Today’s my wedding anniversary. It’s been the best four years of my life.
Marriage is fun and easy when you marry your best friend!
It’s also around this time that I celebrate my anniversary at WE Communications.
I will never forget March and April of 2010. I visited three continents, opened WE’s first office in Africa, and married the girl of my dreams.
It’s been intense and wonderful time, setting the fast-paced and exciting standard for my WE adventure that has seen the agency grow and thrive. There’s never a dull moment. I feel lucky to love what I do and collaborate with a team of talented individuals who enjoy spending time together to create magic for our clients.
There’s no secret sauce and we continue to learn as we grow, but for the purposes of this post, I’ve included the following insights based on my experience over the past four years:
1. People – attract and retain the best people in the market. Show them the love, empower them and invest in them
2. Culture – create a culture that is open, fun, supportive and free of office politics
3. Focus – specialise in industry sectors based on growth potential and mapped to the team’s expertise
4. Relationships – build authentic and long-lasting relationships with stakeholders, from clients, to suppliers, to communities, to journalists
5. Differentiate – design an offer that stands out from the crowd grounded in a consistent delivery of quality consultancy that leads to tangible outcomes for the agency and its clients
6. Excellence – encourage and reward excellence across the team at all times. Learning from mistakes is part of this journey, as is regular training and mentoring
7. Make a difference – don’t only do good business, but also do good, whether that’s giving back to the community in the form of charity or non-governmental organisation support, or through contributing to skills development programmes
8. Fun – take your work seriously, but always have a sense of humour and integrate regular fun activities into the day-to-day activities of the agency
If you are interested in following the adventures of WE in Johannesburg, you’re very welcome to follow the agency on Twitter or via FacebookI
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