Work ethics

Hey, everybody. Drew McLellan here from Agency Management Institute this week coming to you from Montreal. I had an interesting discussion today with agency owners talking about employees. And one of the things that comes up every time Danyel and I are with agency owners is the conversation around “They don't work the way I work.” Or “They don't work like I used to work when I was their age.” Or “They don't work the way I want them to work.” And I think there are a lot of assumptions that get made about our employees and the way they work and their understanding of work. Number one, I think we assume that they know how we want them to work. Number two, I think we assume that they know how we worked. I think we assume that there is no wiggle room in their perception of work. And the reality is, we haven't defined what work looks like in our agency to all of our employees. So especially if you have a lot of younger employees, maybe you're their first employer – other than a job in college or high school – you're their first like grown up job. Or they've worked in a different industry, or they've worked for big agencies or just they've just worked at another agency. The reality is, how you want your team to show up is unique to you and your agency.

So one of the conversations we had today was the idea around having a set of core values, which is sort of here's who we are and what we believe. Super important. Most of you could lean into that much deeper than you do. But maybe there's a companion set of, we'll call them work ethics. This is how we work. These are the ethics around our work, which is things like “I own it from the start to the end, whether it's my project or not.” “A deadline is not optional. We never miss a deadline.” Whatever your work ethics are. “I stay till the work gets done.” I – every agency's going to have a different set of work ethics, but they live in our heart and they live in our head as agency owners and leaders. But we often, often don't ever articulate them. But we're frustrated when our employees don't show up the way we want them to show up. So I think a great way to kick off 2025 would be in January to talk about sort of your goals for the year, where you're headed, why you're headed there, and also how you're going to get there. And I would talk about your core values and why they matter and why you want to live by them, and how you honor those and how they show up in the work and amongst the team. And then I would talk about your work ethics or your work rules, or your work verbatims, or your work, whatever you want to call them, give it a great name. But it's, you know, 3 to 5 sort of statements that define how you want your employees to show up every day and the responsibility you want them to take in the work, the accountability, the respect you want them to have for the work, for each other's work, whatever it may be.

And for each of you, it's going to be a little different. But you cannot expect them to live by your expectations if you don't articulate them. And so I think it would be A) a great exercise for you to think through what those are and 2) to share them. I do not believe this is a committee thing. I think this is you, the agency owner, maybe a leadership team, really defining the way you want everyone from owner down to intern, to show up. No matter what role you play in this agency. Here are the five work ethics we live by. “Deadlines are not optional.” “Nothing leaves this place without QA and a kiss and a promise.” Like, whatever, whatever it is for you that says this is quality work I'm proud of. This is the way I want my team to show up. This makes me proud of how my team is committed to the work, to each other, to our clients. Whatever that is for you, get it down on paper, articulate it, polish it up. Do what agencies do, make it pretty. Make it sound great. Make it memorable. Don't make it three paragraphs. Make it five, 3 to 5 simple statements and then share it. And then every month in your all-team meetings, talk about core values and work ethics and call people out for living by those core values. Call people out for living by those work ethics. Reward people publicly for showing up the way you want them to show up. Then you can have really candid conversations with the employees who aren't honoring either the core values, the work ethics, or both. Because odds are, unless they change their tune, they're not a good long-term fit for your agency. And then when you have tools to have those conversations and you can point to them, that allows you to have conversations that are, kind of feel fuzzy and not really defined. But with these two tools, you absolutely can have concrete, very concise, but very clear and specific conversations. So everybody knows what the expectations are and they can choose to live up to them or not.

All right? Give that some thought.

I'll see you next week.