Lessons In Business. #Productivity

Let’s ‘unpack’ #productivity.

With nine staff in the stable, we often discuss productivity because it’s an important part of agency life on many levels. For the client they like to see momentum and their projects moving forward; for the team we need to be clear about our roles and who does what and when. Getting the ‘what’ done well and correct the first time is the productivity part for Feeney.

But productivity has changed. As digitisation becomes more critical and technology solutions increase, I’ve come to realise that people don’t just need technical skills and cloud platforms, they need each other and people require training in ‘soft’ skills, including communication and collaboration. So we put a lot of focus on mentoring our team and we nurture them in their roles. Frankly, I believe if a person doesn't feel productive in their role it's hard for them to feel valued and they don’t enjoy their job.

After over 30-years in marketing I still get asked - “What is marketing and what do you actually do?”. The short answer is marketing, at its very core, is communication. It takes many forms written, verbal and visual.

Communication is not just promotional, it needs to be informative, educational, knowledgeable, clear and most importantly in the digital sphere - concise. No one likes a wall of words and this is applicable to every industry - technology, science, consumables, services, health, food, wine. A good agency determines the needs of a brand with the client upfront - and translates this into meaningful communication and determines where the message should be published, it’s about targeting the right people, with the right message at the right time.

How does this relate to productivity?

Our mantra is “don’t go a long way the wrong way”, because if you do, productivity is not optimal.

Even with the best cloud-based systems for planning our tasks and managing projects, our internal communication is the key to getting work done seamlessly and improving productivity.