What Shipped: Issue 9, 2021

Future Super is a superannuation fund that helps people use the power of their money to build a future worth retiring into. We’re building our product and brand in-house and documenting what we learn in the process.

Here’s what we’ve been up to in the past few weeks:

1. How we work with external partners
   Reflections on how we can set the table better for productive, inclusive working relationships with external creative partners.
2. Visual Identity
   Turning those trees into a forest.
3. Grace
   Started a new job and I’m still here!

How we work with external partners

Reflections on how we can set the table better for productive, inclusive working relationships with external creative partners.

One of the things I’ve noticed in holding workshops with externals recently: 1) the way we work at Future Super is pretty different 2) when I’m bringing in external partners to the team it’s my role to make sure we’ve set the table for productive collaboration and 3) when we don’t set our intentions for collaboration, it’s easy for these sessions to feel like long wandering chats — that’s frustrating when there’s a lot of smart cookies in the room (and a lot of head hours that could be spent on other things!)

That got me thinking:

• How can we set expectations how we come together?
• What practices do we expect from others so that we respect each others time?
• How can we filter out partners that aren’t right for us, and induct them into how we work before we get in a room together?

Why it matters: ‘Conversational turn-taking’ is one of the ways psychological safety is measured and it’s a major north star for our team. We hold relatively structured meetings in our team — and I noticed when we work with external parties, the lack of structure really stands out. Unstructured meetings don’t fully allow everyone in the room to participate as well as they could have — and means that louder, or more senior voices are heard disproportionately — this cramps our style as a team that values psychological safety.

How we’ll set the table for better collaboration:

1. When approached by externals — ask: “What is the purpose of the session, and what outcomes do we want from it?” If you think their proposal is worth bringing to the team: share a briefing document. Give them a chance to understand how we work
2. Get consent from the team to run a session. Bring a clear proposal with desired outcomes for both parties.
3. Ask for an agenda and desired outcomes.
4. In the room, kick off with introductions to set the table:

• Facilitator: How did this work come up? What is the purpose and the desired outcome of the session?
• Participant introductions: “What is your role and what would you like to get out of this session?”
• Takeaways: close the session with time to capture takeaways and next steps. We’re not down for chatty sesh’s with no outcomes.

What I’ve learned:

• When you’re inviting external parties into your organization, it’s your job to help them navigate how your team operates — and set the table for success
• Structure can seem OTT, but it helps respect one of our most important non-renewable resources — people’s time
• Everyone works differently — be explicit about how you want to work so there’s a starting point for working together

— Amanda

Visual Identity

How a partnership is helping us see the forest for the trees and forge ahead with a visual direction that makes sense.

It’s fair to say I’ve been tinkering with the Future Super brand for a while now. Dialing things up and down to try and find that sweet spot, which we could usually articulate as a team but never seemed to consistently land on. This constant iteration (which we’ve written about on this forum before) led to a brand that, like most recent Kanye albums, had more misses than hits. It’d be easy to dwell on those misses, but what it has given us is a really clear perspective on what feels right for us, and what doesn’t.

So armed with this info we went on a search for a partner (more on that here). Where we landed was with the fine folk at Universal Favourite. I won’t fill this page with platitudes, but safe to say it’s been a pleasure thus far. Over the past few weeks myself and other members of the team have been bunkered down figuring out how we bring the visual identity to life. A visual identity that feels right for us, but more importantly is held together by a creative idea that gives us the flexibility to stand out and be expressive when we want to, but maintain a level of consistency that builds more equity into our brand.

Back to the drawing board

So as I mentioned before, we had a fair idea of where we wanted to head with the visual identity, but we needed some help to get there. Finding that thread to hold everything together and affirming that the direction we were heading in was the right one. We started right back at square one. Pen, paper and a bunch of sketching and writing. Not blindly, but led by our brand proposition.

Our aim was to bring this proposition to life visually. I won’t turn this post into a play by play, but fast forward a day or two. Pages of visual reference later. Quick visual nuggets. A bunch of play and we were starting to see which ideas would stick and which ones wouldn’t. It’s tricky to cull ideas that feel exciting. Despite their meti, one that centered around the different voices we take on as a fund, and another that dealt in the rule of thirds both hit the cutting room floor. We were left with, was two really compelling creative ideas.

So how do you choose one. Again, I could step through exactly what played out (and maybe I will in future issues) but I’d rather get to some of the meat of the concept we’ve chosen. It’s ownable, very different for the industry (just like our business) but most importantly for me, has a really strong connection to our proposition.

Shining a light on the super industry

The power to have influence over the kind of future we build is in everyone’s hands, they just can’t see it.

We shine a light on that power. We punch a hole through red tape. Slice a window through an opaque industry and show how things work behind the scenes.

People have power, they just need to know where to look.

I’m keen to share this journey over a few issues of what shipped, so I won’t delve too deeply into the direction right now, but I will share a few small snippets of things to come.

There’s still work to be done but I feel like I’m finally starting to see that forest.

— Nick

Can you tell me more?

Starting a new job, at the same company

The only way Future Super can achieve its widly ambitious mission is by getting people to talk about us. It’s something we talk about all the time internally and it’s an incredibly big job to get right. Most companies think if they say they want to get word of mouth and then snap their fingers, it happens. Good luck my friends. What you really need to do is earn the air time of your customers and be useful in their lives.

As a first step to turn this talk into action, I’ve changed roles at Future Super. I used to be accountable for finding more customers and winning more customers at the Chief Marketing Office. Now that’s expanded to include keeping more customers as the Chief Marketing & Experience Officer. The intention is to organise ourseleve in the way customers and members experience us, rather than just by internal discipline. In a practical sense, it means putting customer service, technology and marketing under my single windswept umbrella.

None of these moves are novel, most companies have a single point of accountability for the customer facing side of their business.

What was novel for me though was that, a few weeks ago, I showed up to a new job without anyone noticing. I flicked open my laptop, coffee in hand, ready to meet my new colleagues…they all already knew me. I walked into a meeting…that I had attended many times before. I input onto some work in Asana…which I had already drafted.

Similar to the switch from office to remote working, I had to make the change myself. The environment wasn’t going to be my proxy. I have to understand what this new challenge is without being thrust into the uncomfortability of not knowing anything about a company. So over the past 10 working days, that’s been my bid.

What I’ve learned so far

1. Treat it like an entirely new gig. A mental model I’ve had during this time is to pretend (and not pretend) that this is an entirely new job. I’ve been doing what I do normally when I start somewhere: interviewing people, asking tons of questions and staying really curious about what I might have been missing from the perspective of my old role. It’s about the role I’m playing in a company which is new, not me as a person.

1. Cut yourself a break. It feels like I should have all the answers since I already work here but if that were the case I’d be able to solve any challenge while being in the same role. If only my ego stretched to those kind of heights (Leigh Dunlop, if you’re reading this I promise it doesn’t). A change in role offers a shift in perspective. While I’m discovering what this role might be, I’m tempering some of the heuristics I used to work on since this is a new role and things might be different here.
2. Write, write, write. This depends on how you process but I process through writing. My notebooks are more full from the last two weeks then they were the 6 month prior. I’m letting thoughts spill out of me even though they don’t make sense I know I’m processing towards a point of view on what’s net. Scribblings are helping figure out what road to pave.

3. Steal great art. If interview your (new) team mates, find one someone else has used that’s good. I used the script from another new members of our team, Veronica. Here it is if you want build on it:

4. Process as part of the job. Have you noticed how most knowledge workers these days is don’t give themselves time to think? Supposedly thinking isn’t productive enough to be ‘work’ in 2021. That’s for another day but if you’re in a situation of moving jobs internally, give yourself (at least a little) time to mull, ponder, be bored. There’s no other way to get your head around a new gig and make meaningful change into the future. Go for walks, take long showers and just let yourself work through the ambiguity. The answers will come.

— Grace