Education is the most powerful weapon we can use to change the world.
Nelson Mandela
Writing on Monday morning, as a new week dawns and the world goes back to work after the awful events of Friday night in Paris and Beirut, I’m reflecting on what I’ve learned so far in 3 weeks of #havaslofts life and what it means to be part of a global family — #havastogether borne out a French dream.
I’m coming up to 4 and ½ years in the Havas Family, starting out at ignition in June 2011 and joining the Havas Sports & Entertainment wing in January 2013. In that time it has taken me a while to understand the full labyrinth of companies within the Havas Group and who does what, where, why and how. I still don’t fully understand the capabilities of the entire group, but I think there’s some beauty in that (unless its your job to know it all — which it isn’t for me!). We are an organization that is evolving, growing, adapting, mighty but nimble, and not afraid of change. In real terms this means you meet people in every day situations (like a Halloween party I went to a couple of weeks ago), and find out within a few minutes that they work for Havas too. You have an instant connection, a common ground, and you feel more at home already, in a foreign land where you ‘know’ a handful of people, a Havas friend is a friend indeed.
I hadn’t realized that could extend to terror attacks and how a company can respond to it. Nor did I ever expect to learn this. But the spirit, solidarité and compassion shown across the world makes me feel that we aren’t just employees turning up, clocking in and doing the 9–5 but something a little bit more special. I said last week that the team at ignition value that this is not an every day job. But I now think the wider Havas Group appreciates that we work in the worlds best cities, in some of the most inspiring spaces, with the most interesting people. After the Paris Attacks, I think there is a sense that when your work for a French company, Paris is closer to home than you think, whether you’ve been there or not. The senior people in our business travel to Paris on a regular basis, from my London office it’s a short Eurostar hop away and it’s a city that I know I’ve taken for granted. Not anymore. These last few days I’ve learned that life is more fragile than we know, and whilst we won’t change our routines or our way of life, we will appreciate things a little more, and enjoy our loved ones in a renewed way. The reaction around the group, with memorials, minute-silences and counselling arrangements, has been swift and efficient, helping people to deal with something so life-changing for people within our family. With people on the #havaslofts programme exchanging to and from Paris, Friday night sent a flurry of messages worldwide within our mini-community, checking on those in Paris. There’s a different mood today in our New York office, schedules have changed and some meetings no longer seem important, but we are resilient and things will go back to a new normal.
There’s a small amount of work from my home agency that I need to keep up with, but I’m trying to embrace the experience fully here. I’ve learned 5 or more new things every day (even if sometimes one of those things is that a chicken biscuit is not what my brain tells me to expect). In our every day work I think you can reach a point where you don’t learn something new every day, and we stagnate (I know I have at times), and this experience has given me a renewed vigour to learn.
It is in my nature to question, and quiz people. I was an inquisitive (and most-likely highly irritating) child, who has grown in to adult that loves to talk and understand people, why they like something, why they don’t, what makes them tick, what they ate for breakfast, what they are doing for lunch. Just questions in general. It has been said I’d make a great interrogator…
That thirst for knowledge has served me well on this experience so far.
I’ve compiled my list of top 5 things I’ve learned and how I came about them — in no particular order:
1) Interviews with the ignition Havas Sports & Entertainment team. I’ve had one-on-one catch ups with 6 out of the 9 team members so far. Catching up over a coffee, breakfast or drink and just finding out more about their role, their time in the Havas Group, what they enjoy about the Village, what could be better, and much more. It can be hard to take the time in your day-to-day role to just talk to some one. Everything is email, inboxes, excel sheets and presentations, sitting and chatting sometimes looks like killing time but I’ve found the most interesting insights this way. I’ve discovered that the world over our timesheets, procurement and other software systems are less than ideal, I’ve learned that people don’t always need to report in to people in the same office as them, and it can work, and that ultimately everyone is striving for the same success but with a million different ways of getting there. Nothing rocket science but things you don’t often get to sit back and appreciate.
2) I’ve mentioned Google Docs and Google Drive, and I can’t wait to try and implement this on a new project at home. The realities of collaboration across different email software, and servers mean that Google Drive really is a smarter way to work in many cases.
3) Brainstorm etiquette. I’ve already dived in to Armin Mohavi’s epic brainstorm technique (see last blog), but the way of participating here — fully and committed is to be admired. Mobile phones are further out of sight, and you apologise if you need to use it. This might not happen all of the time, but its great to see people trying to put the distractions to one side, and be in the moment not multi-tasking ALL of the time!
4) How productive people can be when there’s a bit of peace and quiet. In the UK as the Entertainment Hub there is always music and laughter and engaging ‘stuff’ going on. But I’ve actually enjoyed (shhh don’t tell anyone), a bit of peace and quiet. There is enough meeting rooms and shared spaces for piles of collaboration to take place in the building, its just not in your face, its in the kitchen, or a meeting room, or a hammock — yes there are hammocks on every floor. Like a quiet diligence to doing awesome work. Different spaces breed different thought.
5) Get. On. The. Phone.
You might be in the same country but stop emailing and just pick up the phone. There’s a lot of that at ignition and it makes for healthy working relationships. If someone is working remotely, emails can get lost in translation so they call when they can. Obviously email has a huge place, but just speaking with someone can iron out issues before they become bigger problems.
In my world of experiential and sponsorship we don’t use ‘Tools’ in the typical media way, with systems for that, and software for this. We’re pretty much Microsoft Excel, Word, Powerpoint (Keynote if I’m forced to), some pretty cool hospitality software, and then our beloved email. The tools I’ve enjoyed seeing in practice are more human techniques for doing great work and collaborating. These little tweaks to how we work in the UK can hopefully make a tangible difference to our output and the environment we work in.
Culturally the differences aren’t huge. There are the novelties like free coffee machines in the office with every variety of coffee you desire. There’s the things that come in to the office, like a different lunch provider each day (fooda.com) and manicures during the day (manicube.com) all designed to be convenient and give you the time back you would spend traipsing round the streets. It also means if you aren’t careful you don’t enjoy fresh air or a walk round the block. However the idea of a being in a brainstorm for a Vitamin pitch is crazy to me, coming from a country where you take a Berocca for a hangover at best, rather than a daily roll-call of life-boosting pills. New York isn’t that different to London, everything is just a bit ‘on steroids’. The coffee’s are bigger, the tube (subway) runs 24 hours, the sandwich choices are so varied it blows my mind every lunch time, and the toilet doors seem to have little gaps down the side that I’ve still not worked out the point of. So I’m learning all the time, not just in the office!
As I seem to be enjoying the quotes I thought this pretty much summed things up, thanks to Leo Buscaglia…”Change is the end result of all true learning” — so the pressure is on to go back to the UK and put these learnings in to practice. But I do get one more week to learn a little more and work out how to put this all to best use back at home.
I’m not saying we need to change things, but there’s lots of useful things I can’t wait to share and see if we can’t make things a little bit better. After all those little things can add up to make a big difference.
