This month we held our quarterly team day, but this time with a bit of a twist.
The purpose of the team day was to get everyone together to provide an update on the progress we have made as a company over the last few months.
As a company we’re always looking to improve ourselves, constantly looking at ways to evolve the service we offer to clients, streamlining our internal processes and provide a better working environment for the staff.
From previous team days we’ve found the most constructive elements of the day have always been the collaborative tasks – i.e. where the team works together on a project.
It’s often the smallest things that create barriers to working more effectively. This gave us the idea of creating the ‘Ultimate Dragons Den’ for this event.
Each member of the team was asked to prepare a short 2-minute pitch on how to improve something within Ultimate. This could be the installation of a Tea Bag bin in the kitchen, all the way through to implementing a new backup policy on the server. Simply any ideas to improve as a company and to make Ultimate a more efficient and better place to work. We wanted to encourage everyone to make a positive change to either the office environment or create an improved business process.
Following 12 very well thought through pitches, from creative breakfasts through to introduction of a water cooler, there was 1 winner.
On this occasion it was our CEO, Matt who made the most impact and pitched a concept inspired by one of Marketing and Advertising’s great leaders, Kevin Roberts, CEO of Saatchi & Saatchi Worldwide.
Matt’s concept was the ‘The Ultimate 100 day Plan’. The idea is to carefully compile a list of things the business needs to achieve, making sure that each action is measurable and that each one is a stretch, whilst also making sure we’re not just making a list of things to tick off. Then review the list every week.
When the 100 days comes around, the goal is to have each item checked off.
So, the idea is to get 100 of the small things we’ve always needed to do in the business and strategically within the organisation, and get them completed. Split them up intelligently between the whole team and just get them completed over the next 100 days.
Matt’s pitch was also an extension of his fascination with the concept of ‘The Aggregation of Marginal Gains’.
The Aggregation of Marginal Gains is about analysing every aspect of a team’s performance, and making incremental improvements in every area. The idea is that a large number of small improvements can add up to a big difference in overall performance.
Matt commented “I want to break down everything that can impact our business performance, absolutely everything we can think of, and then improved everything by at least 1%. When you clump it all together you are going to get quite a significant increase in performance.”