This document provides an overview of the culture and practices at NixonMcInnes, a company with 20 employees in Brighton, UK. It emphasizes transparency, democracy, fairness and personal growth. Key aspects include open book accounting, democratic business planning, measuring employee happiness daily, and celebrating both successes and failures. The company has experienced strong growth and high retention rates while also facing challenges around stress, isolation when busy, and imperfections that come with transparency.

1. Making work
better
(sometimes)
@willmcinnes

2. This was us about a year ago
Now 20 people in Brighton, UK
PS. We are horribly imperfect – what follows is not
perfection, but it is an attempt to improve ‘normal’
business.

3. These two books inspired how
our company would behave. If
you haven’t, read them. They
are INSPIRING.

5. Brand/
PR Legal Client
advertising
Digital
Insight Engagement
SMS
Business
HR teams
(GBS/ BCE)
Nixon Our Customer atInternal
mission NixonMcInnes is to improve the
Other
service agency
McInnes relationships between large organisations and
comms
the people that matter to them.
We do this by helping these large organisations
become social businesses.

6. Datacopter
We like making things too.
This is a realtime visualization of tweets around a
Channel 4 programme called The Promise

7. The fun stuff

8. We value results – where you
work or when is less important to
us. Some people call this
ROWE.

9. The Wall of Win.
Because praise matters and
spontaneous P2P praise
matters most.

10. Someone gave Clive the
Shield of Win for being
excellent. Now he has to
pass it on.

11. Our clever technologists
built NMStereo – a
crowdsourced stereo
hooked up to Twitter
(currently broken :)

12. At ‘First Fridays’ we feed our brains
with talks from amazing speakers on
mental health, geodesic art, activism
and music, banking, improv etc etc.

13. Once a year we have the NM
Summer Camp – people
bring their partners, kids and
pets. Sitting around a fire is
good.

14. The tough stuff

15. Weekly KPIs
We operate Open Book Accounting:
everyone knows everything about the
finances. Each Monday morning, we see
the forecast at the team standup – no
secrets.

16. Everyone knows how much everyone else
earns…
Yep...

17. Budgeting and business planning are done
democratically (this is just an early stage
Business planning an away day)
idea generation session at

18. We create small, decentralised
sub-teams to deal with specialist
issues – there is a Rewards
Team to manage the annual
reviews process, for example
(toughest job in the company)

19. • Fair?
• Attractive?
• Equitable?
Ross published his Personal
Development Plan• on the blog. He
Affordable?
did Illustration at uni.

20. For two years we have measured happiness
every day using 3 buckets and a load of tennis
balls.
It creates a currency for discussion and
awareness.

21. On an away day a group came up with an
• NM church of fail
idea called ‘Church of Fail’ to celebrate
failing. People admit a failure, and the
congregation applaud.
It is weird. And cathartic.
No idea if it works.

22. Strange looking congregation.
Who is in the window?
• NM church of fail

23. Challenges

24. We are often very stressed.
People can feel isolated.

25. We are all very busy. Some of this nice stuff
is hard to hold onto when everything is a
rush.

26. UK employment law isn’t exactly friendly
towards progressive business practices.

27. People still don’t always tidy up after
themselves. Transparency is messy too. The
problems don’t go away – in fact they can
loom large.

28. Results?

29. We have an amazingly talented team, with
very high levels of personal growth and
retention. They rock.

30. We have been on the WorldBlu list of ‘Most democractic
workplaces’ for 3 or 4 years, and I recently wrote a book
about other progressive business practices at places like
Gore, HCL, Grameen and more.

31. 2012 was a good year
(but not an easy one)
Income growth 20.3%
Net margin 10.4%
Happiness 82%

32. Say hello!
@willmcinnes
nixonmcinnes.co.uk
Culture Shock available today
for pre-order on Amazon