Lessons we learnt from the imaginary ‘new player in town’

By Jacqui Gage-Brown, Sep 24 2019

It’s easy for us to become bogged in the daily ‘doing’ and the grind of routine within our workplace.

Sometimes we don’t remember to look up from the deadlines that are looming, the clients we are pleasing (hopefully!), or the staff members we are collaborating with to take stock of what’s going on around us.

So that’s what we did at our Q4 (fourth quarter) off-site strategic planning session. The HGB crew headed up to South Bloc where the team at IT Partners loaned us their Garrison Room for our afternoon sesh.

The challenge to the team? There is a new player in town, the kind of cool kid that everyone wants to be like. What is it about this organisation that makes it special?

• What do they look like?
• How do they act?
• Where are they located?
• What makes them special?
• What services do they offer?
• How do they meet their customers’ needs?

Using our three pillars of customer experience (CX), employee experience (EX) and return on investment (ROI), we divided into teams to brainstorm answers that aligned with each of these pillars.

What we came away with

Well, apart from a huge list of inspiration, we also came away with a smile on our faces knowing that we could put ticks next to some of these items.

Customer Experience

• Our office presentation and internal ambience is great
• We have a diverse team, bring a wide perspective, skills and knowledge to the table, plus some fantastic partnerships with other expert providers
• We offer a range of solutions, but recognise we could also create more packaged solutions
• While we love building strategic marketing relationships, some clients just need us for project and design work, and we’re happy to accommodate this too

Employee Experience

• Our team greatly appreciates the flexibility we offer them for their hours
• We do need to arrange a quiet space, though (especially when 3pm karaoke rolls around!)
• We have a diverse workforce, and we want to better celebrate this!
• Wellbeing – yup, we have this two. Gym memberships, social club and supporting community projects such as the Wheelchair rugby and True Colours Children’s Trust
• Kylie and Ann still believe we need a wine rack
• And we are really trying to work on wider communication between our squads and avoiding working in silos

ROI

• We need to regularly review our software subscriptions, so we aren’t paying for things we’re not using
• Keep working on our systems and process (we’re going to have a one-week challenge where anything completed that week needs to be located in Process.St – a sure-fire way to see where our gaps are)
• Our team recognises why we have KPIs but we’re going to work to develop some that aren’t only billables focused!
• Like any business, we need to generate leads, manage our sales pipeline and prospect… watch this space!

What are you doing to stay ahead of the new player in town? If anything, this exercise was a great way for us to hear from our team as to what they’d like to see in their workplace.