What the deck?! From Powerpoint to prototypes
Eight weeks at Adaptive Lab and the new job dust has begun to settle. Soon I’ll be part of the furniture. Which is fiendishly tasteful, I might add.
With everything still shiny and new, and memories of my last role not too distant, our marketing manager Ieva asked me to take stock.
I joined the team from the digital agency arm of a big four consultancy. Whilst far from the stuffy accountancy cliché, the remains of a button-down culture lingered like a low-grade hangover. You know, the kind that you can still function with if you distract yourself with enough cat GIFs and Berocca.
Don’t get me wrong, leadership had the best intentions when it came to creative culture. The problem was not knowing how to practice it. Practice is the keyword here. An emotive slidedeck and an influx of bearded employees will give your company little more than a facelift: it’s the everyday things you do that give a place a pulse.
Adaptive Lab does a lot of this stuff without really thinking about it. Bloody show-offs. I’m not even typing this under duress. Anyway, here are some real-life practices you can introduce to your team or company to help shape a creative culture.
Get everyone on the same page
Sum up what you do and your beliefs in a sentence. If you can articulate it in a way that is straight-talking and human, even better. And if you can turn it into screen prints and put it on the studio walls — Rob’s your uncle.
Recruit like you date
Culture is more complicated and fragile than your Tinder dates, but figuring out if there’s a spark beyond shop-talk is just as important. For both your sakes. Hit up our first date queen, Kayleigh, here.
Make your brand shorthand for your people
Consulting is a people business. But often the energy, smarts and quirks of the folk behind the company website get lost. Being authentic means clients know who they’re going to be working with. It also means your people feel represented by how your brand looks, feels and sounds.
Celebrate people’s adventures outside of work
Lots of employment contracts straight up forbid you from even breathing anywhere near a side project. A business venture? Outside of work? Preposterous! In reality, supporting people pursue things that are important to them makes them happier and better at their day job. AL really do love Side Hustles.
Don’t be a deck-head
I love a template as much as the next consultant, but ask yourself — do I need a deck for this? On my first project at Adaptive Lab, I went FOUR WEEKS without making a single slide. Unthinkable. Our team kept things strictly conversation and whiteboards — scribbling, erasing, diagramming — until we had something that made sense. The thinking — not the format — is the hard part. And the thinking stops when you crystallise it in a deck.
Be real, yo
Work can be tough. If you’ve never had your feathers ruffled by having to be simultaneously productive, organised and socially adept in constantly changing teams, there’s a chance you’re a cyborg. New joiners at Adaptive are asked to write a user manual, a guide to your working style — we compare notes on our strengths, weaknesses and quirks on day one. Being vulnerable about this stuff means less façade, more real-talk and better teamwork. I don’t mean to throw shade at cyborgs, but this human stuff is kind of important.
Challenge the brief
Do we need an app for that? It’s an obvious one but being unafraid to retrace steps back to the problem and questioning whether your product is the best solution is brave, necessary and makes for more interesting work.
Get together, often
When you’re in the throes of a client project, it can start to feel like you work for somebody else. At Adaptive, Fridays are for bringing people back together and sharing work. We do this over team lunch and a company update from James, our MD.
Be transparent about everything
What new business is coming in? How much money are you making? Who’s getting a bonus and how is it calculated? If this stuff is for head honcho consumption only, you run the risk of creating a feeling of us and them. And ain’t nobody got time for that!
It’s a bit of a jigsaw. As individual pieces, these practices don’t work. But when you put them together, they become a handy blueprint for creative culture.
This article was originally published on the Adaptive Lab website.
