Hi, listener. This is Masha Mukutonina and I'm a producer on Masters of Scale.

Before today's episode, I wanted to share a tech podcast we love, Ted Tech.

From the Ted Audio Collective, Ted Tech brings you weekly episodes to share the latest in tech news.

Each week, they introduce you to people at the forefront of innovation, who share ideas that have the ability to change your life.

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Check it out by searching for Ted Tech, wherever you get your podcasts.

I came in the office today on Monday morning and the office felt busy. You know, our campus here felt busy and I think it's a sign that people are being productive.

We see the short term productivity benefits of an extra hour off the commute.

We don't see the longer term more debilitating impact on learning, culture, creativity that come from having a workforce that's far too separate.

Personal productivity is not the only measure of business success.

Our business is about how you solve problems and I think you can do that better more often if you're all together.

That's Mark Reed, the CEO of WPP, the world's largest advertising company with thousands of workers across agencies from Ogilvy to AKQA to Wonderman Thompson.

I'm Bob Safian, former editor of Fast Company, founder of the Flux Group and host of Masters of Scale Rapid Response.

I wanted to talk with Mark because controversies over return to office versus remote work have never been hotter and ad firms like WPP are wrestling with mandates, possible penalties and cultural impacts.

The future of work is also being buffeted by the rapid adoption of generated AI and here two ad agencies are in the spotlight.

Mark is particularly outspoken about the disruption he expects from AI but he also shares specific examples of how the technology is improving output now.

Mark's leadership perch across a global enterprise with global clients gives him a unique perspective on what brands and businesses most need to worry about.

The risks they face and the opportunities they need to embrace. Let's get to it.

We'll start the show in a moment, after a word from our sponsor.

Because we had clarity there, we were able to see, hey, this seems to be a big source of rage clicks. Why is this happening?

That's Sharon Peng, a product manager at Microsoft. She was working with the early Microsoft clarity team in order to solve a mystery with their search engine Bing.

Users were opening Bing but not searching for anything. To figure out why the Bing team turned to an in-house behavioral analytics product that created a heat map pinpointing user frustration.

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