Do you want to show up more creatively for your clients and your colleagues, your family, and your friends?
Do you want to default to thinking about opportunity versus focusing just on problems?
Discovering Hope is full of proactive steps you can take right now, to achieve a more positive mindset or to help maintain the positivity you already have
Getting Positive reveals that more optimism is close at hand
Building Bridges – Proactivity the Safest Way to Build and Protect Business
Many of you that I’m speaking with whether freelancing or working full-time, are talking to me about current client uncertainties caused in large part by U.S. led tariffs.
Until anyone knows the impact of these tariffs, whether you import parts or export finished products, it’s hard to invest in anything with confidence, least of all people!
The result is inconsistency of work or budgets being delayed or reduced; This means it’s not the best of jobs markets or times of job security.
If you’re in full-time work, what can you do, (particularly if you have a great relationship with your clients) is support them in their scenario planning. Help them if you can, find ways to protect revenue/and or enhance it! OK, not rocket science advice, but really important to be proactive, particularly when the pressure is on.
Is this a time of economic crisis? No, but it is most certainly (as witnessed by the financial markets) an uncertain moment. True to the dual Mandarin meaning of the word ‘crisis.’ It’s a time both of threat and an opportunity.
Threats often act as a catalyst forcing us to contemplate new approaches.
What might you be able to identify for your clients? A short-term win or bigger potential strategic pivot?
If your freelancing short or long term, think along the same lines. Don’t wait to be asked to help, look at those businesses most exposed and anticipate what a smart next step might nbe.
Now is a golden time to build bridges.
Strategy Jobs Market Update – May 2024
Fulltime Roles – In the last several weeks there has been a mild uptick in hiring of creative and brand planners/strategists, but this has to be seen in context. This market is still very tight. I’m talking with a number of you still being given news that your job has been cut.
Freelance Roles – For many of the freelancers/consultants, 2022/2023 were good years but 2024 is a different story. This year many of you have experienced a clear reduction in opportunities. This is a factor of less work generally, of brands and through them agencies, reluctant to spend on freelance, which is more expensive than hiring someone full-time.
Across Markets – In the last three months, I’ve met with
strategists in a number of markets including Sao Paolo, Amsterdam, Los Angeles, Miami, New York and London. The picture I am seeing is consistent across markets. There are always nuances that effect each market differently but one that is a key driver (as well as AI) is the cost of money.
Where is the strategy jobs market heading?
There’s plenty in the way of holding company ‘recalibration’ which will drive
uncertainty for some time yet that said the simplistic, optimists’ view…
The reason this jobs market feels ‘incremental/replacement/defensive’
versus one of ‘investment’ hiring is because of a CFO fear that until
central banks communicate a confidence that interest rates are on a downward trajectory, they might actually go up! Yes, once we see a reduction in interest rates it’s my belief that CFO’s will then have the confidence to allow greater investment in jobs. We’re getting closer to this point. Stay positive.
Roll on interest rate cuts which if nothing else will cut brands and agencies some slack.
Onwards,
Strategy Jobs Market Update – June9th, 2023
Strategy hiring Latest June 9th, 2023
‘Functional hiring’ predominates at the moment as opposed to ballsy risk-taking investment of whole teams.
Where the hiring is happening? In replacements for those leaving the business, by agencies that have won business, for clients insisting on a personnel change or, perhaps for a maternity/paternity fill.
Clients are cautious and even AOR work I hear feels more project focused, more performance oriented at the moment. Yes, even clients wants to keep their jobs!
A whole lot of anxiety – It’s palapable – Yellow skies don’t help the sentiment!
Stay positive. For yourself if not for others or better still stay positive through others.
While I’ve always kept my sanity through physical exercize, I’ve increasingly found that the best anditote to anxiety caused by job uncertainty, (and I hear it and feel it via all the conversations I have most days) is to focus on helping/being kind to others.
Being kind? This doesn’t even mean taking up swathes of time in the service of others, but simply being kind when you interact or, being less unkind than you’d typically be!
Do this and you will feel better about yourself and consequently less anxious. Be kind/be who you want to be, and you may also find that the things you want to manifest happen a little faster too:)
Give yourself a break and feel good by being kind.
Identifying An Employer That Value’s Strategic Planners
When you’re in demand, you might be told things that don’t entirely resemble the reality of the culture or the work/It’s not always straightforward knowing whether a would-be employer, truly values what you do.
Below are some questions (open-ended typically provide more information for you) that I’m sure many of you ask, but there might be one or two that you don’t, that could get the clarity you need.
Q’s about department size/growth/effectiveness
What is the ratio of strategists to employees?
What has been the principal cause of the growth of the function (strong leader, client demand, other)
Does the business enter/and or win effectiveness awards?
Q’s about the seriousness with which strategy is taken.
What role does the CSO play as part of the leadership team?
How does the CSO or other department head, advocate for planning?
Q’s about training/development
What off-the-job training is offered to strategists in addition to on-the-job training?
How is mentoring carried out for strategists?
Q’s about work process
Is there an ECD sign-off for a brief/Is strategy a core part of getting to great creative work
Q’s about agency outputs and the role of strategy to deliver them
What types of pure strategy projects do clients request?
Can you provide examples of the types of projects clients request? Typically how long are these engagements?
Q’s about business development and the role of strategy
How involved are strategists in the process of pursuing new clients?
Q’s about clients/How they value strategy
Do clients request strategy or is this something the agency insists on as part of its process?
Are there any clients requesting not to have strategic input? If so, why?
What do clients see as the role of strategists?
Q’s about creative output
Has most if not all work that has won creative awards been based on strategic input?
And a few others:
What are the biggest challenge for strategic work here?
How many strategists have worked on this account in the last year?/Since the agency had the account?
What is the turnover rate for strategists here/For the agency in general?
What other questions would you ask to know whether the job on offer was a career-defining one a strategist?
All the best,
Stuart
The Great Agency Talent Crunch
The great agency talent crunch – It’s happening for two reasons:
1. Changed mindset of employees – As the attached article states, the events of the last 18 months have lead to ‘permanantly altered lifestyle changes.’ ie) In what I’ll call ‘the great awakening,’ many of us previously who had no time to contemplate our navels have had a chance to get life in to perspective and become clear about what we don’t want/what we can no longer tolerate, be it the commute or the lack of meritocracy, lack of diversity, or just the incessant meetings and pitching of new business.
2. Meaningful work/Positive use of time – Many of those that have left the agency world have left the business altogether but more have decided to freelance, they are waiting to see if the business will change/keeping their options open. They are waiting to see whether the agency world can become more sensitive to the needs of staff and their desire for personal growth and to have a positive daily experience versus being treated as expendible automatons in entities fixated on short term profit; They are hoping there will be more flexibility in working arrangements, more inclusive working environments, and hoping to find places that walk the talk of new business pitches, where the oft talked words, ‘our employees are our culture, are our business,’ are words that are lived and breathed. Time will tell.
bit.ly/3wsTZRj
#Talentcrunch #Awakening #Greaplacestowork
The biggest Threat to Agencies and Your Jobs
Planners and strategists, “Agencies are scrambling to attract talent amid shortage.” The article summarizes that talent shortages exist because: https://bit.ly/37gVRkn
– Skills shortage – A lack of the right skills,
– Greater flexibility/virtual – ‘Talent’ wanting greater flexibility
– Burn out – employees wanting to get out of the business.
What the article doesn’t mention is the core reason for this talent shortage, a breakdown of the psychological contract,
a phrase coined decades past highlighting, ‘to maintain a positive employee-employer relationship employers pay particular attention to the ‘human side’ of a working relationship, rather than the purely commercial or transactional side.’
Yes, the problem for the business is short termism, which is why agencies increasingly use freelancers, treating people like commodities; Even when they are full time, (again due to short termism) there has been a chronic lack of willingness to train/invest in the next generation of strategists.
The good news – For any planner seeking their next career challenge, there are many great people in this business and some basic rules for identifying a great next career move for you, beyond that is, simply looking at the obvious names, this I’ll cover in my next newsletter.