Phil Johnson, founder of Agency PJA
This is a great post from Phil, as usual. The idea of “culture” comes up for us often, too. As I read some of your examples of culture-establishing decisions, one recent event came to mind for Newfangled. We had been considering moving out of our current office space for a while. Our numbers were growing and we were running out of configuration ideas to keep the space workable and efficient. We had infrastructure challenges stemming from the old, but charming, building we’re in. Last spring, we decided that the time had come to finally move, so we began a search for new space. We eventually found some only a couple of miles away, but the configuration of offices was a bit more traditional. Moving there would require us to divide up our team in a physical way that we had never done before. We evaluated the cost of moving, both financially and to our culture, and came to the conclusion that staying put would be best for us. Rather than investing the tens of thousands it would have cost to relocate, we invested a fraction of that in renovating and making some furniture and configuration changes to our current space. The revitalization was wonderful, both as a response to the open, collaborative working culture we have, and as an investment in that culture’s future.
…Impressions may shape your opinion of the [agency] culture, but they don’t answer the big questions. How are we going to treat people? How far will we go for our clients? What will we do in order to win? How do we resolve conflict? Where do you find the balance between being nice and being great? How much crap are we willing to take? What’s the agency’s responsibility to society?
The answers to those questions tell you more about the culture of an agency than any of the shiny surfaces. They provide the operating instructions that determine how an agency responds to every situation and where the lines get drawn at decisive moments. To discover that knowledge you need to look into the history of an agency and identify those critical moments when someone made a decision that shaped how people will behave, what they believe, and where they will or will not compromise. In every agency’s life, there are a handful of those big moments, and they’re seldom the easy ones.
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