This week in the ‘behind the scenes tour’ of Potting Shed Events I want to focus on how we work. These five areas are another foundation of how we operate as a business and, as such, they are broad in meaning. Firstly we are an outcome not an hours driven business. Given that who we are (see part 1) references the fact that we are all grownups, we believe that dictating people’s hours in our industry is not the most effective way to work. Some weeks when we are on live projects, we need to work longer hours and others we can take shorter hours. Rather than dictate this, it makes sense to allow the team to focus on their outcomes for that particular time. Our second point is that we operate a 24/48 hour communication rule. This was something I learnt a few years ago and it is an effective way of dealing with the rare moments of discord. We do work in a stressful industry and therefore occasional disagreements are likely. The 24/48 hour rule is simple – if you are uncomfortable with something you need to take 24 hours to reflect on whether you feel you need to address the issue. If you still feel that it needs to be dealt with you have 48 hours to bring it to the other person (or your manager’s attention). It is so simple and yet means that everyone is able to discuss any issues openly while ensuring that any emotion has been kept in check.
Our third area is that we ask for and receive help and support from those around us. As event experts people are not always great at asking for help but we work as a team and so it is our collective responsibility to help and support each other. Running events an event is the best kind of team building exercise and I believe that event agency teams are some of the strongest teams around for that reason. Our fourth point relates back to being an outcome driven business: we communicate our flexibility with our team. It is fine for any of us to take a longer lunch hour, start a little later, finish a little earlier if your projects allow. However, we keep each other informed about those choices so that we can manage our internal and external communications. And finally, we use social media responsibly. Many of us like to use social media and update with photos and comments about what we are up to. Of course for some clients this is not permissible and so we make sure that everyone understands where the boundaries and what is appropriate. That way we can all relax and use social media as we choose.