2019 Year in Review @ Design Prodigy

I penned my inaugural 2018 Year in Review for Design Prodigy and now as we bade farewell to 2019, I shall be following up with another Year in Review to continue to share our story and lessons learnt with like-minded entrepreneurs and professionals.

Background

In 2016, we had a "Reboot" year as Design Prodigy underwent cultural transformation with Chutzpah. In 2017, we had a "New Dawn" year as we started adding significant MNCs as our clients. In 2018, we had a "Standout" year as we beat out 4 global agencies to land SAP (APJ) as our key account.

As I reflect upon 2019, I think it is best captured as a year of "Consolidation"

In a sense, we grew too fast.

Our best guy was being head hunted, our new hires had problem settling in our work environment and it was increasingly evident that we need to review our new corporate DNA and internal processes to deal with the new realities (productivity and morale is affected). True to our ethos, we had an open communication on the way forward and it boiled down to the choice of reverting to a more mechanistic structure where most conventional talents are familiar with or double down on holacratic-inspired organismic structure that is more suited for high function polymaths.

Decision and Consequence

After careful considerations, I decided to continue to bite the bullet and double down on the latter. We experienced a period of high turnover as those who preferred mechanistic structure left. I have to admit that it was both a difficult and painful period.

福兮祸之所倚，祸兮福之所伏。

There is an ancient Chinese saying that When you in a moment of blessing, misfortune could be just around a corner, while misfortune may be blessings in disguise.

I was drawing strength from those who chose to stay on. They literally picked up all the accounts and raised their performance to some unbelievable level to ensure that our clients continue to receive good service. I personally call and meet with all clients affected by the turnover to explain the situation and inform them of our next steps and back up plans to ensure service continuity. I also asked that they gave my new hires a chance to prove that they learn fast and they will see the difference in matter of weeks.

Recruitment

At the same time, I ensured that we transferred our learning to our recruitment process, with stronger emphasis on certain aspects of cognitive abilities as well as dispositions that were suited to our environment. In a sense, it was liberating to accept that Design Prodigy was not suitable for most conventional talents or specialists. They must have good autodidact, polymathic ability and mentally prepared to fight along side with us at the bleeding edge.

Polymaths, this is your home.

Very soon, we found Hafiz. This gentleman, passed his probation in 8 instead of 12 weeks. He learnt Marketo from scratch and got certified in 8 weeks (previous internal record I think is 7 or 8 months) and also saved 3 accounts by exceeding clients' expectations. You can read his 2019 reflections here.

Subsequent hires are also now being onboarded and upskilled at insane speed, learning fast is sort of a given now... basically you have to do something awesome (which no one in our team has done before) to pass your probation.

Innovation

Once we survived the crisis, very quickly we reverted back to innovation and tackling tough marketing challenges with our #ungoogleablechallenge internship program. This year, we were excited to innovate and refine a new technique of Omni-channel Targeting that can be used for both Brand and Marketing activation with better ROI than usual multi channel targeting technique.

Inspired by Design Thinking and Scientific Method, we successfully innovated a new service offering: Experimental Marketing which can help validate targeting hypothesis (Jobs-to-be-done, Message Hooks, Channel, and audience segment). This technique of qual-quant approach proved particularly popular with clients esp at the Research validation phase before finalisation of marketing plan for activation.

Our research into BTS phenomena was also particularly fruitful as our experiment results of the BTS formula on B2B influencer marketing were showing replicable material improvements. In 2020, where resources and priorities permit, we hope to continue to build on this research to explore the concept and potential marketing effectiveness of team level influencers. Just for fun, we coded this as "Project Supras".

Consolidating

Looking back I think 2019 is the year that we consolidated and strengthened our core. By better identifying and aligning the polymathic recruitment profile to our work environment as well as additional investments to strengthen our structural capital, we have managed to

1. Achieve an understanding with the our team that Design Prodigy actively co-invest into their human capital together with them to achieve fastest possible career trajectory.
2. Innovate and implement knowledge systems that allow the team to create more valuable work in shorter time.
3. Increased Productivity, Morale and Customer Satisfaction (Yes, its a turnaround!)

I remain mindful that this does not imply that Polymathic talents are better than conventional or specialist talents, the key message is the purpose and intentionality of organisation design and the importance of talent/culture fit. Design Prodigy is designed as such for specific imperatives that kicked start the transformation back in 2016.

If you are also interested in building a team of independent, fast and agile knowledge workers, I like to share 3 lessons learnt, which you can try it out and let me know if it works for you:

1. Cognitive profile. Specifically look for high fluid intelligence, high contextual intelligence and avid reader.
2. Challenge. Set insane but meaningful, time boxed challenges. Think Commando Selection Test.
3. Visibility. Make fast learning in the team/community visible by knowledge sharing/spotlighting in weekly meetings.

Thank you for spending time reading this article. I hope you will find some parts useful in someway for your journey in the new year. I like to wish you a great 2020 full of love and laughter.

If you like to enrich this conversation, please feel free to add your comments below or simply drop me a PM.

2020, here we come.