Month: September 2014

Teams

I love being in teams. I’ve just always been that way. Through childhood, then especially playing rugby as a teenager and in my twenties, and then at NixonMcInnes where we managed to assemble a special team. I’d almost always rather do work and play activities as part of a collective.

And like many people, I love especially those moments and periods of time when the teams I’m part of somehow reach that higher level of performance. When everyone is contributing their particular strengths, giving everything they’ve got, and the whole thing is working together fluidly.

Those moments when you look around you and you’re inspired and driven on by your teammates. And you suddenly realize that the individuals have become more like a single entity and you’re part of it. Yes it’s hippy-sounding and it’s also true and tangible. You must’ve experienced that too. Playing in a band, dancing in a club, organizing a brilliant event, whatever.

What prompted these thoughts was that I was at the dmexco show in Cologne, Germany these last few days. An unusually high quality event. Enjoyable to be part of and impressive in scale. (Most noticeably, not soulless in the way that the large scale trade shows have become – and better than anything in London of the same scale in my experience).

And these thoughts of teams are prompted by how our team came together to put that on.

Before the event our design and marketing team worked particularly hard to make a richer, more engaging platform than before – so some great foundations were laid and our goal of going further was established too. And then over the two days of dmexco our German commercial team just blew me away with their attitude and results.

In my favourite moments during the show one of two things was happening:

– sensing the same without communication

Every time I thought I was going to need to suggest to one of our guys that there was a person nearby who looked interested in chatting, as if by magic a team mate would sense the same thing and engage. Sometimes this was a lot more subtle than it might sound, and that was the inspiring, exciting bit. And the initiative, the proactivity to keep the whole thing functioning – the bin being emptied, screens being fixed, laptops being swapped. None of this is glamorous or difficult. But normally there’s friction in the need to spot, communicate, in the egos about who does what, that stop the flow.

– total contribution

Total effort all out. And ego-less. Our longest serving German team member gave out flyers and quietly supported from the edges. Our CEO gave product demos. Our head of client services lost her voice from talking to customers and prospects. Our young marketers shape-shifted into a salesperson and an IT / AV guy. And – to a person – our front-facing commercial guys worked so bloody hard. They smiled and they chatted and they won. Two days, everyone on their feet, extended periods of complete focus on other people, limited or no breaks. Our team gave their all.

All of this makes me wonder how we can do this over longer more stretched out periods of time. And across the boundaries of sub-teams. Our whole company is one team, after all.

Because I’ve experienced this team flow in a 60 minute new business pitch, in a half day workshop, over a two day show and – outside of work – in an eighty minute game of rugby.

Given that the teams I work with are located between 3 offices and working on programmes that can last weeks or months in quite different regions, the question I’m left with is can this state be designed for, given those constraints?

Can we reach this level of work zen and unity over an extended period of time, longer than 48 hours? Or is there just something about that compression of time and that essentially physical, face-to-face experience that best suits these moments? The reality is that very often we feel like we’re a long way off this smooth, satisfying state.

And what are the ingredients? What conditions create the right environment for this to happen?

At the heart of this team experience was one person – Susanne, our marketing manager for the DACH region. She was the axis at the heart of the whole endeavour, from deliberately planning the event into her budget in December 2013 to being the last person in the event hall, waiting for delayed delivery guys to show up. The playmaker. The conductor. The team captain. Not in a strategic armchair, but working like crazed person in the thick of it.

And secondly, there was a complete sense of shared purpose, and I think our team in this instance wanted to prove themselves, too. We all knew what the goals were. Shared purpose. And we wanted it.

I love teams. I wonder what else is present when teams of people reach their full potential and put on their best performances?

New things

Life is interesting now. I have many thoughts but no theme to wrap them up, so I’m going to slide them into this blog post, like pouring pebbles into a bucket. Feel free to look away.

Learning

I’m in my 12th month at Brandwatch, and I feel that I now fully understand the company, the market, the people, the dynamics. Obviously it hasn’t been linear – probably a nice s-curve – but it’s interesting to me how long it took. 12 months to nail it. As an aside, the company has doubled in staff size in that time.

(Knowing all of that how the company works stuff isn’t necessarily helpful. I feel the value of fresh eyes, when new people join us. As much as I’ve understood the status quo, I am now part of it too. Gotta watch that.)

I have loved taking services-side experiences and skills and using them inside an organisation. Especially having worked with so many different types of personality and spent time learning about listening / motivations / organisational culture etc. So for me the transition from external (consulting/agency) to internal (client-side) has been very rewarding. Seeing things through. Being at the heart of it. I love it. I don’t think I will want to go back to services, but never say never.

The only two things I miss from the type of work you do services-side are:

  • Winning deals – I am one step removed from our sales teams and their selling to clients, so that incredible adrenaline that I used to feed off has gone. There are lots of warm, fuzzy moments when we win, or launch great stuff, or see particularly sweet inbound enquiries from great organisations, but it’s less raw, less heart-racing. I miss that.
  • Space to be creative – I only noticed this recently, in two more creative, spacious conversations with team mates. And I realised how lacking we’ve been in our NYC office in places to draw (white walls, flip charts) and how rarely I’ve been in that mode. We can be very head down – there is so much to do. I can do more of this and plan to, now that I’ve noticed it, but also learned the business.

America

Still loving living and being in New York. We had a great summer (bloody hot, but unseasonably mild apparently – I shudder at the thoughts of ‘normal’).

My subway card swipe (no Oyster card here) still needs work. Really pisses me off. How can I consider myself settled before I can confidently swipe through with 99.9999% success?

Favourite moments are still where the melting pot blends ingredients that were just not available back in Brighton & Hove. Like taking the kids to the playground, and there being 5 or 6 families cooking BBQs for their kids parties, Puerto Rican music blaring out of proper sound systems, while I push the kids on the swings in the sunshine. Or seeing snakes and eagles on our summer holiday. The variety, the difference.

Some of my language has changed. I say apartment instead of flat, even to Brits. Elevator. Resumé. Soccer (I know). But not all. I say Surname. And said ‘trainers’ the other day – I’m never saying sneakers. It’s a non-negotiable. Mrs and kids have gone further: they say chips instead of crisps (this upsets me greatly). Accent-wise, I think I’m still largely unchanged. Some gentle rounding of Ts, maybe. Our eldest said ‘peanut budder’ the other day. Our youngest deliberately pronounces ‘wadder’ to make himself understood at school. Sweet.

Challenges

Perception – this is a bit abstract now, but I am becoming more and more fascinated by perception. It seems to be a central opportunity and challenge for us at Brandwatch, and principally for me given my role. And for anyone who has something they want to share with others. I can’t really explain all of it, but it’s about I suppose it gets called and relates to (but isn’t entirely about) Positioning, a lot. It’s a magical area. How people feel about a product, a company, a sector. I am looking forward to learning and playing in this area.

Face time – I spend the first 2/3rds of every day in Hangouts and on Skype calls, some one to one, many with multiple attendees. It is often a frustrating experience. This area is still so flawed, technologically, for consumers. What’s great is that I have found that strong relationships can continue to thrive through these channels, but really working through challenges when the relationships aren’t there yet or are suffering is very difficult. It’s also hard to contribute to important, dynamic conversations when the majority of a group are together in a physical space and one finds oneself the voice from the screen. A challenge. (And the reason that business travel continues, despite tech).

Time for writing – I write best in the morning. Morning is now when I catch up on 5 hours of the UK’s productivity (and to a lesser extent, 6 hours of Germany’s) and start jumping on video calls with people. I need to find a way to hack this. I enjoy writing and I know it is a great investment.

And those are the thoughts I’ve been carrying around with me.