House of Kaizen: Not Your Traditional Agency
By Matt Cronin, Founding Partner
We've been around for a long time as an independent company in the world of digital marketing services. Twelve years into our now 18+ year-old business, we realized it was time to reflect and refocus. That effort has fundamentally improved our business in a meaningful way.
First, we’ll back up to the beginning. As the widespread adoption of the internet has launched a significant social and intellectual evolution and gave birth to a new form of consumer engagement, we were among the pioneers who saw the opportunities in digital marketing and built the roads leading to them. We helped shape the market, write the rules, and educate the industry––at the time, as employees in someone else's company.Over time in a steadily growing market, many digital marketing businesses were simply rising with the tide. Traditional agencies still didn’t quite understand digital media, and clients were frustrated. They wanted more from everyone to push harder and to grow their business along with consumer demand. We believed there had to be a better way, so we built our own business with principles rooted in the original vision of what a digital agency should be: accountable, agile, and aggressively pursuing performance improvement.Over the years we’ve had ups and downs, but on the whole we’ve succeeded where it counts and where most others have not. We created new marketing opportunities, innovated upon old channels, expanded around the globe, and won big clients from bigger agencies.
Though we powered through the 2008 downturn, things eventually started to slow, and growth as our measure of success wasn't getting us where we wanted to be. In 2012 we knew we needed to innovate again. Fearing the industry was edging closer to stagnation, we identified a few key areas in our services that could reignite our own and our clients' pioneering spirit. We looked inside at who we are, not who we simply aspire to be for our clients. We looked back to our roots while also looking forward to new opportunities. As founders, we each consider this company a highlight of our careers––not for the accomplishments we've had, but for the fulfillment we intended to create amongst our team members.
Our industry is known for long hours, punishing timelines, and minimal appreciation––all things that we knew needed to change. It was at this time that we decided to re-interview each of our staff members in offices in New York City and London. We sought to understand what gets them out of bed each day, what 'fills up their cup,' and how their work contributes to their broader life plans. Through this process we began to evolve our culture into a community. Rather than assuming that the values of the founders can be imposed upon the team, we embraced the values of our team and made it a priority to support and elevate those. We had done a great job of hiring good people, but it wasn't until embracing this perspective that we were able to really empower them to be their best in life and at work.
Achieving this outcome required re-prioritizing our time and the amount of it we allow our team to invest in themselves. From there it became easy to implement programs and policies that directly improved our workplace and our team members' lives. For one, we quickly dispelled the false value of face time by giving individuals lots of autonomy with their work schedules and their location. We now emphasize responsibility and evaluate performance and productivity on specific contributions, not hours in the office. By giving our team more of their most valuable asset––time––we immediately saw improvements in the amount and quality of our work, as well as the satisfaction of those doing it. Further, we invested in services that can ease everyone’s efficiency at work and at home; we provide healthcare advice apps, subscriptions to valued products and services, and full benefits to part-time employees who wish to balance their personal interests alongside their profession.
Further, we allocate roughly 25% of our time to development. Based upon a 'roadmap' tied to peer reviews, team members can progress their careers in line with their objectives and the company's needs. Each person has the opportunity to attend internal and external training on subjects within or adjacent to their expertise, as well as on management and leadership. The ability to change roadmaps and explore another role within the firm is also encouraged.
In addition to encouraging individual development, we’re always exploring ways to improve as a company. We have weekly team-wide training sessions where we 'tear-down' real-life customer experiences and have blue-skies ideations on solutions to broaden our perspectives and keep us thinking creatively. Our monthly town hall meetings start with a reflection of our purpose to make House of Kaizen a better place to work and a place that works better. Next, team members volunteer their gratitude for the specific efforts of colleagues that they believe deserve wider recognition––an enlightening and encouraging exercise that we really enjoy.
Together we are a unique group that truly believes we can change the way work happens. We believe that our industry needs a renewal of the visionary, authentic, innovative and opportunistic spirit in which it was born. We can create value and be pioneers again. We can be better at the things most agencies overlook and do poorly, because they've become too big, too lazy or too slow. We can show them how it's done, all over again.We learn from trial and success, we always get better. This is adaptation, this is evolution, this is being "un-insane". With each new thing House of Kaizen does, our team and our clients benefit from the accumulated learnings and improvements of our experience.We share a core belief in the benefits of intellectual curiosity, of constant improvement. We come together in the place where that belief lives and grows every day. We believe marketers are pining for this passion and this leadership. We believe that in a commoditized market, people don't buy what we do they buy WHY we do it.Our WHY is the foundation of a long-term goal, a vision shared between the team and our clients: House of Kaizen exists to be a better place to work and a place that works better.