YOU shall not pass. Gandalf screams at the top of his lungs as the Balrog moves closer to the fellowship. As he tries to cast a spell in defence of his friends, the balrog lashes out and with a single stroke of his mighty sword takes out half the fellowship. Frodo, Sam, Gimli and Boromir scream out as they tumble to their death, the end.
Are you not glad Lord of the Rings played out differently? That Frodo made it all the way to Mount Doom, that Gandalf resurrected into the bad ass white wizard and that Aragorn became the king of all humankind? It would have made for a terrible story if the above passage would have come to pass. Killing off all your beloved characters kills the story. Or does it?
When George RR Martin kills off the entire Stark family during the scene that is known as the Red wedding, we might all revolt. But the story didn’t end there. It drew us in closer, the investment in the world became bigger. What’s going to happen next?
Game of Thrones is about just that, the game for the thrones of Westeros. As a reader/viewer you're invested in the system and want to see who wins the game. You're invested in a higher story, a system that transcends the individual stories of the heroes. Besides the point, this is also why the last two seasons sucked as they moved back into writing GOT as a hero's journey.
I believe that any company culture has elements of both a hero's journey as well as a systematic approach. In understanding the journey we’re undertaking, it’s important to understand these differences. Because as Lifely, we’re trying to rewrite Lord of the Rings into Game of Thrones, or in other words, move away from the hero’s journey into a more systematic approach.
I’ve dubbed them the Institutionalised Agency model (Game of Thrones) and the Messiah Agency model (Lord of the Rings). Again, they often co-exist, however I believe, the most successful and most renowned agencies often go hard in either direction and so should we.
Building a vision is not about setting big goals and writing long documents like this. It’s about nudging everyone in the same direction. Every meeting. Every day. Every action. Every little hint of feedback. Building a shared vision has to become part of everybody's individual belief system. Helping Lifely transition from the Heroes journey to an institutional model is the foundation on which this entire strategy is built. So how can you help?
We need to create a culture where everybody is searching for common denominators in product development with clients. What problems arise time and time again? What code or design work should be repurposed in every project? We need to find efficiency and build a shared base of knowledge.
These common denominators need to be constantly be documented in the RAP template. The questions in the different RAP levels represent a mental exercise of awareness. What is it that I need to think about before starting a project? Everyone at Lifely should be able to contribute to the RAP. Furthermore we need to work on standardising all our client touch points through the customer journey project. Every kick-off, workshop, kitchen review and delivery should follow a set structure that is improved over time.
We should stop advising clients as much as possible. We should do our research, listen and then give them the options we’ve discovered. The best strategy is one that our clients can live and breath. The more we enforce our ideas the less likely we will solve our clients problems for good. And yes, sometimes clients may say very contradictory things that don’t go together. We need to make them aware of the consequences of their request. Help them see how to balance quality, speed and budget.
Everybody, but especially the leadership at Lifely has the responsibility to nudge people towards the vision for the company. Are we building the system? Are we letting go of our hero's journey? Are we documenting our learnings? At the end of every meeting, internal or with clients, we should ask ourselves two things:
What did we just learn that is worth documenting and sharing?