Creativity wins the fight, systems win the war

It couldn’t have happened with better timing. A chance meeting that’s now transformed our business within just 3 weeks.

It seemed incredibly simple, and in fact, as we were reminded by our benefactor, …”You know it all already!”. Knowing and applying are two very different things, however, and in the hours that followed, he continued to present us with a gift. A system. A way of applying the knowledge we had in a simple, repeatable process.

It’s not that we were struggling, things were going well and we were attracting high-profile clients like the United Nations and House of Commons. But we were unstructured. This was fine with a small number of clients but with growth and diversification, we were on the lookout for a system to help us manage and prioritise our work. What we got was much more than a system to manage workflow.

Through a friend, we’d been able to meet with Stephen Kelly, ex-COO of UK Government and ex-CEO of Sage, MicroFocus and Chordiant. Opportunities like this don’t come about often and with open minds, we lept at the chance.

We left the meeting with heads full, buoyed, inspired and excited to share what we’d learned with the rest of the team. And in the days since the meeting, we’ve applied the process across our business and the products we’ve developed.

Better futures…

It was simple, almost to the point we feel embarrassed we weren’t doing this before. There are just four key elements. The future, the audience, the problem we are solving and the plan. Simple in structure, challenging to produce and as we’ve found, the true value is in the detail.

We spent the best part of two days breaking down each part of our business as a team. We established goals for each product and business area under our overall 572 vision and broke down the detail of how we are going to achieve this. We didn’t always agree — we had to be open to being challenged on everything. This process brought us to a place we were all bought into and all had a hand in drafting.

The process we’re now running internally borrows from sports psychology and the software world. We’ve combined what we learned from Stephen with Todd Herman’s 90 Day year to create a system that offers us:

• A clear vision for all areas of the business
• A strategic plan for delivering on our vision
• Responsibility for projects and tasks
• Individual and collective accountability
• A framework for evaluating future opportunities
• A framework for evaluating resource allocation

All of our products and business areas have high-level future targets and detailed 90-day plans broken down into 2-week sprints. Operating at this level of granularity across all business areas ensures we remain focused on the tasks that directly contribute to our longer-term goals.

This feels so alien at times. I know creatives can be the worst at accepting systems and processes. I’m guilty of this and in the past I’ve done whatever I could to avoid them and the ‘constraints’ as I saw them. Ideas and creativity can feel at odds with structure, however, this has given us so much freedom. Rather than feeling trapped by a new system of 2-week sprints and reviews, of pre-set projects and tasks, it has been liberating. It has given us a framework that we can use repeatedly to help ensure our ideas have the best possible chance of success. Our creativity has a direction and is being channeled towards a collective vision we have all been a part of setting for the business.

It’s also given us a far more robust way of developing business plans. Having been on the investor journey in the past, we’d been left totally knotted by different investor requests and suggestions. Business plans ended up so far from what we believed in or felt connected to, that they had no relevance for us as a team. They weren’t motivating or demoralising, we were just numb to them. We now have a plan based on our beliefs and wishes that we are totally committed to and fired up by. Something we think is achievable but that is really going to stretch us. Bring on 2019!

To the future. And beyond!

Stephen’s helped us beyond the end result planning process too. Within a few minutes of his company, we were able to much more clearly articulate our business, the challenges, our story and where we were going. He was a truly inspirational character and it is certainly a meeting all of us will carry with us.

A part of getting clarity was in just saying it like it is. No dressing up or hiding anything. We’re a marketing and design agency transitioning to a product studio. We work with clients of all sizes to create better futures and develop their businesses along with developing and marketing our own products. What we learn during our process we can pass onto our clients and at the same time strengthen our business with recurring revenue.

We’ve also narrowed the audience for our products. We’re a small team and want to be able to deliver a responsive service and high product relevance to our customers. We can’t be everything to everyone, we’re not going to be everything to everybody. We’re going to stick to the core of what we built our products to do and do the job better than anybody else.

Our products

Slidecraft — A solution to enhance and share existing business presentations for increased audience connection and measurable ROI. For B2B presenters and training professionals.

FlipRSS — A solution for automating personalised newsletters using multiple RSS feeds, saving time and increasing performance. For communications teams creating and sharing moderate to high levels of content.

Insights — A targeted business intelligence solution for busy professionals, cutting through the noise and delivering actionable insights. For Senior Executives and management teams.

Our services

Marketing & design — This is the core of our business, brand development through strategic marketing and design.

Software development — As well as developing bespoke systems for clients we also provide digital consultation, product prototyping, and validation.

Stephen Kelly was remarkably open and generous. What he shared in the 2 hours 30 minutes went far beyond what I’ve outlined above and included so many insights we’ll benefit from. As a small team, time and resources are limited. Implementing and defining this system has given us a tool to remain focused on our end goal as a team. It has given us the ability to avoid getting sidetracked by urgent requests or shiny new ideas if they don’t move us forward but at the same time, stay nimble and flexible when required.

We were always excited and positive about the future of 572 Digital but we can now see the steps we need to take to make our vision reality. It’s no longer down to luck or fate, it’s down to us. That’s a good place to be starting a new year from.

If you’d like to learn more about the process, or how we are getting on with sticking to our goals, projects and tasks (warts and all) feel free to give me a shout — always happy to catch up for coffee or a Skype chat.