It was a Wednesday morning when I left my grey cubicle at my old corporate office for the last time. I pushed the smoked glass doors open and into the sunshine, and set off for uncharted agency waters.

I “dashed” down to Dashboard. Through the front door was a sunny, open work space. I was literally met by everyone around a large lunch table for the monthly barbeque. I was immediately handed a beer, a burger, and was the recipient of a warm hug.  After lunch, I was shown my desk, situated in front of the record player and in full view of the ping pong table.  New waters indeed…

My initial work-culture shock has worn off and over the course of the past few weeks I have gleaned many more treasures, tales, and tidbits from these new waters… Here are a few I’d like to share:

1. Take everything you know about target audiences, channels, and tactics and throw it out the window. If you’ve been on the client-side for a while you’ve been selling the same stuff to the same people, probably in the exact same way season after season, year after year.  You will now be selling things you’ve never sold before to audiences you were never even aware of, so you’ll now need to add shiny new tools to your trusty (and probably rusty) toolbox of tactics.
2. Take everything you know about agency-client relationships and post them on mental sticky notes everywhere. Remember that time you asked for a wireframe walk-through and it came back as a 2-hour word association brainstorm?  Remember the time you were covering for your co-worker’s 3-week vacation, were brand new to a line of business, trying to launch a major seasonal campaign within the week, and your account executive called you and said “hey, I know you’re busy, so I just wanted to reach out and let you know we’re here”? Take all these memories.  The good. The bad. The ugly. Remember them every time you pick up the phone, send off an email, or book a meeting with a client. Remember the Good.  Be the Good.
3. Work hard. Play hard. Then work harder. And smarter.
4. DO sweat the small stuff. Details. Details. Details. That missed apostrophe on a Facebook post on your client’s brand page might just be one little missed curved line, but it’s also the little missed curved line that now distinguishes the quality of work you and your agency produce.
5. Words and phrases I’ve heard and said more in the past month than I have in my whole life: “Let’s re-group”, status report, status document, work flow, retainer, “Check the Wiki”, digital roadmap, COG, phased approach, table stakes (and anytime someone says this, I picture steaks), “let’s revise the deck”, tout, transactional, “content is king”, methodology, high-level, eblast, bolt-on, scope creep, “Can you open a docket?”, value prop, value add, Newwwwwws Feeeeed, discovery/exploration stage, competitive set, focus split, lead gen., execution plan, asset hand off, “beyond the brief”, BCR, end-user, and any of the following combinations: consumer/user/partner/branded + journey/path/experience/flow, aaaaaaand burrito

Lastly, when people ask me what agency life is like, I use the analogy of a painting.   There is a balance of broad, colourful, imaginative ideating, set within the framework of strategic thinking and careful assessment. What I’ve discovered is that I work in waters where beauty, innovation, and inspiration can be found every day.

Here at Dashboard we take a slightly different approach to office spaces.  Let me just give you a little description to set the scene from my desk.

As I write this I can hear the sounds of a heated ping pong game being played behind me, as well as the faint sound of ABBA’s “SOS” coming from a record player in the corner.  If I look straight ahead I can see the smile of a giant ceramic pig peeking out from behind an absent co-workers computer.  When I look to my left I see a sitting area with a bright red couch and records scattered over a coffee table.  Needless to say this is not the description of a mundane grey cubicle littered office.  (I realize after writing this that I have made it seem as though we don’t get anything done, let me assure you this is not the case)

They say that one of the main things influencing creativity is your environment.  I can confidently say that this is not a problem for us.

Admiring our unique office space caused me to wonder about other offices, surely we can’t be the only one without cubicles and beige walls, and…through a little googleing I found out I was in fact right.  So, here are some other companies I came across with unique and inspiring work atmospheres.

Pixar

Red Bull London

Google

Mindlab

And my personal favourite – The Lego office in Denmark

After 10 years in business, this means something. It isn’t a statement about the company, but rather the people that make dashboard who and what we are. We are our clients. We are our partners. We are our staff. They are the “we” that make us great. I love that all of our guests at the party left with a “we are dashboard” coffee mug. I love it because everyone that attended the party has played a part in our success during the past decade. They are dashboard. Thank you to everyone who came last week and thank you to all who sent their best wishes. For everyone who came and for everyone who wanted to come, check out the photos from the party. A special thank you to Michael Banasiak for supplying the gear for our photo booth.

This morning my alarm clock went off at 6:30am.  Like usual, I rolled over to hit the snooze button for another quick 10 minute nap.  It’s not enough that I hit it once, but two more times, for a total of 30 minutes of my morning ritual. This has been going on for the past 3 years, I’ve thought of many things during that 30 minute morning ritual, sometimes I think:  “What excuse should I use to call in sick with?”… Ok, maybe only just a few times but who’s kidding who? I work at Dashboard!

Dashboard is different from any other company I have worked with.  It’s not because of the free coffee, two giant monitors on my desk, or this kick ass chair that I’m sitting in as I write this, but because of this…

1. The main reason I love working at Dashboard is, you guessed it, the staff! I have the best coworkers bar none!  Yes that’s right, here at Dashboard the staff is just like one giant dysfunctional family. We have Franz Tan who isn’t embarrassed to eat the last piece of food (I will never forget that piece of chocolate you ate after I was eyeing it up!). Also a part of the Dashboard family is Aniesha Mohammed who always supports me on projects even when they run into weekends and late nights.
2. Potlucks. Yes, we love potlucks…or maybe just food in general. This is where we get to share a good laugh, and have fun together while we experience different kinds of food not served on our own tables at home.  As an added bonus is we are all pretty darn good cooks!
3. When I first started at Dashboard I dreaded failing. It wasn’t until my first mistake that I learned something. I’m not perfect! Coding is one giant experiment to me. I’ve wasted countless hours trying to code an experiment 10 different ways, only to find out 9 out of 10 are bunk! Without making the attempt, I would have learned nothing. So the advice I have to you is to fail, and fail fast!
4. I’m not a just a number here. I started here with no experience in the industry, and now I’m responsible for launching and maintaining sites for major clients. Sure, projects go through a number of different people before they roll out, but everyone who works on projects here gets personally involved in its success – and gets to feel a real sense of ownership throughout the process. That’s something I don’t think I could get at a lot of places.
5. I get to be myself. Some employers ask that you wear a suit and act in ways that might stifle your creativity but here at Dashboard you can shine on you crazy diamond. Don’t get me wrong, we are still consummate professionals, but thinking differently is something that is highly encouraged here.

Sound good to you? Yes? Well you’re in luck, we’re hiring.

I love when other entrepreneurs and colleagues are succeeding. I appreciate what they have achieved and what they have endured to develop their craft, win clients and build their agencies. Don’t get me wrong, I want to kick their ass in a pitch, but if we don’t win, I sincerely want them to win. In fact, we often receive rfp’s or opportunities that we have to turn down for a variety of reasons. We recommend other agencies for those clients. Equally, we’ve been recommended by our competition when the shoe was on the other foot.

Why am I writing about this topic? Recently, there have been lay-offs and some office closures. I hate seeing this, whether the agency is independent or part of a network. Great people can be found in every agency. Nice people can be found in every agency. Hard working people can be found in every agency. At the end of the day, every person in every agency is paying rent or their mortgage, worrying about their family and kids and, ultimately, wondering what they’ll do next. It’s a terrible position to be in and I’d hate to be facing that same position. At the end of the day we need to remember that friendliness, compassion, respect and empathy should always be immediately behind any competitive spirit. Our industry is at its’ best when we all want to win and we all win often enough to find ourselves fighting each other again over the next pitch. So, we intend to kick your ass, but if we can’t win, we hope you do.

Given my longer posts recently, this one will be short. I love countdowns and I love that they begin at the number 10. I love countdowns because they usually lead to a launch that holds the promise of exploration, knowledge and new opportunities. As we hit our 10^th anniversary and launch our new rebrand, I expect this of us. I expect that after this launch we will learn more about ourselves and to seek and explore new opportunities. We hope that our launch provides you the opportunity to explore our work and our company, to gain knowledge about our culture and to see us in greater detail for who we are and what we do. We’d love to hear from you. You’ll find lots of ways to reach out on our website or you can always pop in for a coffee.

P.S. We’ll be following up with a big bash to our blast off with a launch party. We’d love you to come. Just email me if you’d like an invite. Barry@dashboard.ca. We’d love to meet you.

Where’d the time go?

Have you ever found yourself so engrossed in whatever you were doing to find yourself look up and realize that the day was almost over? You suddenly realize how much was accomplished. Suddenly we looked, in a moment of pause, to realize that Dashboard was turning ten. Ten! To look around the agency that we are today and reflect on who we were back in January of 2001 and what we’ve experienced since that time, is an amazing and interesting reflection. Through the highs and lows, we emerged as a strong agency with a world-class roster of clients and a collective of talent that is the envy of every agency in the Country.

Over the years, many people that didn’t know our name were shocked when they saw the work that we had produced. They were even caught off guard when they realized the strength of our client roster. Over the years, more people came to know us, but our work continued to surprise. I’ve been surprised at how much Dashboard has affected me and how it has guided me professionally and personally. Co-workers are usually surprised to realize that they aren’t working in an agency, but are working within a family while benefitting from friends who are also mentors professionally. We have experienced good and bad times, but integrity was never questioned and hard work was never averted, nor our desire to create great work. Each person pushed themselves and others to be better. The collective was stronger than the individual, but we still wanted that individual’s perspective to make its’ mark on the work and the agency.

I’ve said in the past that the strongest agencies that have made their mark in our industry really broke out between their 9^th and 11^th year in business. They did great work before this, but they were on fire between 9 and 11 years old and they exploded in the following years as industry leaders. Knowing what I now know, it is because they built the systems, hired the talent, and created the base for domination, not just growth. They developed personalities that were unique and true to themselves to create a unique story that appealed to both clients and employees. They evolved, but they never lost touch as to who they were in their heart of hearts. They understood their soul, even though their appearance changed.

When I look around our agency, I know that we are becoming the agency that we are capable of being. An agency that will make its’ mark in our industry. This is why in the fall of 2010, we began work internally to rebrand our agency to better reflect our work, our people, our passion and the agency that we have become. From humble beginnings, we have become an agency that has won national and international awards, built friendships, established innovations in technology and creativity and risen to compete with the best agencies in Canada. We can look around proudly knowing that our story isn’t complete, but just starting.

We have been looking back, but in doing this, we know that it is our future course that provides the real excitement and opportunity for Dashboard. Next week, there will be new face to Dashboard. We are rebranding for the next ten years with a new logo, collateral and a new website. Our core is unchanged. We know and understand our soul, even as our appearance changes.  The people at Dashboard are our strength and we are ready to create the next chapter for Dashboard. Next week you will discover why we are dashboard.

It’s good to be Canadian…

Being a Canadian and independently owned company can be a negative at times. For instance, many clients seek a global company with multiple offices to coordinate a broad, global strategy. Those multi-national agencies also have deep pockets in bad times. While they are concerned about quarterly profits, they also protect their investments over the long term. But, there are times when it’s good to be an independent. For instance, many global clients want the secret sauce that comes from small, boutique shops. Many people want to work at a company that treats employees like family, especially in hard times. Also, we tend to be nimble and not connected to management that is making and basing critical decisions for Canadian offices based on market conditions in New York or London.

In spite of the past two years, 2010 seemed to be a year of recovery… but maybe not. We thought things were getting better… but maybe not. Depending on the day, week, month, you read how a big turnaround was just around the corner. Then you flipped the page and found out that a critical piece of the economy dove tailed and we were potentially facing the “OMINOUS W”. Needless to say, I’ve been a big believer in two personal guides to the direction of the economy. The first is my clients’ business. If they are seeing improvement across the various categories that we manage, then my confidence in the general economy improves. My second guide is from my Father and two Brothers. They work in structural steel plants and they are my “canary” in the economic coal mine. They feel the surge and the retreat very quickly in a pick-up or slow-down. And in 2010 their hours at the factory started to improve dramatically. These two guides provided reasons why my confidence level was guarded, but high on the economy continuing to improve.

This attitude was also due to our new business efforts over the past few years adding some great clients to our roster, including the Atlantic Lottery Corporation, Mother Parkers, ING Direct, Torstar, Due North (Milk, H&R Block, LCBO, 3M), Sharpe Blackmore (Home Hardware), Dentsu (Toyota) and John Street (Tetley). Our previously existing clients were expanding again and our offices were truly full. You can never throw caution to the wind, especially when you have staff that count on you for their mortgages, rent and so on. But you also can’t be fearful when opportunity presents itself. We began discussing expansion again in the summer of 2010 and negotiated an additional floor in our building.

Through 2009 and 2010, many of the multi-national agencies maintained hiring freezes, regardless of the amount of work the agency maintained at the time. This meant two things; we had exceptional talent looking for better opportunities to help build and grow their own careers and make a mark in an agency and, it also meant that we could pursue business with the knowledge that we could get the right talent to grow Dashboard, as opposed to finding bodies to fill positions. We could grow without hurting our clients. In fact, we could increase our talent base substantially for the entire agency.

We used this time to our advantage and continued to bring on extremely talented staff on board. In January, 2010 we hired Catherine Baird as Associate Creative Director. She was formerly co-creative lead at Henderson Bas and had returned from an agency in Paris. She was on contract in late 2009 and we felt she would be a creative leader to really accelerate our growth and work. Catherine brought her former partner at Henderson Bas to Dashboard, Julie Stolberg in early 2010. We were creatively armed with world class senior and junior talent. Tim Arney left Dashboard for personal reasons (we still stay in touch, but miss him) and we brought Ralph Reefke on board as head of Technology. Ralph had worked at MacLaren McCann for the past 10 years and he rounded out our leadership team. Our entire leadership team maintained substantial credentials at some of the top agencies in Canada and the world. As fall approached, we were ready to expand into new territories with an additional floor and expanded client base. Dashboard was finishing the decade stronger than ever.

Good Management in Bad Times…

When a door closes, a window opens. As Chris departed, it was time to re-evaluate the company and our goals. Dashboard was always growing and we could re-evaluate the future with a fresh re-start in 2008. Since the beginning, I had always written a business plan for the business. This is something that I’d recommend for any entrepreneur because it helps guide you with an established strategy and it serves to remind you of the core goals you’ve set and the results you expect to achieve. I used this time to shift our organization structure and invest in senior talent. It would cost, but I believed that this was a necessary step to grow the future.

Part of our growth goals was to expand our client base beyond Unilever and Toyota. We love these clients, but we maintained 80% of our business between these two clients and 5 brands. It was a level of exposure that didn’t make business sense as we could be in trouble if we lost one or more. To help us with this, we brought on Brian Steinhauser to head up our New Business and aggressively begin looking for good fits with Dashboard. This was the first time since 2003 that we actively sought new business beyond referral.

I also pondered my own position as President and decided to re-evaluate my role. It goes back to my earlier blog where I mentioned learning about learning the difference between being an employee and a shareholder. As a shareholder, I wanted the company to grow beyond myself as an employee. Now, many entrepreneurs have trouble stepping aside and letting other people step in to guide the company that they created and lost sleep over. It’s natural and understandable, but in many cases, it’s limiting. Had I not started an agency when I was younger, I would have gained experience in larger agencies that would have helped me in key areas of leadership, establishing process and much, much more. Instead, I gained invaluable experience in understanding financials, launching a start-up, establishing bank relationships and much, much more. Each direction had tremendous value and anyone, depending on the time and opportunity, will likely face this choice with a fork in the road of their career.

Needless to say, the routes of agency executive vs. agency entrepreneur are two different paths and skill-sets. Recognizing this, I decided to step aside as President and bring in someone who had taken that larger agency path to help lead Dashboard into the next growth phase. I invested in bringing on Daryl Aitken, a former EVP, Managing Director at BBDO and then Head of Marketing at ebay. Our skill sets complemented one another very well and Dashboard was stacked for growth.

Bringing on someone of Daryl’s stature would cost Dashboard in the form of some ownership, but it was well worth it since we would have the best of both worlds between herself and myself… entrepreneurial soul with institutional savvy and experience. In addition, we added Gayle Lunn as our head of Client Service. She had agency and client experience and we wanted someone that wanted to grow with the company and put a serious mark on our brand. This team, with the addition of Brian Steinhauser and having promoted Tim Arney to head up our Technology gave us a strong experienced leadership base to grow our clients and expand our client base beyond Unilever and Toyota.

All of the changes in 2008 proved to be wise as the world experienced the worst market crash in September, 2008 since the Great Depression. All of our clients and almost every business in the world pulled back dramatically. Fortunately, we had begun our new business efforts as we would need to rely on them heavily in the following two years. There is a saying that you never recognize bad management in good times, but good management in bad times rises to the surface quickly. Tough times were certainly ahead of us.