Monkey Monday - February 14th, 2022

The power of choosing your ideal work (Matt's golden triangle)

We believe that the work we do should bring value to our team, not only in terms of financial benefits, but other good stuff too. That’s why we evaluate all the new work that comes through our doors in terms of three key criteria.

1. Is the money good? It’s important we’re not making a huge loss because we need to support our team and give them the right amount of time to do their work.

2. Is the work interesting? We hate being bored, so it’s important for us that our work is engaging and fun. We like to try new things, be creative and explore the unusual.

3. Are the people amazing? We like working with cool people who share our values and views on the world. We’re fairly happy, laid-back people. We each have our own loveable quirks. We like working with people we like.

If a new customer scores well on at least two of these pillars, we’ll work with them. If they don’t meet our ideals, we’ll recommend another path for them.

Having the power to say “no” to work that won’t bring us value and joy is a wonderful position to be in. We ask all of our clients to imagine their perfect client or customer. And if that isn’t the customer they currently have, why not? Some organisations focus so much on the quantity of work they have, they forget about evaluating the quality of that work.

Try setting up a golden triangle for your organisation. How much of your work measures up?

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That is the new explosive start to a new season of, um, what are we called? Monkey Mondays. That's it. I remember.

Yes.

Rolls off the tongue.

Oh Christ. It's going well so far, isn't it. Good start.

Thanks.

Right. Well,what are we going to talk about?

I thought it'd be interesting to share how we evaluate business and new work and whether or not it's something we want to do.

And I think we've entitled this one, Matt's golden triangle.

Yes. Not a great key phrase for people to search for, but maybe we'll just go over it. So, um, I guess many organizations or some that we talked to as well in, in sort of brand workshops, we sort of asked them how they evaluate their work and whether or not they want to take on a particular project or whether or not, they care about who they're selling a particular product to. And quite often, not all the time, they just really just care about the money. They go, well, as long as the money is good, we will do it. But, um, we kind of like to expand the idea a little bit, because we don't just want to take everything that lands on our lap where the money is good, because sometimes it's not going to bring some happiness and you shouldn't necessarily just do everything just for the bottom line.

Well, well, I, I, I think we should, I think we should be honest. So I think in our early days we did work that we wouldn't do now. I think there was a company that out there that sold telephone data, which is a bit, I don't know, it seems a bit nefarious now.

It sounded like kind of, some of the work sounded kind of fun for us at the time, but it was actually just managing an awful lot of data and it was, it was not fun. Um, the fun part was creating some algorithms to search through it, but they weren't our kind of people. And it wasn't really something that we felt great about. Um, so we made mistakes. We have to sort of find our formula in a way. And so the money part is important. You want to be paid well for what you're doing. You need money to keep the business alive. Um, but it's an interesting thing you can pivot around because maybe sometimes your organization's doing very well and money is not the most important thing you're after at the moment, maybe it's something more meaningful. So the other two parts of the triangle - you've got money and another part for us at least is what is the actual work we're doing. So, uh, is it stuff that we can get really excited about? Is it some brand development? Is it, um, you know, really cool complex website that we can build? Uh, or is it something that looks a little bit churny and a little bit repetitive and then maybe we won't be as excited about that. Um, so the type of work we do, it brings us lots of meaning, it brings us fun. The other parts of the triangle, the final parts is it's kind of an, a cultural part, really, and it's are the people we would be working with kind of nice, are they our kind of people, would we get on with them, and do we like what they do? Are we behind their product or service? Are they helping people? Are they doing some good in the world? Can we get, can our team get really excited about what they're doing? Or is it something that we justlove anyway? Is it a guitar shop? I like playing the guitar, that would bring me a lot of joy. Is it some outdoor fitness? So we've got guys in the team that we know like that kind of thing. So that cultural engagement is a really key thing. And if you get all three parts of that triangle right, that feels like a great customer that we would want to work with.

Yeah. So I suppose the, the minimum amount of points on that triangle that you successfully hit with any new client would be two, at least?

Yeah, I think so. I mean, obviously if you have a huge pipeline, you might be able to get rid of the gumf at the bottom pretty quickly. And if somebody fulfills all three, then you might be quite happy, but it all depends on where you are with your business plan and your growth and how much money is in the business at the time and what you're trying to do. So if you are cash rich, maybe you'll do more charity work, which is really fulfilling and happy. And it's for someone who is nice and the work is fun, or, um, maybe, you know, you really like the people and they've got a bit of money and it's okay, it'll pay for some stuff, the work's a bit boring, but you know, you're helping someone. So you can evaluate depending on where your business sits at the moment.

And I think it's really interesting to just go through that, that process of having a chat with your team and seeing what people like doing and the kind of work that you're actually pitching for. You might be putting all your marketing eggs into a basket where everyone's like, I don't want to do that. Or you're attracting loads of clients who are like, uh, not a real cultural fit.

Yeah. Um, so your team will be able to say the type of work they like doing, or even if it's not service-based the type of products they want to sell and the type of people that they want to be representing your brand with the products that you're selling. So it's not necessarily just service-based B2B stuff like we would do. It could be product as well. If you think of Burberry back in the day, how happy were they maybe that their shirts got picked up by the kind of chavs and it wasn't the right audience for those guys. They probably didn't want that to, that probably didn't work well in Matt's golden triangle world with regards to the people that they wanted representing their brand. So it's interesting to think about how you evaluate the work you might do for someone or the product you might give an audience. Maybe you've got some cooler, more interesting, different geometric shaped way of evaluating work.