with an awkward conversation attached
Turner’s November 2025 essay on mentoring names a principle that helps explain his approach: “robust kindness”. It means delivering difficult feedback with empathy and receiving it without allowing pride to block the useful part. He describes mentoring as something that can happen through a formal programme or an unexpected conversation over coffee.
He also describes using external coaches for promising people who were already performing well. The investment was intended to help them develop further. In his account, the gains included greater confidence, better client management and more strategic thinking about careers. He connects those changes to new business and client retention, while keeping the individual’s development in view.
There is a demanding bargain here. A supportive workplace needs people willing to say something uncomfortable, and colleagues willing to hear it. Endless reassurance would leave the original problem politely undisturbed. Turner’s preferred culture asks for care and candour in the same conversation.
“robust kindness”
A principle Turner discusses in his writing on mentoring
Cricket keeps appearing in the management notes
Ask Turner about his childhood ambition and the answer involves an opening partnership. In 2016, he still fancied opening the batting for England, joking that he was waiting for the call. The sporting ambition had survived a substantial career in communications. National selectors, apparently, were being given every opportunity to correct their oversight.
Sport also supplies examples in his business writing. His 2024 essay on leadership considers Ben Stokes and the Pittsburgh Steelers alongside retailers and financial businesses. He is interested in how leaders give people confidence, establish expectations and make the group work together. The examples suggest a reader looking for useful management behaviour wherever it happens to appear.
In another 2024 essay, on lateral thinking, he turns to Ricky Ponting’s way of seeing openings in a field. Turner uses the example to discuss challenging assumptions and looking at a problem from another angle. Cricket supplies both an enduring personal interest and a vocabulary for the job.
A wider map, with people on the ground
The more recent expansion gives those ideas an international test. Aspectus opened its first Middle East office in Dubai in 2024, led by Astrid French. Turner explained the move as a shift towards strategic leadership in the region after years of supporting clients there. He praised French’s combination of client work, business development and enthusiasm for the specialist sectors.
In February 2026, Aspectus announced a partnership with Vermilion Asia, based in Hong Kong and Shanghai. The arrangement added local knowledge and delivery for clients working across Greater China. An international strategy still needs people who understand the market in which a message will land.
Edinburgh followed in April, with Kirsten Scott leading the new office and working alongside the established Aberdeen team. The combination paired financial and professional services expertise with the agency’s energy and industrials work. Turner linked the decision to client demand and the availability of talent in Scotland.
By July 2026, the Singapore team had moved into CapitaGreen after more than doubling in two years. The business reported annual revenue growth above 40% for four consecutive years there. Turner described the investment as following clients’ growing interest in Asia-Pacific. The challenge was becoming more connected while preserving the local judgement that made the network useful.
The homework editor’s Icarus lesson remains relevant. Turner’s business has grown well beyond the first-employee stage, and his responsibilities now stretch across markets and time zones. His writing keeps returning to the people who make that possible: give them responsibility, help them improve and stay open to being corrected yourself. There is plenty of ambition in that approach. It simply leaves room for someone else to speak.