Each week we'll be highlighting what Digital Agencies in the Bureau community are excited about. This week we take a look at the biggest lessons we've learned from working during the pandemic. To find out even more ways it helped, check out this week's newsletter:
Gene Crawford:
Welcome to the first, not really the first, but the first as far as we're concerned, Bureau Briefing. What's up, Carl?
Carl Smith:
Nothing much. So we've done a 100+ of these before, Gene.
Gene Crawford:
Whatever.
Carl Smith:
You know what? Here's the thing, they all sucked. Apologies to those guests, you were horrible.
Gene Crawford:
Something is mysteriously showing up in your podcast feed, and you're like, "What are these two jokers doing?"
Carl Smith:
So, welcome back.
Gene Crawford:
Welcome back. We are going over the weekly Bureau newsletter that Carl painstakingly puts this thing together every week for you, and it's a good read so we thought it would be awesome to just go through it and pull this stuff out as color commentary.
Carl Smith:
That I actually cared about. You know what? Gene, I would like for you to know that the word newsletter is actually one word. People say, "newsletter." And folks, if you haven't heard Gene and I together before, this is the type of passive-aggressive and direct attacks you can expect.
Gene Crawford:
Lots of lessons you can bring back to your own company.
Carl Smith:
You're welcome.
Gene Crawford:
All right, man. What you've been doing this week, what you're just wrapping up?
Carl Smith:
Biz Dev Camp. We had the first Biz Dev Camp a month and a half ago, and we had enough people on the waiting list to have a second one, so I was like, "All right, well, let's do a second one." I'm so glad that we did, man, because Monday and Tuesday spending it with 24 people who are Biz Dev professionals and digital services and just helping each other, it was great. Actually, that fed the newsletter this week with, one session that we had was all around things that changed during the pandemic in the way that they approached Biz Dev and also working with their teams and that sort of stuff. I have to say, the stuff that I shared in the newsletter, we should have been doing it anyway, so it's nice that the pandemic forced us into being better humans in the way that we work together. That's what this week has been. What have you been up to?
Gene Crawford:
It forced you into being better humans.
Carl Smith:
What have you been up to Gene?
Gene Crawford:
Man, getting ready for this? I'm excited. I'm excited to be part of this. You can go look it up, we did a podcast Biz Craft for years and it was one of my favorite things and I'm just pumped to get back into this with you.
Carl Smith:
Let's go. What are we doing?
Gene Crawford:
Well, let's go through that. What are the biggest lessons you've learned from working during the pandemic? And like you said, you pulled these out of the Biz Dev Camp discussions. This is a good list of stuff, so let's just break it down real fast.
Carl Smith:
We've got 10 things on this list that's in the newsletter. I would say we maybe pick a few, like maybe we alternate and just pick the ones that mean the most to us. I'm going to start with the one that's at the top there, and let's face facts, I put the list together, so this was when I actually cared about the things I was putting there, not just trying to get to 10. The first one, "Be generous." I love this because it wasn't around so much about give more of your time or give more of this or give more of that. It was about being generous with clients.
Gene Crawford:
Ooh.
Carl Smith:
That was a big part of it. And it was like, you know what? They're going through shit too, and obviously, we're all at a different point. We all started the pandemic together, but we're all at different parts of the pandemic now.
Carl Smith:
For example, we have people in the community that are in India and India is just really suffering right now with the pandemic and they can't get the vaccine. So it's like, be generous is about understanding everybody's in a different place. It's about giving things that maybe you wouldn't normally give, or I had somebody had to cancel something last second last week and normally I would have been like, "Damnit," but instead it was like, "Hey, you know what? Not a problem. I have no idea what that person's going through," so be generous for me was just a huge one.
Gene Crawford:
That is a good one. That's a good lesson. I liked, let's see, "Be flexible. Process is not a person." I get stuck myself working with other people where it's like, they get so rigid. You have this process for building things. You have this process for client discovery or whatever, and we just get so stuck in that. Sometimes it's like we could solve all this with just a simple phone call. You know what I mean? I don't need to go through all eight steps. I can just stop it two. Now, I know there's value in sticking to your process. There's lots of things that come out of it when you're not expecting, but I thrive on being flexible.
Carl Smith:
I think that's a huge one because I even remember back in the Engine days where we started getting so process focused that we lost a project and the client said, "I love that you had a process, I just felt like it was an assembly line," and we were never going to be able to make something that worked for us. Instead, we were going to put a logo on a widget based on how you always built stuff. And so I think that's huge.
Carl Smith:
Another thing that we talked about at Biz Dev Camp was that it also, all of these depend on the context of where you are in your organization. Being a good human, that's regardless. But in terms of being flexible, sometimes it's based on how much cash you have in the bank, like how flexible can you be or do you have to be more flexible to make things happen?
Gene Crawford:
Absolutely.
Carl Smith:
One that's huge for me and I'm not great at, "Communicate clearly, concisely, and frequently."
Gene Crawford:
I'm terrible at that.
Carl Smith:
It is the worst for me, and it's one of those funny things you consider that most of what I do is facilitate other conversations. I'm just like a conduit trying to get things through, and half the time I'm looking over here to see what's in the chat, and half the time I'm looking over here to see who's got their hand raised, and the whole time I'm trying to really listen. Exactly. Exactly. I mean, heaven help me, my mom forgets that I'm doing something, so she's calling, "Why aren't you answering?"
Carl Smith:
But I think the, communicate clearly, concisely, and frequently, I actually wrote that on a post-it note and I'm keeping it close to me because when I work, even though it's me and Laurie for the most part now, man, I miscommunicate all the time. So, I think that is a huge one. And a lot of that one is work from home, and if you've always worked in a distributed team, you knew you had to communicate more. But I think even post-pandemic, we've got to, as people who are collaborating, make sure we say what we mean, make sure we say it frequently, and make sure that we say it in a concise manner.
Gene Crawford:
I wonder if this came up. I wonder what the value everyone puts on writing, being able to clearly and concisely write. I find that to be a skill that's dying anyway these days.
Carl Smith:
I want to say that it touched almost every session, especially when we started talking about finding new people to bring on the team and we started saying, "What are the criteria for these people?" Because there is no tougher role to fill in a company, specifically in a digital services shop, than Biz Dev. There's a legacy of work. There's a legacy of successes and losses that are locked up in a founder's head. Somebody new comes in, gets given a screen and said, "This is what we need." They bring in something, "Well, it fit the screen, but honestly we lost our ass two years ago on this," and they're just like, "What?" But the criteria that people talked about was communication and specifically written communication because handoffs, right?
Gene Crawford:
That's so important.
Carl Smith:
Being able to communicate clearly and concisely with the client and with the team, and from a founder's perspective, that founder has to be able to do it. I mean, it was huge.
Gene Crawford:
That's awesome.
Carl Smith:
Communication is the root, well, let's say this, bad communication is the root of almost every problem when you start digging into why a shop's not working well.
Gene Crawford:
How much of that communication wasn't, I mean, we're talking about project communication and facilitating communication, but what about just personal, "Here's where my brain is on this stuff. Here's how I feel today," communication?
Carl Smith:
I want to say that leads to another one of the things to keep after the pandemic. Another one of the lessons learned. I'm just going to read this one out. It's the only one I actually cut and paste because it was written so well, it was in the chat. "The definition of professionalism has changed. Noisy backgrounds, children and pets coming into frame and 9:00 to 5:00 work hours should be embraced." I think it connects with another one, which is, "Clients are people with families, friends, and challenges outside of work." Because a lot of times we're just like, "Why didn't they go dark?" Like, "Why are they not answering this DM? I need this input so that we can keep working." But you know what? Maybe they're dealing with a health issue. Maybe it's a mental health issue. Maybe they've got a challenge internally.
Carl Smith:
I think to your point, we need to communicate about things that aren't necessarily even work-related. I think that's a huge one. I want plug Project Inkblot for a second because something that they do. These are the diversity coaches that we work with. One of the things they do every time we have a meeting is everybody starts the meeting by saying, "Are you bringing anything into the meeting?" And what that means is I can say, "Yeah, you know what? I got in a disagreement with my wife this morning and so my brain's still wrapped around that and what I did wrong, what I could have done better. So, that's what I'm bringing in." And somebody else might say, "I did not sleep well last night." Somebody else might say, "I am whistling Dixie out of my butt." At which point I would say, "What does that even mean [crosstalk 00:10:17]"-
Gene Crawford:
I would say, "Let's hear it. I need a demo."
Carl Smith:
So it's not always negative, but I think to your point, communication isn't just about work, isn't just about that. I mean, we have to share with each other where we are, because otherwise, because we are self-centered carbon-based life forms, I'm going to think Gene was really pissed at me today and I don't know what I did. When the reality is he just woke up and realized he was Gene again.
Gene Crawford:
We talk about how whenever we're reading an email, we tend to put in our own emotions and state of mind. We do that when we talk to people too. Email just exposes it easier, I think, but we do it when we're just interacting.
Carl Smith:
This came up in Account Manager Camp, Account Management Camp. I don't even know the names of these damned things anymore. But one of the conversations was, oh my God, what the hell were we just talking about? I cracked myself up. Oh, it was about forms of communication.
Gene Crawford:
Yes.
Carl Smith:
And one of the things we talked about was, if you're worried about the tone, don't make it an email. If you're worried about the tone, make it a phone call-
Gene Crawford:
That's right.
Carl Smith:
... make it a video call, make it whatever.
Gene Crawford:
That's right.
Carl Smith:
This is just a little side note, but on communication as well. Some people don't like to be on video. Some people, I mean, it's a thing for them. One person mentioned that they had a team member who never liked to be on phone calls. They wouldn't get on phone calls and they found out later that person had a really bad stutter. It was just something they did not want to have to reveal or work through with that team-
Gene Crawford:
Wow.
Carl Smith:
... so written communication. I think if there's one lesson that we take away from this it's that, at the beginning of the pandemic, as bad as everything was, we all had something in common and it showed the human side of everyone. If you were at work, if you were at a soccer game with a kid who now has to play six feet apart [inaudible 00:12:17], whatever that meant, I don't even know what I'm doing now. But it's like we all realized, "Oh, shit. We're all in this together." Except for the state of Florida because we just refuse to acknowledge it.
Gene Crawford:
We're not too far behind you man.
Carl Smith:
Thanks, South Carolina.
Gene Crawford:
Always picking up the rear. All right, bro, moving on here. What was one of the coolest things from this week or most interesting thing came from the Slack channels?
Carl Smith:
If you're a member of the Bureau, you're in the Bureau of Slack and this thing is like crazy active. We have hundreds of people all the time sharing things, talking through things. And one of the things is we have a Share channel, we've got a Collaboration channel. We have all these different channels. I'm not sure where this got put, it might've got put in the Share channel, but under the Tools and Resources category, there's an API connector for Google Sheets.
Gene Crawford:
I saw that link. You dropped that in the email.
Carl Smith:
I promise, everybody, it's not going to be this just benign going forward. I'm going to use medical terms to describe the link. It's not going to be this boring going forward, but people, they were pretty excited-
Gene Crawford:
It's exciting.
Carl Smith:
... to check this out because this API connector for Google Sheets is allowing people to create dashboards, pulling in analytics from different places. That link is in the newsletter, so sign up for it. Are you catching on now? Sign up for the newsletter. It's what I'm saying.
Gene Crawford:
There's way more stuff in there.
Carl Smith:
I don't care about anything else.
Gene Crawford:
I mean honestly, this would be like a two-hour podcast if went through everything.
Carl Smith:
Oh my goodness. It's ridiculous. I would say that API connector for Google Sheets, and I'm sure you can just search that. But that seemed to be one that a lot of people were clicking on there.
Gene Crawford:
That was pretty hot. I mean, I went there too. I would scan through it and I was like, "Ooh, I can use that. That's a good one." All right. We've got that one out of the way, but what was another good link out of here?
Carl Smith:
I'm just going to plug it because it's a book that I love. There's a link I put in there. Hey, it's my show. Go to hell. I can promote my own stuff. The Starfish and the Spider: The Unstoppable Power of Leaderless Organizations, this book really changed my life when I read it because I realized it was okay to own something and not lead it. I really think I probably became a leader the day I stopped trying to be a leader because I gave other people room to grow. I wasn't casting a shadow that kept them all just sitting there working and knowing that I had everything covered. But the core concept of the book is it goes through history, it looks at the Vikings, it looks at nature. It looks at business like Napster, and it shows you that when an organization-
Gene Crawford:
That wasn't a business.
Carl Smith:
Well, was it?
Gene Crawford:
I know. I know it was.
Carl Smith:
Or, was it? Now, eDonkey, no.
Carl Smith:
But basically just that if something is running without a leader, it can run a lot more effectively if it's structured that way, and not just holacracies and things of that nature, but the other part of it is, if it is run by a community, then it can run on its own. A spider, if you knock off the head, the spider dies. A starfish, if you cut it in half, you have two starfish. For me with the Bureau, it's just a perfect analogy because this is what in Engine days I was striving for, was just a bunch of people helping each other out and making it self-sustaining. That was a huge one.
Carl Smith:
On a health and wellness tip, I just want to plug really quickly, there's an article in there that was shared, "Going From I Tried to I Didn't Give Up." I don't want to get too into it, but-
Gene Crawford:
It's a long read.
Carl Smith:
There's some heavy stuff in there.
Gene Crawford:
Pretty heavy.
Carl Smith:
Very heavy stuff in there about just getting to a place of stable, getting to a place of okay. And so if you're struggling with stuff, this article may be something you want to you read, just so you see that you're not on your own. If you really struggling with stuff, definitely find support. But that one touched me and reminded me, hey, you know what? I'm not doing so bad.
Gene Crawford:
There's a lot of folks that aren't okay right now coming out of this stuff and business leaders too.
Carl Smith:
It's okay to not be okay, but then the question is for how long?
Gene Crawford:
Well, you want to be chronically not okay.
Carl Smith:
Was I always like this and the pandemic just made it all right?
Gene Crawford:
I don't know. The world crumbled around you. All right, man. What about a hot take from the week, what you got for me?
Carl Smith:
Hot take from the week. I was in a call yesterday with the team that is putting on Beyond Diversity, which is one of our events. I am the white guy in the room with five people of color. So, I think my hot take is we got to this point in the conversation yesterday about how the event's going to go, and there's one part of the event where we want to make sure everyone can speak completely open openly, openly, that I'm getting nervous talking about it right now. For that to happen, we might have to put people in a room of people like them, so there may end up being a BIPOC and a white room. I was getting really tense. I could feel it. I was like, "Eh, there's something about this separation that doesn't feel like we're bringing people together," and we had this amazing conversation around it.
Carl Smith:
I think what I realized, and this hot take, and this was something that Eric, who's part of the team, said, "Is I have to take off my whiteness and put on my humanity." My hot take is that even when I feel like I'm doing the right thing, I've still got my white on and there's still things that are going to hit me a certain way. The hot take is I got to take a step back and look at myself and say, "Why? Why are you feeling that way? Why are you doing it this way?" And I just want to thank everybody on the Project Inkblot Team and the Beyond Team, because we had such a great conversation and I learned so much, like I always do. I learn so much about myself-
Gene Crawford:
That's awesome.
Carl Smith:
... just hanging out with them.
Gene Crawford:
It's hard to re remove that opposite of humility.
Carl Smith:
Well, I mean, it is entitlement, but I think it even goes beyond that to not even realizing that you're holding onto something. You know?
Gene Crawford:
Which is basically to realize you don't know what you don't know.
Carl Smith:
And you need somebody who is experienced in it to share it with you.
Gene Crawford:
Or nice enough to share it with you not blow you off.
Carl Smith:
And not so exhausted that they quit trying.
Gene Crawford:
That's what I meant. You said that in a very good way. That's what I was trying to say. Exactly.
Carl Smith:
That's why we're a good team. You don't have a great idea and I make it my own.
Gene Crawford:
All right. What's coming up, man. What's next?
Carl Smith:
Ah, let's see.
Carl Smith:
Actually Beyond. We've got a couple of workshops coming up, but they're all sold out, so why talk about that? But the Beyond Diversity event is what's coming up next and-
Gene Crawford:
The 24th and 25th of this month.
Carl Smith:
See, that's why you're on the show-
Gene Crawford:
Boom.
Carl Smith:
... because I don't know any of that.
Gene Crawford:
I got you.
Carl Smith:
The 24th and 25th and this is an event if you are ready to build a strong foundation for real change, if you're really ready to create a company that doesn't look like you, this is the place to come and start.
Gene Crawford:
Cool.
Carl Smith:
This event is going to get real about the challenges that BIPOC employees have, and it's going to have the challenges that white founders and owners and leadership have and BIPOC leadership have, and white employees have. It's really going deep in that first day on a lot of these challenges. We're also going to have wellness check-ins-
Gene Crawford:
Ooh.
Carl Smith:
... to make sure, "Everybody feeling all right? How is this going?" That's the next thing we've got going. I really encourage everybody to get in there if you're ready. I mean, having a DEI council is great, but talking about stuff and building a path forward are two completely different things. So if you're ready to kind of keep it moving, join us.
Gene Crawford:
That's strong, man. I like that. Well, until next time, we should be doing this again next week-
Carl Smith:
There we go.
Gene Crawford:
... so, let's get it done.
Carl Smith:
As long as there's a newsletter, there's a podcast.
Gene Crawford:
Well, that the ...
Carl Smith:
Gene, thank you, first of all. I just appreciate you being here and offering to be the producer of the show.
Gene Crawford:
Love it.
Carl Smith:
And plus, it's just so much fun to punch sideways and know that I'm going to connect.
Gene Crawford:
All right. All right. Take it easy.
