Jungle Creations CEO—Melissa Chapman
This week, I had the pleasure of speaking with the CEO of Jungle Creations, Melissa Chapman. She shares her perspective as a young leader who had a non-linear journey to her position, her best pieces of advice, and candidly shares a recent failure she faced at the company. It was inspiring to hear her viewpoint on leadership and how she is setting incredible goals for her future while showing empathy to her past self. Let’s dive in!
The Leader In You
When was the first experience you had in C-Suite leadership that made you realize you wanted to enter a leadership position?
My road to c-suite was fairly organic - I was the first employee to join Jungle Creations when it launched in 2014 - I was still studying at the time and didn’t really expect the job to be the start of my career. The business grew rapidly, we went from 3 people to 20 people in the first year, then up to over 100 after a few years - I was fortunate enough to lead that growth and grow with the pace of the company. Through launching our media channels, building out our departments from scratch - I ended up as our chief content officer incredibly naturally.
Do you believe leaders are born or they are created?
I don’t believe there is a fixed archetype for a ‘leader’ as it has been commonly told. The idea of a leader being someone with a dominant voice, a big personality, an extrovert etc are archaic ideals. Different businesses need different shapes of leadership and anyone can be a leader in the suited environment. With that in mind, we are all born with the potential to be a leader but the circumstances we end up in create space for those leadership roles to be carved out.
How do you manage your tasks on a daily basis?
As someone with diagnosed ADHD, I’m not a tremendously structured and organised person - therefore, every day looks different for me. I try to create balance in my days where possible - from internal work, to external facing work and beyond. I try to utilize programs like Asana to prioritize my tasks and my team - however it’s more of a loose guide than a rigid to-do list.
In your opinion, what are the two most undervalued qualities of a leader?
Empathy and compromise. When you’re ultimately responsible for a business, a department, a team - the weight of decision making and performance ultimately rests on your shoulders which can mean leaders are keen to do things their way, in their view of what’s right, measuring people and teams around them by their own expectations and ways of working. For a successful and harmonious team, decisions and strategy need to be marginally more democratic and you need to adjust your ways of approaching problems to the people you have around you who will be the ones executing. In order to do this consistently, leaders need to be empathetic and open to changing their viewpoints.
Leaders tend to smash goals. What is a goal that you still have professionally that you’re hoping to smash?
As someone still relatively young for my position at 31, I fundamentally believe I can grow in every area of my profession so any goals hit are constantly reset, increased, pushed further. It’s important to take the time out to acknowledge and appreciate what you’ve achieved - however, the potential always feel there to improve. We sold our business to private equity in 2021 - so my latest goal is for a successful, bigger and better next exit.
If you had to have TED talk about your leadership style, what would you title it and why?
(I asked ChatGPT to do for this for me haha) - Leading with Empathy: Redefining Success through Human Connection
Memory Lane
What is your favorite memory about being a leader in this current role?
It has to be the moment we sold the business. Every employee - no matter how long their tenure at the company, was part of our share/EMI scheme, which meant everybody was able to take money away from the deal. The moment we announced to the company that the transaction was agreed adn they’d stand to benefit personally was a truly proud and pinch-me moment.
What is one piece of advice you would give to your younger self?
Don’t be so anxious about what people think of you. Most people’s toughest critic is themselves - if you focus your energy more on making yourself proud, the natural confidence it’ll unlock for you will take you forward.
You worked your way up to CEO at Jungle Creations over several years. Did you always know you wanted to become CEO? I would love to know a little more about that journey!
I never set out to be a CEO. It’s not that I set out to not be one either, I really didn’t take the time to stop and think about the destination as I was focused on each step of the journey. I’m an admittedly competitive and driven person, and have always had an appetite for more. More responsibility, more pressure, more accountability - so I think my path to the role unfolded naturally. When we sold the business and our CEO exited, I remember the first time he asked me to take over and I really wasn’t sure it was right for me. Would it mean I had to step away from the work which I loved so much? Would it change the way I had to interact or engage with my colleagues who i’d worked side by side with for many years? Would I be any good? I think these are natural responses. But ultimately, I knew I loved the business, I knew I had a clear vision of where it could grow and I knew I wouldn’t change who I was and the way I conducted myself with my peers - so I thought, why not?
Beginning in the social media department, do you find that those skill sets are useful to you as CEO? If so, how do you put them into practice today?
Absolutely. Whilst it’s not imperative for a CEO to understand the granular inner workings of the minutiae of the business, as you have management to do that - I found it really helped me set expectations, help teams problem solve and ultimately be agile in the strategy of the business in what is a fast-moving and ever-changing landscape. The only constant in social is change after all.
Leadership in Progress
One of the areas I’m interested in exploring is failure. Has there been a specific failure in your time as a leader that was public and how did you overcome it? If not, no problem.
We’ve had to make redundancies during the course of our journey as a business, particularly after 2022 where economic conditions worsened. While this isn’t always an outright “failure” - it felt like one. To have to lose team members and let people go felt like I’d let people down - perhaps if I’d made different decisions, focused on different priorities, been able to win more business, we wouldn’t be in that position. Naturally, this is very public internally as we make announcements to the full company. There’s a level of guilt there for sure. I tried to approach it by being as transparent as possible, being open about how we got here and also confidently presenting what our plans were moving forward to best avoid the situation in the future.
What was the biggest challenge from this year and how did you overcome it?
The biggest challenge this year was having to reshape my senior management department. Senior teams are full of incredible talent, otherwise they wouldn’t be in that position, but it doesn’t always mean they’re the right person for the right challenge that lies ahead for your business. It’s important to overcome this by managing these situations quickly, openly and with empathy.
What is one thing in your toolkit as a leader that you’re hoping to improve?
Patience! When I have an idea, I like to run at it at full speed - however, taking a minute to think about the steps, how we best get there/execute and who is best to do it would improve the success rate of what we do.
OOO
Leaders often struggle with work/life balance. Are you happy with your work/life balance right now? Do you find more happiness at work than outside of work?
Ultimately, yes. I’m aware I could have more balance here however, given my youth I want to commit the energy I have now to the business to enable me to step back/have more life-work balance in my 40s/50s.
What are the ways in which you find joy outside of work?
I’m a huge football (it’s not called soccer), fan. Watching tottenham hotspur, spending time with my two dogs and playing board games.
Melissa Chapman, CEO of Jungle Creations
Liana ✨ 🦋 🪩
The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams - Eleanor Roosevelt