Your Agency Culture just booked another Workshop

Here’s the picture, I’m sure a similar picture at your agency… but at our entirely imaginary agency, the culture committee has booked a workshop to understand why nobody has time to work. Attendance is compulsory btw. Please arrive with an open mind and the concept presentation you were supposed to finish during the workshop.

The agency is fictional (of course). The calendar invitation may feel suspiciously familiar.

Somewhere between the welcome pack and your third postponed lunch, agency culture stops being “a nice place to work” and becomes the way people behave when the deadline slips, the client phones and there is exactly one decent meeting room left.

That is when you discover whether “bring your whole self to work” includes the part of yourself that would like to go home.

Your onboarding office tour had excellent production values

Our imaginary recruit gets the full treatment of course. Exposed brick. Bean to cup coffee machine. A “real” plant.. Probably a Monstera with cool holes in the leaves. A neon sign telling everyone to be brave, positioned above a printer nobody dares to touch.

“We wanted a space that encourages collisions,” says the tour guide.

Wonderful. The kitchen doorway is already delivering.

There is nothing wrong with a beautiful office. Creative people deserve somewhere pleasant to spend their working hours. The trouble starts when the furniture is asked to perform duties normally handled by decent management.

A standing desk cannot clarify a brief. A rooftop cannot tell someone their workload is unreasonable. You can put a beanbag in the boardroom, but eventually somebody still has to decide who approves the work.

Everyone has a title and nobody owns the decision

At 10:00, the team assembles to discuss a campaign for a fictional neighbourhood hardware shop. By 10:40, the presentation describes a movement for people who refuse to be defined by conventional shelving.

The hardware shop wanted to sell shelves.

One brave strategist asks what customers actually need. A silence follows. Somewhere, a mood board loses confidence.

Before we blame the person asking awkwardly useful questions, read The Strategist and the mind behind the madness. A little clarity early on can save a remarkable amount of interpretive dance later.

The meeting finally ends when somebody says, “Let's take this offline.” Everyone is sitting in the same room. Nobody knows where offline is, but apparently it has capacity.

The braai cannot approve your leave

Friday arrives with a team braai and an invitation to celebrate the people who make the agency special. This is lovely. Somebody has remembered the vegetarian option. Somebody else has brought a speaker capable of addressing a stadium.

Then a junior asks whether Monday's leave request has been approved.

“We'll chat,” says a manager, reaching for the tongs with sudden professional urgency.

This is where culture gets interesting. The social bits are easy to photograph. The useful bits happen in less flattering lighting: answering a leave request, paying a supplier, giving clear feedback, admitting that a deadline was promised before anyone checked the studio schedule.

Nobody puts “we answered your question the first time” on a recruitment poster. Perhaps they should. It would stop a few people scrolling.

The feedback has entered the group chat

Our fictional team returns from the braai to find a voice note. The campaign needs a small adjustment. It is six minutes long.

The account manager listens twice, writes down the actual request and asks the client to confirm it. For a moment, civilisation holds.

Then another message arrives from someone who was not in the presentation.

If this particular horror franchise sounds familiar, the client sharing one inbox with several personalities deserves a place on your reading list.

A healthy agency can laugh at this and still protect the team. It can agree on one feedback route, explain what another round will cost and stop treating every notification as an instruction from the mountain.

Humour helps people survive a messy afternoon. It should not become the operating system for a permanently messy business.

Show us the agency behind the adjectives

There is a better story an agency can tell about itself. Explain how the team works. Show the thinking behind a good piece of work. Give credit to the people who made it happen. Say what kind of client relationship helps you do your best work.

Anyone can describe themselves as a collective of curious minds. So can the queue at the licensing department. Give us something we can recognise.

Want your agency to join the conversation? Head to CreH8ive Agencies to list your agency. Bring the work and the people behind it. The neon sign can stay at reception.

And if your team's running commentary has escaped the kitchen and become a show, visit CreH8ive Podcasts and put your podcast on our radar. A microphone does not automatically make a meeting worth hearing, but somebody out there may have cracked it.

Meanwhile, our imaginary agency has finished its culture workshop. The conclusion is that people need more uninterrupted time to work.

There will be a follow-up session on Thursday.