Redesigning agency culture in a new remote and hybrid world with Gustavo Razzetti

Hey, before we get to the show, I just wanna remind you that we have created a private Facebook group just for you, our podcast listeners. There are almost 1500 agencies, agency owners, inside that Facebook group every day talking about what’s going on inside their shop, asking for resources, gut checking decisions, talking about everything from pricing to hiring, to biz dev. All kinds of things are happening there. We’re starting conversations. You guys are starting conversations. What I love about it is the community’s coming together and sharing resources, encouraging each other, and just sort of having a safe place to talk about what it’s like to own an agency. So all you have to do is head over to Facebook, search for a Build, a Better, Agency Podcast group, or Build, a Better, Agency Podcast.

And you’ll find the group. You have to answer three questions. If you don’t answer the questions, we can’t let you in. But they’re simple. It’s, do you own an agency or do you work at an agency? And if so, what’s the U R L? What are you trying to get out of the group? And will you behave, basically? So come join us. If you haven’t been there for a while, come on back. If you haven’t joined, join into the conversation. I think you’re gonna find it really helpful. All right, let’s get to the show.

It doesn’t matter what kind of agency you run, traditional digital media buying, web dev, P r r brand, whatever your focus, you still need to run a profitable business. The Build, a Better, Agency Podcast, presented by a White Label IQ will expose you to the best practices that drive growth, client and employee retention and profitability, bringing his 25 plus years of experience as both an agency owner and agency consultant. Please welcome your host, Drew McLellan.

Hey everybody. Drew McLellan here with another episode of Build Better Agency. So glad you’re back. If this is your first episode, welcome. Our goal is very simple. Every episode, I wanna help you build an agency that is stable, sustainable, scalable, and more profitable. And if you want to down the road sellable, that’s, that’s our gig. That is what we’re all about. And for 400 plus episodes, that’s what we’ve been bringing you. And today is no exception to the rule. So I’m excited to bring you our guest, which I will tell you about in just a quick second. But before I do that, I wanna remind you of a tool that we have available to all of you free of charge on the website.

A lot of agencies have been thinking a lot about sort of their D E I efforts. How do we get to be more diverse in all of the ways that diversity is defined? How do we become an agency that is more diverse? And so we created a report card, if you will, a way for you to score yourself to assess where you’re at today and where you want to be in the future. And you can grab that tool by going to agency management institute.com/racial equity. That’s it. Grab it and use it. So a lot of agencies are grading themselves on a quarterly basis.

Some agencies are sharing that with our clients, or they’re sharing it on a website. What most agencies are doing is they’re using it as an internal tool to better understand sort of where they’re at in terms of the D e I effort and what they can do to get even better. So again, please feel free to use it however you want to. We’re excited to have the ability to offer it to you and you can use it however it best serves you and your agency. Alright, so let me tell you a little bit about our guests. So Gustavo Rosetti actually is an agency veteran. So I’m gonna let him tell you a little bit about his agency experience. But he spent much of his career leading large agency teams in major markets and has shifted over the course of the last few years to really focus on workplace culture.

So he’s the creator of the Culture Design canvas, which is a visual, a visual and actionable method for intentionally designing workplace culture. And he is an expert in what’s happening in workplace culture post covid, and all the changes that we’re experiencing in terms of remote work or hybrid work and all things like that. His work has been featured and talked about in Psychology Today, the New York Times, Forbes, and on the B B C, he’s also written a book called Remote Not Distant, which is really a great read. So I highly recommend it. And today he’s gonna be on the show just helping us think about how to create culture in this new environment that we’re all in post covid.

So without further ado, let’s welcome him to the show and learn from him as much as we can in the next hour. Okay, let’s do it. Gustavo, welcome to the show. Thanks for joining us.

Absolutely. We’re excited to be here.

So you actually have quite a bit in common with the listeners. I know now you’re focused on culture and things like that, but that was not always your career path. So tell everybody a little bit about your history and why you made the pivot to the work you’re doing today and wrote the book that you did.

Absolutely. I’m very excited to be here because I have my, my Heart still in marketing and advertising services. I work over two decades in different agencies, mostly across the the US. I’m over 50, so I relate to some of the pains and challenges that your audience might be going through. I know that in a creative space, we want that emotional connection, want people to be together, we want to collaborate. And as you were saying earlier, managing by walking around. Yeah, that’s how we were all raised in the workplace. Yeah. But at some point in my career, one of the things I realized is that companies were looking for us, looking for more ideas, better ideas, but I realized that actually organizations have more ideas than actually need.

The problem is their culture. Many times ideas never see the light of day because of a politic political struggles or management that are free of fearful and so on and so forth. So that’s why I decided to move into the workplace, a consultancy field working not only in the, with the marketing related companies, but across different industries. And the book, basically, I was writing a book on culture and then Covid hit and started helping many organizations adapt to what was supposed to be the new normal. And yeah, and I understand the pain and basically it’s more of a framework rather than a one size fits all solution. Because I think that every organization needs to design what’s the best solution for them, rather than try to copy what other companies are doing.

Right. So, you know, as, as you said, everything is different. So for most of the listeners, they started their career, you know, grinding it out in an office, making sure they never left before the boss left, so that they were, they were deemed good, hardworking employees. And you know, today, especially with a remote culture, a lot of agency owners and leaders are really struggling with the idea of how to build culture. I think they’re very committed to wanting to have a great culture. You know, in an agency, as you know, the greatest asset we have is our people. And the more connected they are and the more collaboratively they work, the better the work product, the better, the more profitability for the agency.

So talk a little bit about, ’cause I think, I’m not sure we define culture the same way anymore. So talk about how you define culture and why it is so important today to agencies.

That’s a perfect way to get started because to point me, people talk about culture. Say our culture is suffering and say exactly what part of your culture is suffering, right? Right. So it, there are three key elements to culture. One is the vision that you have for your organization when it comes to what are you trying to achieve, what’s the impact that you want to create in the long run. And that’s the purpose, the values and the behaviors that you want your team to basically adopt. Then there’s an emotional side of culture, which is the glue that brings people together. It’s that sense of belonging where we feel connected. That includes feeling safe in the workplace to express our ideas, to debate ideas, pushback. It, it has to do more the like the team rituals, how we celebrate, how we recover from losses and so on and so forth.

And lastly, there’s an event of culture that’s more functional, that is what help companies move fast. Like it, it includes decision, how we make decisions, how we meet

Both

In real time, but also asynchronously and also the norms and rules that guide the different behaviors.

Yeah, I think, I think most people think of culture as that. It feels good to work there, that people are happy and like to work there. And I’m sure that’s part of culture, but what you just defined is a much broader sense of culture. I think.

Definitely. I’m gonna give you an example. I used to work an actually advertising firm that everything about culture was about celebration, beer everywhere, food everywhere, and so on and so forth. But many people hated working there. Why? Because it was very bureaucratic, eh, eh, they were always trying to please clients and not the, so basically the client pleasing ideas one, the great ideas one. So in the end, that side of the culture alone, it’s not good enough. Yeah. So it helps. But if, I mean, I remember another company which the owner basically invested millions of dollars in refurnishing the office bringing like video games and actually basketball court and so and so forth.

But then when people were playing, yeah, he was looking at them like saying, Hey guys, you should be working. So it was this kind of, I give you the toys, but then I don’t want to use them.

Right, right. I don’t want you to play with them. Right,

Exactly.

So from your perspective, both in your current work, but also in your previous life in, in your previous agency life, why is this such a critical issue for us? So, you know, we talk a lot about how important it is, but what do you see is the competitive advantage for an agency of having a healthy culture?

Culture in the end gets the best and the worst out of people, right? Yeah. So if you are very talented person, they’re gonna be even more talented in a great workplace culture, especially when you think about great people, very creative people, they have the choice. So if they can work in a place where they’re gonna be treated like human beings, they’re gonna have freedom to make decision to take risks, to screw up and then recover a a i i in, in places in which basically they’re promoting collaboration rather than competition. Internal competition, people are gonna feel better working there. So in the end, the same talent is gonna choose a place that’s more conducive, more positive, more friendly, if you wish.

That doesn’t mean that you’re lowering the bar when, when I use the word friendly, I’m not saying that we’re all friends, right? But it’s way we to feel respected as a human being, as a professional, both.

Okay. And, and in terms of that, to me that’s about recruitment and retention of your team, right? So it’s a, creating a work environment that makes people want to work there, and b, it makes people want to stay there once they work there.

Absolutely. And I think that a great example of culture is a Pixar in the sense of they were able to basically elevate race the bar when it came to creativity and disrupt the industry, while also building a very collaborative culture. And one of the things that they realize is that in many, for example, movie production studios, there are a lot of egos, like in marketing agencies as well, and especially the directors are like, God, that, you know, they have everything they say is right, right? And they started with a different approach. So at, at Pixar, even if you’re an intern, you can go and talk to the director of Toy Story and he’s gonna open the door and, and welcome, you know, so they eliminate those barriers, but also they put in place a process that they call brain trust in which imagine a team from a creative agency coming up with a campaign and they present it to another team, working on a different client to get their feedback.

And very candid, very brutal feedback. but the feedback is focused on the ideas, not on the people. So they don’t judge the creator, they judge the ideas, then it’s up to the owners or the regional team to take that feedback or not. They’re not forced to. However, if then the movie or the campaigns sucks, it’s their fault, right? So I see in agencies that they try to give this kind of cross a, a team feedback. However, when someone comes up with a better idea, they say, ah, now you’re gonna take the the job. So people don’t want to share the work because they, they’re afraid that someone’s gonna steal their campaign or their project. Yeah. So I think that’s important, creating collaboration in which we’re not fighting against each other, but the best idea wins.

Yeah. Yeah. I think that’s always been a challenge in agencies for sure. And you bring up a good point, this whole idea of collaboration and communication. So in the air quote, old days, you know, you walk down the hall and you talk to a coworker or you said, Hey, we have to work on a campaign together. Let’s grab a conference room and do some brainstorming together, or whatever, whatever that vehicle was. But it was very in person and it, and it also I think was more impromptu. So how are you seeing, or what are you recommending agencies think about and do to create in either a remote team or a hybrid team? How do you create communication and collaboration when we are physically not in the same place and we may not even be on the team, same time zone, or in some cases in the same continent?

Absolutely. First of all, I, I like to encourage people to think that it’s not one or the other, but both, how can we integrate the best of both worlds? There have been global teams that have been working for decades in advertising for creating campaigns across to a point different time zones, different continents, without the technology that we have now. Right. And people were able to figure it out, you know, so I think that today we have technology like mural or Zoom that are really good. Yeah. If used properly to basically create that. We do a lot of, for example, brainstorming with teams in which first we ask them to work on their own. So basically silent brainstorming, and then when people capture a couple of dozen ideas, then they start sharing and building.

And so there are ways of doing that, but that doesn’t necessarily replace the magic of the team being the same role. So I remember to your point, in the nineties, the early nineties, the old days, what they did is they flew the whole team for a week or maybe a couple of days to craft different big campaign ideas. Yeah. And then everyone went back to their corners and they keep the development phase remotely. In that case, it was via phone calls or via email at the most. Yeah. So I think finding those in between spaces important. So when you’re cracking a very critical problem, there’s no better way to do it. That in person, when you’re having a crisis as a team, getting people together, that helps a lot.

But then the rest you can do it remotely. So it’s finding the right cadence between one and the other.

So, so how do you, how do you communicate that to your team? How do you teach them new ways to do what they’ve always done? You know, that’s a lot of muscle memory for a lot of people, especially if you have employees who are, who have been in the business for 10 plus years. So how do, how do you recommend we transfer those habits? Because I think a lot of it is habit, muscle memory. How do we transfer those so that we are more comfortable? ’cause I don’t disagree. There are tools that help us do it, but that doesn’t mean people are comfortable doing it or feel like the results are the same. So how do we, how do we get people more comfortable, and how do we get them to deliver at the same level of results as they did back in the air quotes, old way of doing it?

That’s a good question. First of all, I think that people need to realize that the train left the station. So you can fight as much as you can, like companies forcing people. But in the end, we saw a research last week, it was actually an analysis of many pieces of research across the world. And all the companies that are forcing employees back into the office, they are having people to leave, especially the most talented people and productivity and many other variables are going down, right? So if companies force a, a, a force, people back into the office, that’s not working at all. Yeah. So it’s more of a in-between model. The first thing, I think it’s kind of, if sometimes you cannot change your culture and your muscle memory all at once.

Yeah. So what are the quick wins that you can start? Like for example, doing for example, could be maybe you’re not gonna create a campaign from scratch with this new tools, but probably some project that is halfway cooked, baked, maybe you can use the tools to start giving feedback to polishing to, so the, the, the, the fine tuning thing, that usually is when the CREs go more into their corner because they need to do their thing know, so it’s not much of a team. Well, that’s a great way to start building that practice. Another way is finding where, which are the teams, some teams in the companies are usually more open to experiment. Well use them as a pilot to learn from them, bring that experience and the what work, what didn’t work to the larger team.

And that’s another way to make that kind of a happen and also mix it. The point here is like there are people that are saying, oh, this is not working, let’s get back to how things used to be. There are people that say, oh, it’s all remote. My approach is mix it, find the right mix between one and the other to, to change that. Also, lastly to your question, it’s important to find a facilitator. Either you can get an external facilitator like me or whatever, or someone in the company that can be the person who’s gonna lead the process to help people stay in track. To your point, changing processes, the way we brainstorm or the way we interact in a mural board or in a Zoom call, require more discipline, require different behaviors and need someone to first put those steps in black and white, but also keep the, the, the team on track.

Yeah. You know, you used an interesting word pilot. So I can remember early in my career as an agency employee, we didn’t pilot things. We just got told something was gonna change and we were gonna do it a new way and we just did it the new way. But it, it feels like a, because things are changing so fast, but B, because of sort of the difference in employees today, the idea of having task force and piloting things for 90 days and doing more trials and talking through more collaboratively. How did that feel? How did that work? It feels like that’s becoming more a expected, but b, the norm.

Is that what you’re seeing across, across the board?

Absolutely. The point is advertising or marketing firms usually work under the perfectionist mindset. No. Yeah. And they had a hard time while innovation firms work more on the test and try and figure it out. And I think that many agents have been adopting more of a trial approach, which is, let’s work in smaller projects, let’s see what happens and what doesn’t work. We discover what work, we continue working on that as well. One thing I remember in terms of mindset, like couple of decades ago or so, I was talking to a regional director of a large firm McCann at that point, and we’re talking about how internet would change marketing and the, that guy told me that internet would never disrupt or replace TV commercials and no one would ever browse the internet and so on.

So I quit. I started an internet film at that time. But what I’m telling you is people don’t get to see things when they’re happening. They see what they already, it’s too late. Right. So this, the way we work is changing, so don’t resist it. Try to find a way into joining the movement, so to speak.

Yeah. If he thought the internet wasn’t gonna change things, I wonder what he would’ve thought about ai.

Exactly.

Yeah. Yeah. So what you’re really talking about is this, is is this is not a flash in the pan. This is not just a post covid thing. This is sort of the new reality and the new trends. What, what are you seeing across the board in terms of workplace trends and technologies? Like not only what are you seeing that’s here to stay, but what do you see coming down the pike? We’re, we’re barely getting used to this new world that we’re living in, but I know that the change is continuing to come and come faster and faster. So what are some of the trends you are seeing that we should have on our radar screen?

You mentioned ai. I think that’s changing more than people realize. And you know, the phrase that we exaggerate the short impact of technology, but we always don’t understand and underestimate the Yeah. Long-term impact. And I think that’s gonna be transformation, especially for creative industries. So today I’m writing an article and I use artificial intelligence to brainstorm. So why can a copywriter or a art director use that? I mean actually they’re doing, and I think that’s gonna be game changing. But when it comes to people, one of the biggest trends I’m seeing is it’s changing the relationship that people used to have with their workplace. And I know that this is gonna sound a little bit, oh no, I don’t want that to happen.

But in the past, people felt a stronger sense of belonging to the workplace they belong to. No, basically we felt that if I was in ex agency, I felt, oh, that was my career. Today. People feel less attached to the organizations and they feel the opportunity that why can I not become a kind of a freelancer? You know what I mean? Right. And work many places at once. So it’s more fun. Right.

More, much more common. Right. People are

Looking for project by project basis than a full-time e employee. The only obstacle for this to accelerate is the benefits because if you don’t have a full-time job, you don’t get the health insurance. But Right. But most people are starting to think, okay, why do I need to belong to a one company rather than have control of my own career? And that’s basically what technology and the Covid movement. Yeah. And Flexibility has given people the ability to feel, oh. Or other people that feel I can take more than two jobs. It’s not two jobs, but actually doing two different things. Right. Yeah. I le I can be a, I can cook in a kitchen, I can be a chef at night, but then during daytime I can be a, a copywriter or a director or illustrator.

Right. And that’s the thing that’s gonna accelerate a lot.

Yeah. What else? What in terms of the workplace you, you sort of mentioned that, you know there there’s a lot of news. You know, publicist just came out this week, you know, you and I are recording this. The early part of August publicist just came out and said, guess what? Everybody’s gonna be back in the office three days a week and if not, you’re not gonna get your full bonus. You’re not gonna get promoted. So it’s interesting to see the pendulum already starting to sort of sway back and forth. What do you think that we’re experiencing today? Is air quotes permanent or gonna be around for a while? and what do you think is going to ease up or change in the next couple years?

I think that the depend on is gonna adjust. What we’re seeing is their companies, for example, Amazon, the, the BP or E B P of Prime video video told people that, Hey, I want you back and you know, Amazon have this criteria for making decision that’s called disagree and commit. So there’s a moment in which people are allowed to express the differences. They use that information to make and then commit. However he’s using now by saying, Hey, this is working. I don’t have data, I don’t have any facts to show you how, but disagree and commit. Basically he’s telling, I don’t give a shit about what you think. Come on and right. And do it. And I think that’s not gonna work because people are not stupid. You know what I mean? You can fool them once, you can fool them twice.

But that’s it. Companies are failing to find what’s a real trigger or motivator for having people together. What people are saying is, why would I show up to the office to do exactly the same things that I used to do before or I can do right At home? Right. Right. And I think it’s more like a, if you’re gonna show up to your office, let’s do meaningful work. I don’t want to go to the office to be back-to-back meetings to be interrupted by my colleagues to lose my time. So Right. Even if you’re forcing people back, at least have the this to design exactly how people are gonna feel that it’s worth their commute and their time and the effort to do something different, to really enjoy that collaboration rather than simply do things that write emails that they can do or take video calls with your clients that they’re not in the office either to.

So

Right. There’s a lot of talk about Shifting to a four day work week. Are you seeing that start to permeate the workplace or is that still pretty fringe?

I would say like many experiments didn’t work for everyone. So I think that many companies are sh showing really good results. It’s really complex to do that. And many companies end working much more hours in a condensed kind of a, a, a timeframe, which is not good either, eh, like everything I would say some companies, some of my clients are experimenting with it with that. Some basically never, eh, the thing about that is like still a rigid approach because it assume that everyone’s gonna work the four same hours when you’re serving clients. What happens on Friday when your clients expect you to do this? Right? So you can implement that, but you need to have some Flexibility in which there’s always need to be someone taking care of the fort during Friday or whatever day it is.

So people feel the service. So I, I feel that more flexible models are more effective than simply say, hey, we’ll work, because in the end, the nine to five is what’s dead. So creating a new nine to five, that’s the Monday through Thursday, it’s the same rigid approach to the workplace.

So talk a little bit about the nine to five being dead. So is that a, is that a result of people working in different time zone? Is that a work result of people just aren’t pulling in eight hour days anymore? What is your perception of, of that trend?

I think it’s a mix of all the things that you just mentioned, right? You got it. Great. The, the, the key things, many things that we have in the workplace that feel like, oh, part of the, the day-to-day are still new. So the weekend didn’t existed a hundred or so years ago. So it was really new. Someone created a weekend in the past, people were supposed to work seven days a week. So things for good evolved to protect people. That’s why the nine to five was born to make sure that employees didn’t work more than X amount of hours. Right. The reality, especially very competitive industries like the one that we’re talking, that never works because people have to put as many hours as needed.

You have to basically meet your, your clients on, on their demands and so on and so forth. What we’re seeing now, it’s the Flexibility, if rather than spending a lot of times altogether maybe I want to wake up early in I, and this are real case, I have clients in Australia or New Zealand, so I need to, or Europe, I need to start really early in the morning, run a workshop, whatever. But then I take a couple of hours break and then I have another staff. So rather than working like a, from a fix to another, fix a hour, right? I design the, the, the, the, the day work, the work, basically the workday based on my demands, my energy, my preferences and so on.

Yeah. You know, but one of the things I think a lot of agency owners are experiencing is their employees are making it very clear that they’re not gonna work longer hours, to your point, but they also don’t wanna work after five or they don’t wanna work on the weekend. So what they’re saying is, look, you’re right, I don’t wanna work more than 40 hours, but you know what, I want the Flexibility on my end, but not so much on your end. Like, you can’t tell me to stay late and do this thing in the evening or do you know, work on the weekend. I, and in fact a lot of employees are purposefully scheduling things that, you know, they’re assuming like I can, again, I can remember early in my day, I would’ve never scheduled like a class at five o’clock.

’cause I knew that a lot of my days I was gonna still be at the office at five or six o’clock. Where a lot of employees now are just saying, look, the work, the work schedule is eight to five or whatever it is. And at five o’clock done or not, I’m out. So how do employers deal with that and help their employees understand that everybody wants a flexible, flexible schedule. And I think every owner wants their employees to have life work balance. But that has to go both ways.

Absolutely. There’s a micro a, is this a trend that people don’t want to basically prioritize work as much as we did as our generation did? Yeah. But even people in their forties and fifties today are that so it’s not just a generational thing. Yeah. It’s, it’s changing. So we need to accept that. However, to your point, Flexibility should work both ways, right? If not, it’s not Flexibility. I give you all the freedom have, but then you have. So that’s why the commission needs to focus less on when, where, how much we work and focus more on the result, right? If one copywriter can come with 10 taglines in five minutes and another needs two weeks to do it, well it’s up to them that they need to put more hours.

The point is what’s the outcome? What’s the, I mean, we want X amount of work, we want great work, great quality work, that’s where the commission needs to focus. And if people need more time, that’s on them to get it there, you know?

Right.

You take your class but deliver on the deadline and deliver on the quality standards. Yeah. That’s Flexibility to me. It’s not free for all. It’s, we have certain outcomes in terms of deadlines, in terms of client satisfaction, in terms of creativity. Well deliver on those. If you can do it fast, good for you. If you need more time, well figure it out.

Yeah. So, so I wanna ask you more about that because I think another trend we’re seeing is that, you know, and I hate to keep saying this, I sound like a dinosaur, but you know, when I was in my advertising career before I made the shift over to consultants, deadlines were not optional. They were not fluid. If somebody told you that they needed something by five o’clock on a Thursday, even if I had to get up at five in the morning that day to make sure I got it done by 5:00 PM I made sure I delivered it on time because it was unacceptable. What, that wasn’t my rule. It was just clearly unacceptable in our culture. In, in all the agencies I worked at that deadlines were meant to be honored.

I think today employers are having a hard time conveying that and then enforcing it inside their agencies. So I wanna ask you more about that after we take a quick break. ’cause I’d love your take on how do we, how do we engage in that conversation with our employees? So let’s take a quick break and then we’ll come back and we’ll talk about our deadlines, flexible and fluid. Hey, just wanna take a quick minute and tell you about a resource that we have on the website that I don’t talk about as often as I should. So it’s an exercise called My Future Self. And the reason why you would do this exercise is if you are in planning mode. And this is really for you as either an agency owner or an agency leader, but you really wanna think about what your future looks like, not the agency’s future, your future.

I find so many agency owners struggle with how they are spending their days and is it fulfilling and is this what they wanna do? You know, in five years that we created an exercise and I, I will tell you a a very brief story, but I first did a version of this exercise probably 15 years ago and it basically walks you through some thinking and you have to do some journaling around what your future self looks like. And you have to sort of give yourself into it. You have to really suspend like the reality and talk about what it is today. But I’m telling you when I did it, how it was different from my current moment in my life was pretty dramatic.

And I was working with a coach at the time and I said, this is great and this is the life I want, but it doesn’t look like my life now. And we talked about just sort of being open to the possibility of transitioning in some of those directions. And I will tell you for the last 10 years I have been living that life, the life that I created in this exercise. So it’s can be very powerful and very eye-opening and I’m not a woo woo kind of guy, but once I understood what I wanted as opportunities presented themselves, I just took advantage of them in different ways than I would’ve had I not done this exercise. So head over to the am I website and go to agency management institute.com/my future self and you can read more about it.

There’s an intro, a video intro where I tell you all about it and then some questions. It’s $197 if you don’t like it or you don’t want, you don’t end up doing it. Happy to give you your money back. But I’m telling you can be really transformative if you give yourself into the exercise and really do it with an open heart. So just wanted to tell you it was there. Hopefully it’ll be helpful For, some of you. Okay, let’s get back to the show. Alright, we are back and we’re talking about workplace culture and we are talking to the author of the book Remote, not Distant, about how has culture and agencies changed? How do we create a culture that is collaborative even though we’re spread out over many time zones and what are today’s employees looking for from us and how do we communicate better together to get the great work that we need to get out for our clients.

So right before the break I said, you know what, deadlines seem a lot more fuzzy today than they were before. And for a lot of agency owners and leaders, that is super frustrating that somebody would just leave at the end of the day, even though a dead, it’s a project isn’t delivered on time and they assume that it’s okay to do it tomorrow. So given the culture and the attitudes of today’s employees, how does one approach that conversation when the commitment of the agency itself, the belief of the agency is we don’t miss deadlines.

Absolutely. You don’t want the train to arrive lead to a station either. Right? I think that that’s a non-negotiable, right? There are standards that you need to have and deadlines should be deadlines. Once again, Flexibility, it’s about how you do the work, not when you get back to the team. Right? Right. And I think that’s a non-negotiable by any means. And my, my wife is an architect. I work in advertising for many years, so I know what deadlines are to your point. Yeah, on

Both sides, great.

Figure it out. And I think sometimes about going back to to the, the pendulum that we talked earlier, it, some employers basically gave people too much freedom and then all of a sudden they lost it and they say no, you know what, back to normal. I think that’s important to have these conversations in the context of, okay, you want work-life balance, you want Flexibility, well then you need to deliver on quality, you need to deliver on deadline. It’s like right all come together. It’s not one or the other. And and, and let people know that, do you want this? Well what are you gonna give in return? And I think that’s basically the way it should be discussed Andre.

Yeah, agreed. So let’s talk a little bit about what are you seeing in your work? What are some of the common remote work challenges and how are you helping clients overcome those challenges?

The biggest challenge is first immersion. So bringing in new employees. Yeah. But also there are many teams that go or companies that go through acquisitions, mergers, leadership changes and so on and so forth. And those things that are really traumatic that create a lot of hiccups, people have a harder time dealing with those remotely. That’s where we do a lot of what your point. We do a lot of team offsite with those teams to first increase that sense of connection, belonging. One of the things that we do that’s, I mean, agencies can do, it’s really effective. It’s right people washing instructions, you know, the same way.

And we have a tool for that. We can then send you the link the same way that your clothes come with washing instructions that you need to basically make sure that you follow so you don’t damage it. People have different preferences. There are some people that like to be large meetings. There are people that like more smaller group conversations. There are people that are early risers, people like me that are night out. So a different, some people prefer to talk face-to-face, some people prefer slack. So different stuff. Getting to know your colleagues, what are they, washing instructions, how they want to communicate and so on and so forth. It’s really great. However, there’s a second step to that tool, which is about finding common ground, how we move all those personal preferences into team common grounds.

Because in the end, if everyone works whenever they want, then we’re not gonna operate as a team. Right. So moving from what I like and prefer to what we need as a team, that’s a great exercise to basically address some of the things that we’ve been discussing so far and find common ground. So everyone has to give a little bit, right?

Yep. What, what are some of the other challenges that that you’re seeing? I, I will say, I think you’re right. I think onboarding new employees we’re so used to, you know, in our industry we were so used to hiring employees right outta school, knowing that they didn’t know very much about the business, but that they would learn a lot of it just by being immersed and surrounded by other people who were more senior, who had more experience and kind of that they took it in and they grew by osmosis and by sitting in on meetings and doing things like that. So I agree with you. Onboarding I think is a super big challenge for agencies in this remote environment. What are some of the other challenges you are seeing, particularly in the creative industries that you can help us sort of overcome?

Feedback is another big challenge because people are not, I mean, feedback has always been an issue. Giving people feedback. Yeah, I’m not talking only about annual or biannual performance reviews, I’m talking about day-to-day feedback that could be on the person, on the team or on the work. People feel that they don’t have the tools and the coaching to do that in a remote environment and they’re losing that impromptu feedback. That’s really good. One thing that leaders have found very effective is having one-on-ones with your team members once a week. Have it on the calendar. It’s optional if someone has someone to share with you. But another thing that works a lot is rather than leaders going and telling people, Hey, you need to be improving this, you need to do that, you need to stop doing X, Y, and Z.

It’s for leaders to start promoting a, a feedback culture. But by them being the ones who request feedback, if you are the owner and you start going around and saying, Hey, what can I do better? What can I improve? What do you think about my latest decision? What do you think about how I handle that meeting with the client and basically being open to learn and grow, then the rest of the people are also gonna follow through that. You know, that’s a very interesting, for example, Patagonia, you know, it’s a large firm by, they stop having managers giving feedback. So Patagonia managers don’t give feedback, they only can request it from their peers or direct reports or their managers. And that’s game changing because it actually creates a culture in which feedback becomes well received

And, and sort of normalized too, right?

Normalized. And another thing that’s important feedback, usually it’s about the past and we get, that’s the word feedback. We get stuck into, hey, six months ago you promised me this and then you, and then people say, why are you bringing this up now? Right, right. So it feels, it creates, it basically harms trust. One thing that, eh, eh, Marshall Goldsmith, the coach called this feedforward focusing feedback more into what needs to happen rather than what happened. No, they were, hey, you didn’t respect the deadline. Well why don’t we talk about how can we make sure that we respect the deadlines moving forward? Right? Right. And Spotify has this rule, they call it the seventy twenty ten. So every feedback conversation from the most tiny to the most structured and and formal one, they spend only 10% of their time talking about what happened, 20 about what’s happening and the majority, 70% about what needs to happen and how can we get there.

So it turns feedback into something positive because about improving rather than rehashing past issues.

Yeah, yeah. It feels less punitive probably.

Exactly. And that’s why people, I think that many, many of the owners that you deal with and, and people that are listening to a show probably, eh, eh, are fed up, they cannot take it anymore and they go back and say, Hey, you and I think they’re right, but sometimes that doesn’t work. So one way to make it work is like, moving forward, what can we do better? And going back to the small experiments, the small tests that we can, the pilots that we can put in place to improve those behaviors.

Yeah, I think another thing that’s Shifting is, you know, it used to be a much more of a patriarchal, matriarchal sort of structure where the owner or the leadership team sort of dictated how work was done, what everybody, what everybody’s role is. And one of the things I’m seeing, and I’m curious if you’re seeing it on a, on a bigger scale is the agencies that have successfully moved into this hybrid or remote work environment are really Involving all the employees in the problem solving much earlier in the problem than before. So it used to be a, hey, we’re having a hard time meeting deadlines, we’re gonna have a leadership team meeting, we’re gonna decide how to fix the deadline problem and then we’re gonna dictate down to the rank and file the solution.

And now I think we’re seeing a lot more of, hey you guys we’re noticing this pattern, we’re missing deadlines on these kind of projects. How, how do we all think we should attack or solve that problem? Are you, are you seeing a shift in problem solving becoming more collaborative than it used to be?

Absolutely. And I think that, I always say if you want people to behave like grownups, treat them like adults, not like kids, right? So if you dictate all the norms because you don’t trust people, they’re gonna just wait for you to give the marching orders. The moment you involve people in the process, people have a bigger sense of ownership and accountability first because they’re being listened to. Second because they can provide a solution that it’s, that makes sense to them. But then because they were the ones who came up with the idea or informed the idea, they’re also on the hook because of that. However, one distinction that’s important is, one thing is consulting people, another thing is turning everything into a voting session or a debate and don’t, you know what I mean?

So even the most flat organizations, in the end, there’s someone who makes the decision. And I think that’s important. ’cause sometimes people feel that everyone should be consultated, that everyone should have a saying in every decision that’s made. And that’s doesn’t work either because there’s always leadership and we need that, the need, we need people to make decision and to run the company, have the clear vision rather than try one to be happy and then no one is happy, especially the owner of the firm. Yeah,

Right. So I, I think my last question for you is, and you’ve made the point, and I think we all are, are sort of at this realization that this is not a flash in the pan. This is, this is a huge shift in the way we work and it’s probably never going to go back to what we were used to earlier in our careers. So if you are, you know, 40, 50 plus and you’re running or being a part of a leadership team of an agency, even if you don’t like it, how do you, how do you wrap your head around it and how do you accept it and how do you actually be successful using the reality of today and the workforce of today And the fact that we will probably never all be back in an office under one roof again five days a week, except For, some noted exceptions.

Yeah,

I think there, first we really address this, it’s more of an internal journey. You need to get over it. Don’t, right, right, right. Maybe one thing that can work, some people maybe getting some coaches, I mean, and helping them like process exactly what’s getting in the way. But I would also advise them, find people that crack the code. I, I know people in in that used to work with me and they are running global agencies and they were able to adapt to this new approach. So maybe reaching out to them to say, hey, what actually clicked? What helped you? What advice would you give me? That kind of stuff. Maybe to maybe sometimes we are becoming too anxious for things that are not that bad or that different.

Yeah. I think that we’re turning things like more dramatic that brought it this Yeah, that’ll be the first and the second you mentioned earlier it’s about Involving people in the process. For example, if you feel frustrated, go and share with people. Sometimes people hold their emotions and then it’s too late and then they fire people. So let know, if you don’t feel right about it, invite people to an open conversation and say, Hey guys, this is what happening. This is what I feel. It’s not working, this is how I feel about it. And and and and sometimes people are not aware that you’re frustrated as an owner or you are happy. So because if you don’t give them feedback they feel oh, everything’s fine.

Right. What is the most important thing we can do as owners and leaders to build a strong work culture given the work environment that we are all, that we are all in today. What, what is the, if, if we could all do one thing, what would you have us do to create that strong culture of connectivity and collaboration? Even though we are spread all over the globe?

There are two things. First, it’s a trust and trust is a two-way street and someone has to give the first step, right?

And

Leaders need to, there’s an analogy that we use is like a, everyone has a trust battery. Some people start the relationship with the battery full. Some people have full, yeah, some people with the battery empty. Like basically show me that you’re trustworthy leaders need to have, I wouldn’t say a hundred percent full, but at least they need to start the relationship with new employees, with their teams. Like saying, Hey, I trust you right in in a way that because I’m giving you that trust, you need to trust me back and you need to show that you are trustworthy. Yeah. The the second thing, it’s about consistency. Don’t tell people things. Don’t promise actually things that you’re not gonna be able to deliver. Don’t say things just to please them and then you don’t believe them because people are gonna know this.

And, and going back to trust, that’s gonna harm that trusting relationship. So many leaders try to please their people tries to win their hearts and whatever just to look good, but then they go back to her. So if you think one thing, if you don’t like remote anymore, be honest. Right? Don’t fool people around because they’re gonna hunt you down.

Right, right. Yeah. I i that’s one of the pieces of advice we are giving agency owners too is it is like, look, this is your company so you need to, you need to run it the way you want to. And there are consequences no matter what choice you have. There are some people who don’t wanna work remote, they wanna be in an office. There are other people who only want to be remote and don’t wanna be in an office. But you have to decide the company you want to run and run that company knowing that you will find resources one way or the other. Maybe it’s more freelancers, maybe it’s, you know, whatever it may be. Yeah. But you need, you need to be, you can’t do it out of fear. You have to, you have to be strong enough in your leadership vision to understand what works for your company.

Absolutely.

Alright, any last words of advice for the listeners before we let you go?

No, I think that a good exercise for any leader is kind of basically to reset their views about how culture, how their companies should run. And one thing that we do with, with different leaders is go back to before the pandemic, how we used to operate and what are the things that were working and what were the things that weren’t working because companies weren, imperfect do the same during the pandemic, what were the new things that basically came up during that stage? What was working, what was not? And now and try to reconcile because I think that we still have this that’s interesting. Binary conversation remote versus whatever one and the other. It’s an evolution. It’s not a new, when we see new model fields that we’re dropping everything that we knew and we’re starting from scratch and that’s not the case.

Yeah. We need to tackle more of an evolution building on what used to work, but also incorporating new things.

Yeah, that’s, that’s a really great exercise because you’re right, it wasn’t perfect in any of those phases. So to, to look at the pros and cons of each face and then steal the best of all of those may create a very different hybrid than what we’re existing in now, specifically for your company, for your agency. So that’s, that is a great exercise. It, this has been a great conversation. Thank you so much for sharing your expertise and you know, just helping us wrap our head around what for many agency owners is still kind of a thorny issue. So I, I appreciate your time,

Thank you Drew for hosting me and thank you for, for joining the conversation. I really enjoyed it too.

So if folks wanna learn more about your work, if they wanna reach out and ask you a question, what’s the best way for them to, to find you, to follow you on social, all of those sort of things?

Absolutely. The easiest way to to get a hold of me is via LinkedIn. I’m the only Gustavo ti with double C, double T. So it’s kind of easy to find me. Yeah. But I’m also very active there and you can reach out, connect and then we can continue the conversation and also you can visit our website, our company’s fearless culture. Our website is fearless culture.design, not.com design. And you’re gonna get a lot of content. There’s a lot of tools like for example the exercise we just discussed. There’s a tool that we have with all the facilitation guide that you can download for free and see with your team. So there are many resources that you can use there and also we offer training and consulting if you need some support.

Okay. Awesome. Thank you again so much for being on the show. Appreciate it.

Fantastic. Thank you.

Alright guys, this wraps up another episode of Build a Better Agency. Lots of food for thought in this conversation and you know, I know For some of you, you are loving this hybrid new work environment, whether you’re in the office, whether you’re working from home five days a week, For, some of you, you have found your groove and for others you’re still struggling with this. And so again, the book is fantastic so I highly recommend it. Again, the title is remote Distant, so that’s a great resource for you. Gustavo just said he is got a bunch of other resources on the website, so go take advantage of those. But I think the one thing we cannot do is stick our head in the sand and think this is just gonna go away, that this is a flash in the pan and we’re gonna go back to the old way, whatever that means anytime soon.

And so all of us as leaders of our organization need to be thinking proactively about what’s working today, where we want to take our workforce tomorrow, and how do we carve a path to do that. So lot, like I said, lots of food of thought for thought in this conversation and hopefully it will really kind of get your wheels spinning. And this is a great conversation to have with your whole team about the kind of work they like to do and how they like to do it. Let them be a part of the solution with you. I think you’re gonna be surprised at some of the innovative ideas that people come up with when they’re invited into the conversation. All right. A huge shout out and thank you to our friends at White. Label IQ. They are the presenting sponsor of the podcast.

You know, a lot of agencies are, are leaning on them for their white Label PPC work. So many of you have clients who have small budgets and you don’t have a PPC or SSS e o team on your staff and you’re looking for a partner who can help you deliver what your clients need, but deal with the smaller budgets and White Label IQ is doing that for agencies all over the planet right now, so feel free to reach out for them, to them. For that. They’re also doing white Label design and web dev, so head over to White Label IQ dot com slash aami. And as I’ve told you many times, if you, if you embark on a project with them and it’s your first project, they’re gonna give you some free hours to kind of kick their tires, so you can’t beat that.

All right. I’ll be back next week with another guest to get you thinking a little differently about running your shop. In the meantime, you can always find me at Drew at agency management institute.com. Super grateful that you keep coming back. I’ll do the same. If you will, I’ll talk to you next week. Thanks for listening.

Come back next week for another episode. Designed to help you build a stronger, more stable and sustainable agency. Check out our workshops, coaching and consulting packages, and other professional development [email protected].