Will it blend?
Remember the good old days when you weren’t forced to have fun at work? When you could sit untroubled in a colorless cube all day and growl at anyone who came too close?
Good times, good times.
But then along came the consultants and everything was ruined. Realizing that fun could add to the bottom line through increased employee productivity and creativity, a depressing vogue for jocularity swept across the nation. Managers read absurd books like ‘The Levity Effect: Why It Pays to Lighten Up” and soon we were all glued to colored beanbags, forced to write emails in crazy Comic Sans and dreading the Monday morning banana bread bake-off with our co-workers.
We exaggerate (for comic effect, see?) but the point is that fun became far less fun when it morphed into explicit corporate strategy. And herein lies an important lesson for making ‘blending’ work.
Yes, at LBi we firmly believe that skillfully blending different disciplines together leads to more creative, more effective work. And yes, we’re banging on about it here to get the wheels in motion and introduce our preferred way of working. But we also know that we can’t force people to blend, either within our agency or with our beloved clients. Indeed, forced blending is worse than no blending at all – a tiresome imposition on our already busy working days.
So what can we do?
First, realize that blending is a culture, not a process. You need people who are up for it, who make blending infectious and unstoppable.
And today, we’re happy to reveal that we’ve developed a fool-proof test to identify potential blenders, the alpha employees of the future, wherever they work:
Do you like this?
If yes, congratulations – you are human and therefore a blender!
If no, I’m sorry – you are clearly a robot.
Easy, right? Wanting to blend is simple human nature. We clever people-monkeys are actually programmed to be sociable, to collaborate and find joy in sharing ideas. Sadly, though, years of treating business like trench warfare has trained us to think in boxes, in straight lines and in fear.
Blending is not something we need to create. It’s something we need to rediscover by stripping away the stuff that gets in the way. Here are three things that we believe inhibit blending – and brilliant work – every day.
1. Job Titles
Yes, we need to know what people’s jobs are. And it helps to know where we fall in the decision making process. However, it always amazes us that businesses look for inspirational, well-rounded people and then slap a business title on their head that deprives them of 90% of their creative capacity. Let people contribute wherever they can add value – the best idea wins, no matter where it comes from.
2. Corporate Babble
One minute we were having fun thinking up some cool ideas to make people fall in love with your brand. The next we’re agonizing to describe a ‘Global Brand Acquisition Creative Development Strategy for AB1 Millenials’ in bullet points. Enough said.
3. Politeness
We like that you’re nice to us. But we’re better when you tell us what you think. If an idea isn’t working for you despite our best efforts, be honest. Our shared ambition is to create brilliant work and we’d rather be thinking up new gems than, as a wise and eloquent man once said, ‘polishing turds’.
There are many more things to add to the list of subtractions. We’d love to hear your thoughts.
Ultimately, the thing about blending is that we all have to take personal responsibility for it. That seems somewhat ironic but it’s something that happens with you, not to you. The good news is that, for the most part, it involves doing less not more. So ask yourselves this – what can you cross off your ‘to do’ list tomorrow that will make the day blend a little better?
At LBi, we talk a lot about digital solutions that ‘add fun, value and interest to people’s lives’. Where better to start than with the way we work together?
