How to write a company book they’ll actually care about.

Our Company Book: Chapter 1

Focusrite was growing at a phenomenal rate. Where once I knew everyone’s names, first and last, now there were people milling around that I didn’t know at all. Where once it was a single tribe that got each other, now there were multiple factions and distinct silos.

One thing did however unite many of them — they felt like they were missing a plan. Or if there was a plan (there definitely was), they didn’t know about it. Though invariably hard to prove through data, efficiency in some areas of the business was falling. Meetings would happen with no clear outcome, and decisions would be overturned, again and again.

Enter a new CEO, and with him, a golden opportunity to pull the team together and unite them. But how to do it in a way that didn’t make young creative minds scoff. Focusrite has an exceptionally bright team, full of ideas. Full of opinions.

The board were only too aware, as were most of the employees, of the risk of becoming a soulless, corporate machine, slow to change and lifeless throughout. People would point to other large brands in the industry as examples of where they didn’t want to be. Sadly, there are plenty of examples.

So began a two-year process, (though knowing what I know now, it could have been done in 4–6 months) and the request to work with the entire two hundred strong, global team to develop a common understanding of who we were, why we did what we did, how we should go about it, where we were going and how we were going to get there.

I can’t break down the entire process in this one article. This was supposed to be a short content piece and that’s already slipping out of reach. What I would love to focus on are some of the core stumbling blocks and how we overcame them. A few of the big questions that arose and how we answered them. Perhaps spread across a number of articles. And then you have the book, available as slides on my LinkedIn page, so you can judge for yourself.

So, how do you make a plan stick?

“Tell me and I’ll forget.

Show me and I might remember.

Involve me and I’ll truly understand.”

Purportedly an old Chinese proverb, though the meanderings of the internet undoubtedly mean it has been bastardised over time. Nevertheless, the point is clear. Involve people and they’ll buy in. So we set about creating workshops, uniting groups of ten from across the business to spend half a day discussing the ‘big questions’. What did people like about where they worked? What didn’t they like? How would they describe what it is we do as a team? What made them get up and come in to work every day, beyond a salary. It was the most intensive listening experience I’ve ever gone through, and to that end, exhausting. But worth every minute.

So inclusion is vital, across the board. Next came medium, and with it, language. I remember the comments well. “Whatever we do, please let’s not slap big posters on the wall saying, ‘Our Mission: blah blah blah’. We’re a music company for christ’s sake!” People had a really clear idea of what they didn’t want, as is often the case, but there weren’t too many people clearly expressing what they did want, and why they wanted it.

Different people wanted different things, typically falling into two camps. For those that separated work and home fastidiously, there were calls to make our company values overt — indeed, they weren’t even against posters! But for those who treated their workplace as their second home (the majority), the solution needed to be more understated, which presented a conundrum. With people coming, and people going, the dynamic nature of a global business is such that, understated doesn’t work. So, we had to strike a balance. And again, it came down to inclusion and empowering individuals, as well as leading by example and working hard up front to develop multiple ways to integrate the values and ideas we’d created into every working day and beyond.

We chose a book. Not just any book. A book you’d want to be seen, even if you were mid-twenties, too cool for school and a borderline rebel without a cause. And fortunately for us, Focusrite has a phenomenal design team — some of whom are so uncool, they are undeniably, or perhaps even ‘undefinably’ cool! (I know. Cool is so hard to define!) We poured time (and some money) into exceptional design and materials, to create the kind of book that would deliberately be put out on display by the majority.

The language in the book came from the twenty or so meetings. Phrases that were repeated across different groups were captured, and a company nomenclature unfolded. Those same words and phrases made their way into the book. I specifically wanted individuals to read the book, and at least unconsciously, hear themselves talking back.

Then there was the deliberate act to ‘make it personal’. Every book was personalised by the individual’s manager (with some managers having a heavier workload than others), hand-written at the front of their book. Yes. It took time, but it created value in a way that no level of embossing, metallic paint (we did both of these) every could have.

Next came repetition. Every company meeting, the book was mentioned. For every appraisal, the values became formal pillars for discussion. In every meeting room, and on almost every desk, there were copies available. In every cross-company memo, lines from the book were included. In every proposal document, the strategic pillars, word-for-word, were repeated. In the annual report, the same language was used. Every opportunity to fold the language into daily procedures was taken advantage of, and it’s in this way that the language began to stick.

Did efficiency improve? Did resolutions come thicker and faster? Did engagement improve? As repeat participants in the Times 100 Best Small Companies to work for, we were measuring aspects like belief in the management team, trust in a plan and employee engagement, all of which rose the following year. But the best measure was the unanimous approval of the management team and the increased passion evident throughout the business. And I got know lots of peoples’ first and last names –not quite everyone, but almost.