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| Photo by Johnny Delos Santos |
In another conversation with
my HR account person, I suddenly had a realization : I was no longer as fired up as when I was on
my first year in the company. ( I hope
my boss doesn’t read this. )
Today, I’m still more
enthusiastic than most people I know ( I hope my boss reads this.) But my
eagerness doesn’t compare to that in my “newcomer days” when I would work up to
2 am every day, cooking up ideas, writing memos and thinking of things I could
change.
We both observed that the
benefit of hiring an outsider, or promoting someone to a new position, is that
you get a surge of intellectual energy for the job.
I remember my ad agency days
when clients would open their business for a pitch. They complained that their
incumbent agencies were no longer as brilliant, as pro-active and as sweet as
when they first teamed up. In contrast, every new agency will be brimming over
with ideas, will be bending over backwards and will be like a man wooing the
woman of his dreams. In many cases, it looked like the ad agencies would want to
take over the clients’ business.
Noting that interest often
follows a downward path, one of the top executives in our global network urged
us to maintain an “inspired relationship” with our clients. In such a relationship, both parties will be
constantly and passionately thinking of good things for the brand. The ad
agency will not just wait for job orders, the client will treat the agency like
a true partner and not a supplier.
He said that our goal should
be to have a roster of “perpetually
infatuated clients. “
Presently, I am the head of a
division which functions as the in-house ad agency of our company. The threat of losing “our account” to an outside agency is very low. But I remind my staff to never have a false
sense of security. We must serve our
clients as though we could lose them any day.
A false sense of security is
one of the main reasons behind complacency on the job.
Some us may think that we
have a lifetime claim to our position just because we have already won awards
or have scored high in past evaluation periods. Some of us may think we cannot be
fired because we are protected by labor laws. Some of us may believe that burn
out is normal and is, therefore, tolerated.
Many of us may not even be
aware that we are no longer as good or as fervent as we were before.
So, I wish to remind my
readers that management is always on the look out for people who can deliver
the same or even better output, at a much lower employee cost. Remember that
there is always somebody out there eager to prove that they can do a better job
than you.
Just to check how we are
doing today, let's compare our performance now with how it was during our first
year on the job. I hope we don’t realize that where once we wanted to
astonish, now we’re satisfied with being able to accomplish.
In another ad agency I worked
with, the global office sent this reminder to all :
“ We do our job with the
enthusiasm of the first day at work.
By not relying on past glories, we continue
to build new milestones. “
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