Bringing Back the Joy

Where’s the joy gone? The fun? This game used to be a hoot.

Hard work, but it really put a smile on your face. 

And made you feel great about the work. The ideas. The people. 

I’m not sure there is a lot of joy left in creative agencies anymore.

There, I’ve said it. But I know many of you have been thinking it. 

And many more have been thinking it so much they’ve simply left the industry. 

It wasn't the great resignation, it was the great recalibration. 

And it's no surprise.

Lack of money, clients squeezing agencies, agencies sweating assets - yep that's you. 

And when the joy goes, so does the love. 

And when the love goes, so does the respect. 

Clients can tell. Work done quickly by busy people with full timesheets rarely reaches greatness. 

So clients toss it back into the grinder again and again and again, which in turn macerates more joy from the process.

So agencies try harder and go further and later. They work the weekend. Tired teams churn out deadline-beating work…..

And clients, somewhat disappointed, push back. 

So agencies, trying to protect meagre margins, push down. 

And the people who feel all of that pressure…….are the creatives.

Sound familiar, it should, it's your working life. Or the life of those who work for you, if you’re a little further up the greasy pole. 

It really doesn't need to be like this. It can be different. Better. You can bring back the joy in many ways. Here are a couple.

If we’re all in this for ideas, why are timesheets so important?

Here’s a simple truth. Whatever you sell will be your most precious commodity. We all talk about ideas but in reality agencies sell hours. So hours become the thing we care about most… or at least the CFO’s who sign the contracts. Quarterly reporting, timesheets, endless traffic meetings, lost weekends, 70-hour weeks, no time for craft - money isn't the all too often quoted root of all evil. It’s hours. But if you can pivot to selling ideas, you can become the master of your own hours. Not the servant. 

How? So ‘ideas not hours’ relies on market pricing. Like lobsters? Which is both simple and complicated. How much better your lobsters are than the ones in the restaurant next door matters. Are they small and scrawny, or bigger and plumper? Will they be more appealing on the plate? How many people are in the restaurant looking at the menu on any given evening? Or walking past looking at the tank in the window? What is the price next door? Is the custom round your neck of the woods Prix fixe or a la carte? What’s the upper and lower average spend limits for the neighborhood? How much better is your chef (it’s never just the lobster)? How’s your decor? 

But remember people care more about the quality of the lobster on the plate than the opulence of your decor. Mostly… All of that and more …. Dictates the price. It’s not about hours in the kitchen, or maturity of the crustacean … it’s about the value people put on it. And what they will happily pay for the product in a fast-changing marketplace. 

It’s about the people, stupid.

The nature of work has changed. And how the talent views, the role you have in their lives has changed. Full-time staff and Freelancers care more about their personal culture than your corporate Kool-Aid. Especially after lockdown. A barista who knows your name or some trite slogan in neon hanging on the wall behind reception might have passed for culture at one point. But seeing your kids/partner/dog/own bed before 11pm is better. Much better. That's culture. We’ve fallen back in love with ourselves, and who we are, and where we come from, and found what's important to us.

So supporting your staff isn’t just about making their working life more tolerable, it's about making sure people can actually get home from work so their lives are more enjoyable. Joyful, even. No one minds a bit of hard graft but try to make it the exception rather than the rule. Let your crew know they won’t be working the weekend. Again. 

Humane Resource

Old skool HR was about protecting the bottom line of the business at any cost. Many of us have been on the wrong end of that. We creative types never read the small print do we? But good HR, or Humane Resource we like to call it, should be seriously hot on mental wellness not business wellness. In many ways, because it’s the right thing to do, but also because happy minds make better work. And that's what we all want, right? 

We’re in the middle of a systemic industry-wide problem regarding talent. It’s not just those who are leaving, it's the lack of joiners at the other end of the machine that is more worrying. By implementing the above, we can begin to make sure, as a sector, we are attractive enough to get the right mix of diverse talent into the business. And how do we retain the good people who we’re already training up to be the leaders of tomorrow? One very important way is to make sure the joy is still there. That love of ideas we all have inside us. Because if that's not what we’re celebrating every day. It’s just hours……