Digital technology has made people more efficient than ever before. As a result, the industry needs to shift from a closed to an open business model in a big way. Victors & Spoils' John Winsorwill explain the guiding principles needed for agencies to thrive in an open and abundant world.
Presenter: John Winsor, Chief Innovation Officer, Havas and CEO, Victors & Spoils @jtwinsor
Don’t look at employees as financial resources. An open agency should have a number of thought leaders at the top, a number of doers at the bottom and very few people in the middle. A model driven from the bottom-up.
Have once-a-month transparency meetings where everyone in the agency gets to see everything, from the work to the financials. With clients, be totally transparent on where things are and how to save money and time working together. Transparency is the fastest way to grow trust. The agency name is – World’s Fastest Agency and is comprised of a group of creatives in the industry from NYC.
It takes courage to change the way you do things. There is insecurity in creating an open agency. There are fewer places to hide. Focus on getting everyone on the team involved by inspiring and supporting them.
An open agency can be messy. It takes a committed team and a philosophy of ruthless agility. Move fast, fail fast. And once something works, build it fast. Whole paradigms will shift. Accept it. Take advantage of it.
Crowdsourcing scares the hell out of most agencies and holding companies. But it’s nothing more than a tool that allows ideas to come from anywhere – internally and externally. Set up digital and physical ideation sessions. Capture them digitally.
As the cost of making things drops, think about making things first. Build something. Make a prototype for a client instead of presenting it.
Blow up the world of closed meetings and hierarchy. Sit everyone at the same table. Hold meetings in the open. Think like a startup. Give before you get. Allow everyone to ask for forgiveness, not permission. Leave the culture-killing politics at the door.
A purpose will not only serve as a rallying cry to everyone in the company, but it will also be a lightening rod for the kind of thought leadership that leads to great client and talent recruitment.
Innovation needs the ability to pivot and fail. And then pivot again. Don’t make innovation an underfunded appendage. At the core of an open agency is changing before you are forced to change. IBM experienced extreme decline during the mid 1990’s – they were then about to transform their business model to focus on e-commerce, thus bringing about a company revival.
Underlying it all is the current misalignment of incentives. Open agencies must figure out how to be rewarded for the commercial impact of their work. A revolution in more open, aligned compensation models will drive many of the changes that need to be taken for open agencies to thrive.