I very much enjoy working within my team, as a team. Like a stuck record, I repeat the refrain, as we debrief a win or plan a project: this is how we scale.

We are a small, tight team that has to respond to whatever is going on in the organization, and make shit happen. At the same time, we need to carve out space, time and energy to do our work – the work derived from our own experience as leaders in the creative / marcomms / social technology space.

I believe we often do the work of a team twice our size, and nearly all of it in-house. Video, design, content, PMing, client management, strategy, consultancy, process management…we do it all with a lean, 80-, beta mindset. We do it with the expectation that the work will be better than the last time around. We sometimes fail in small initiatives, but always fail-forward. We talk about always getting better, the hustle.

We look at each other with deep trust, and generally work out a way to challenge each other when things go awry. Although I lead the team, we manage ourselves. I make a promise to make things work for the team if they want to manage things differently. We work flat. I see leaders in every one of them, and won’t hire anyone who wants to be led.

We talk about the future, which in marcomms is always yesterday. We are future-ready. The team will go on to rule the(ir) world because they are in control, in perpetual beta, in the moment.

All this comes to mind because of this great gapingvoid cartoon on scaling. In uncertain times, the ability to scale is among the most progressive and future-ready muscles to build.

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