We met with another professional services firm just before Christmas to commission a piece of work for ourselves.
It's always interesting to be on the other side of the table and experience the 'client' role. And always enlightening to have to look at your own business from a fresh angle and through new eyes. .
There were four or five bullet points up on the white board when we'd finished talking about our business goals. Top of the list was doing great work that we can be proud of and continuing to explore things at the leading edge. Not far behind was 'no growth' and 'limit staff numbers'.
The guys leading the workshop did a not-bad job of concealing both their cynicism and disdain for the writing on the wall, and who'd blame them? It's rare in our business culture for successful businesses to consciously choose to limit growth for the sake of doing really great work. And maybe hard for those in an aggressive growth mindset to understand that for us, staying small and keeping a very small team of only very talented people around us is the secret to doing great work.
And so I just loved this piece from the New York times about a Pizza business whose too-successful PR campaign led to queues outside the door and relentless demands from the outside for expansion.The Ma and Pop owners are sitting firm in their determination to open only four days a week, take as much time as they need to roll the dough (which Pop still does himself, and it takes as long as it takes to make it great) and refuse substitutions except on the basis of allergies.
Their take-it-or-leave it attitude is almost breathtaking in the customer-centric business culture we've all come to know and embrace (I actually gasped out loud at some of their comments in the interview),but the story really got me thinking some more about something that's been niggling me since GT downsized and Douglas left Big Ad Agency Central to bring us creative leadership.
Here at GT we talk a lot these days about the sorts of clients we want to work with, now that we're small enough and staffed so that we don't have to take on everybody who walks through the door. And we talk to clients a lot more about the way we work best - which may sound like it's the wrong way around, but in fact as in their best interests, if they want to get the best work out of us.
We tell them we're not the fastest in town - and we don't want to be the McDonalds of the advertising/PR world. If they want fast-food solutions they need to go somewhere else.
Sometimes (Douglas more than me, but then he does have that whole creative thing as an excuse) does want to roll the pizza dough longer than others would. And he insists on touching every bit of pizza dough himself, even if he is bringing in a carefully selected dough-shaper to work alongside him (but not replace him, cheaper) for a bit.
Every extra minute of rolling and each (often unscheduled) extra step in the process is worth it. Fast food solutions may satisfy a hunger for 'more, more, more, now, now, now', but in our game, when a client is investing significant moolah for the long haul, faster isn't always a good thing. No matter how much of a hurry they think they're in. Good creative processes that lead to outstanding work that is strong enough to endure just don't happen that way.
It's hard for others to understand, sometimes, that we don't want to focus on growing an empire for GT. Rather, we want to focus on just doing great work for clients and maintaining our own passion for the work so we can keep on doing that.
Long may Ma and Pop pizza roll that dough slowly.
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