Best Culture Attracts the Best Talent

Great article from adage.com about the importance of agency culture.

Read it here. (I think after a few days, you'll need a subscription to view. If that happens, leave a comment and I'll try to post it as a pdf. For educational purposes, of course.)

Know Your Agency's Pitch

This is going to sound business-y, but stay with me. It relates to your job as a creative.

I'm quoting from Chip and Dan Heath's book Made to Stick, who are quoting from Stephen Covey's book The 8^th Habit. Covey describes a poll of 23,000 employees with the following results:

• Only 37 percent said they have a clear understanding of what their organization is trying to achieve and why.
• Only one in five was enthusiastic about their team’s and their organization’s goals.
• Only one in five said they had a clear “line of sight” between their tasks and their team’s and organization’s goals.
• Only 15 percent felt that their organization fully enables them to execute key goals.
• Only 20 percent fully trusted the organization they work for.

The Brothers Heath write, "As sobering as those statistics are, they’re very abstract. But Covey superimposes a very human metaphor over the statistics and says, 'If, say, a soccer team had these same scores, only 4 of the 11 players on the field would know which goal is theirs. Only 2 of the 11 would care. Only 2 of the 11 would know what position they play and know exactly what they are supposed to do. And all but 2 players would, in some way, be competing against their own team members rather than the opponent.'"

Now here's how this applies to you:

You've got to know what your agency's goals are, what they're doing to achieve them, and who they're using. Because if they're not as dedicated to creative work as you are, it will be a problem for you in the long run.

It's the reason portfolio students send their books to places like Goodby and Crispin and Boone/Oakley and not to...well, I won't name names. But you know who your last ditch agencies would be.

Agency Culture. Client Culture. Leadership.

These are pretty intangible things, but when you start working at a place, or for a client, you can get the feel for them pretty quickly. Here are five questions that can help gauge an agency's or client's culture:

1) Are the people in the meetings empowered to make the decisions, or does everything need to run all the way up the chain of command?

2) Is there a culture of trust, or a culture of fear? In other words, do the people at the top trust the employees to do their jobs and support their decisions, or do they micromanage?

3) Are big ideas that fail celebrated or punished?

4) Is there an overall spirit of collaboration or competition?

5) Do people make decisions based on what they think is right, or are they guessing what their boss will think is right?

Company culture flows down from the top. Leaders who trust their employees create a culture of trust. Of empowerment and collaboration and big ideas. You can often feel out what kind of company you're dealing with by sitting in a meeting or two and listening to how people make decisions.

For more on leadership, I recommend Good To Great, by Jim Collins. The cases are a little dated, but the content on leadership is great.