Hey everybody, Drew McLellan here
from Agency Management Institute,
this week coming to you from the campus of
Cornell University in Ithaca, New York,
where we are moving our youngest daughter
into her first year of law school.
You know, as we are spending the weekend
getting her new residence, her new rental house
ready for her to start law school,
Danyel has been spending a ton of time
sort of personalizing the space
and making it really comforting and supportive
for all of the homework that's going to come
and all the studying,
but also very personal to our daughter.
You know, I got me thinking about
how important our work environment is,
the space in which we do work.
And back in the day when we were all in an office together,
one of my favorite things was to walk into someone's office
and sort of observe what they chose
to surround themselves with.
Things that they collected,
pictures of family and friends,
swag from the agency,
might be work that they were really proud of,
but it was really cool to see what they chose to create
their work environment with,
the tools that they surrounded themselves,
the environment that they created.
And it got me thinking about, you know,
now that so many people are working from home
at least part of the week, if not all of the week,
or even if you're in an office, you may have a situation
where people are fluid in and out of offices
and so they don't have their own workspace.
It got me thinking about
how we probably have not taken the time to create
that same kind of environment in our work offices.
And we really haven't, as agency owners,
supported our team in creating that sort of work environment.
Now, I know most of you have provided computers
and monitors and are helping pay for internet
and all of the sort of the basics,
but have you thought at all about
what surrounds your employees
and what inspires them to do great work?
So whether it's a poster of the values of the agency,
whether you talk about if there's something
standard you want in the background,
if somebody's on a Zoom call or a Teams call,
or if you've got some agency swag
that you want them to have on their desk,
whatever it may be,
it would be really great to start thinking about that
with more intentionality
and to really imagine how you could influence
the work environment of your team members
and support them, but also celebrate them
and get them excited about the work that they get to do
for your agency and your clients.
So for each of you, that's going to be very different.
Again, it might be your values,
it might be something cool that symbolizes
a core tradition in your agency.
It could be work, maybe it's a frame piece of work
that they could put up somewhere in their home office.
But, I think we should give that
as much thought as we used to give it
when we were in an office setting together.
So just some food for thought.
I would love to hear your ideas about this
or what you've already done
to sort of help create an inspiring,
influential work environment for your team
no matter where they're working.
And by the way, it'd be kind of cool to think about
what do we give our people even to put on a screensaver
for those that people that travel.
So how can they, even in a hotel room,
create a work environment that inspires them,
reminds them of the pride and connection they have
to the agency and that the work they do?
Alright, little food for thought.
I'll see you next week.
