Carolina Cruz-Letelier has seen career growth from a lot of different angles. From brand side to agency side to jumping to new cities without a job, she’s had a chance to think about how people adapt to new teams and organizations, and what prevents success there. Over the wild (understatement?) past years, she’s been working with her team at MUH-TAY-ZIK | HOF-FER, to figure out what “culture” really is in the agency and how a new, largely remote team can come together in spirit to deliver great work, and feel like a cohesive unit.
The Strategy Inside Everything is the podcast for people who think for a living. If you have an idea, a question or you want to push back on something you hear in this episode, go to https://thatsnotaninsight.com and leave a message or a voicemail for me. The best and most interesting messages will be added to future episodes. And I can’t wait to hear from you. Music for The Strategy Inside Everything is by Sawsquarenoise. Host Adam Pierno is an author, speaker and strategy consultant. Learn more at adampierno.com.
You can hear the episode here: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/carolina-cruz-letelier-is-a-realistic-optimist/id1269432601?i=1000556301504
Transcript here:
Adam Pierno 0:02
All right, welcome back to another episode of the strategy inside everything. I am here with my fellow Boston University Terrier. We’re excited we’ve we started talking already and we’re ready to get this conversation going. I have the a partner and Managing Director at Muhtayzik Hoffer, Carolina Cruz-Letelier. She’s going to pronounce that name properly for me. How’d I do?
Carolina Cruz-Letelier 1:15
I was very good at Carolina Cruz. Let’s say yeah, you gotta roll your r’s.
Adam Pierno 1:21
You cannot. I’m not capable. I would, it would take me a lot of practice to get there. Before we get going Carolina, I wanted you to give people a sense of your background. Because like a lot of people that come on, it’s not exactly a straight line, you jumped around and did some fun stuff. Give people a sense of what you’ve done and how you got to where you are now.
Carolina Cruz-Letelier 1:40
Yeah. Great question. I did not have a linear path. I actually think a lot of wonderful people in advertising tend to not have a linear path, which we talked about before this agree. So I actually went to school in Boston, much like you did, I graduated a year early, much to my dad’s Joy saved him like four to $6,000 or so. And I just bounced around for a year because I didn’t really know what I wanted to do. I worked at I was a store manager and retail for a year and just like got to know humanity. Because retail is the cruel, cruel world. And you kind of get a sense for what people are all about. So I did that for a year. And then I had a group of girlfriends who were graduating from Boston a year later, and they were like, we’re moving to New York. I was like, Great, that sounds lovely. I had just met my now husband. So we did three years long distance. That’s a whole separate
Adam Pierno 2:30
podcast. That’s a couple of that’s a couple of episodes.
Carolina Cruz-Letelier 2:34
And then I moved to New York without a job, didn’t know what I wanted to do. I knew I wanted to be in some sort of a communications thing. I studied film and television in college and love that space, creative spaces. But I didn’t really know what I wanted to do with it living in New York, because I thought you had to be in LA to make that happen for yourself. So I ended up working in ad sales at Fuse, which is a Music Network. At that point, I believe it was owned by Madison Square Garden. I have no idea who owns it. Now it
Adam Pierno 3:01
was it was much music, and then it turned to fuses. Yeah,
Carolina Cruz-Letelier 3:04
it was a number of things. But the best part was because it was owned by MSG, we got like concert tickets all the time for free, they would just be like, hey, this Foo Fighters tonight he wants to go, it’s amazing. Did that for three years. And then my now husband had an opportunity to move to the Bay Area. Neither one of us lived on the west coast. So we were like, we have to do this one, you know, one, you’re gonna have another opportunity like this, moved again to San Francisco, no job. But I had a friend who had a friend, I could be Silverstein and partners. And she’s like, You should just meet them. They’re supposed to be the best. And I had had friends who worked in advertising for many years. And it was brutal when you’re a junior in advertising and in New York in particular. And I was like, Absolutely not. I’m not into that. Not for me, thank you so much. I’ll figure this out. And then two months goes down. And I was like, I guess I should just meet people that sounds like the right thing to be doing. So I met with some folks that could be and had these like transformational life changing interviews with people who I was like, I must be in these doors.
Adam Pierno 4:05
Seems like a lot of those meetings happen. It could be Yeah,
Carolina Cruz-Letelier 4:07
so strange, but wonderful. You’re like crying in an interview going what I love these people so much. It’s so weird. Um, but I just knew that was going to be a place where I was going to learn and grow and all those things. So I ended up it could be worked there for two years and then realized that I needed to be somewhere that was going to make me get out of my shell and be seen because when you’re in a place like could be your you know, 400 to 600 people. You don’t necessarily get put in the spotlight or get have to be on your toes a lot. And I felt like I knew at that moment, I needed to be on my toes and really challenged myself. So I went to the small agency called Mutasa kafir, again, through a connection and have been there now for over 10 years, which is madness. Run. Yeah, a very, very long run. And I think the thing, working at a small agency too, it’s like it changes and evolves every two to three years like what you’re doing types of clients, you’re doing the type of work you’re doing it If keeps it really interesting, and then there’s always different dynamics of humans coming in and out the door to so you’re not feeling like you’re missing out on any learning dynamics either. Because you just always have really smart people who are coming in bringing their talent, helping you just like taking a little bit of it, and then keep going. So it’s been a really weird, wonderful journey that has gotten me here. And I still think like, do I want to be doing this for the rest of my life? I don’t know. But it’s so fun right now. And that’s what I’m focusing on
Adam Pierno 5:27
has always been your attitude. It sounds like you’re able to figure out what the right now is and and leverage that and kind of make the most out of that, like being walking in the door is a good be or figuring out Oh, the benefit of being in retail is that I get to learn about people the benefit of being at Fuse is all these free tickets, like, it seems like you’re able to, I mean, free tickets is an obvious part of them. Yeah. But it seems like you that’s something that strength of yours, is that something you’ve noticed?
Carolina Cruz-Letelier 5:55
Yes, I would say that I tend to I call myself a realistic optimist. And that I am always looking at the opportunity in every door in every situation that I’m in. But I can also understand the potential highs and lows of any of those opportunities. Yeah, just so that I can continue to bob and weave and evolve and make sure that I can take advantage of anything that’s coming my way. But I’m realistic about the things that I might be giving up in any of those moments. And I don’t think that that’s a bad thing. I just think it’s an under having that knowledge and understanding and self awareness. To be able to, to evolve when you need to,
Adam Pierno 6:35
when you move to there’s so many places I can I can jump in based on what based on the introduction you just gave in the in the conversation I’m hoping to have. But when you moved to the Bay Area, you moved without a job. I’ve done that in my career once and there’s a benefit to it. How did you because you’re able to explore and figure out oh, this is where I’m this is where I’m being drawn, or this is lucky and met these people or sometimes it doesn’t work out so nicely. But tell me about what you were thinking in that two months before you landed at good beware, or before you started that search there. And kind of the open mindedness and how you think about that now?
Carolina Cruz-Letelier 7:20
Yes, I’ve done it twice. Now. Moving without, yeah, you did in New York to New York to and there, it’s the highest of highs and the lowest of lows. Because I think you just learn a lot about yourself. And you do a lot of self reflection and a lot of self doubt. And then a lot of being your own cheerleader. And there’s a lot of emotions, and you’re like I should just be doing more things with my time I could learn to cook, I could work out to be cool if I worked out every day. But I think you also realize like, how do I really want to be spending my time and who are the types of people that I want to surround myself with and, and I’m a naturally curious person, which I pick up, you are the same. So there’s also those moments where I think I could be learning more about this and this and this, and you start to get overwhelmed with the potential that’s out there.
Adam Pierno 8:11
And then you’re like, then you just end up on the couch watching TV, because you’re like, well, there’s 50 things I don’t even know what’s the start? Yeah,
Carolina Cruz-Letelier 8:17
and thankfully, streaming wasn’t a thing. Like, that’s how long it’s been like streaming didn’t exist, you start to get DVDs from Netflix in the mail. So I didn’t have the benefit of being able to just sit there and consume like whole seasons of whatever, which I think was a good thing at the time, because I did feel like I had to get out there. But I did a lot of reading at that point. Like I was just trying to like, just consume as much as I could to understand what are the areas of my career that I wanted to really push on and explore and challenge myself with. And yeah, and I think that’s the right time to do it. I was also fortunate enough to have a partner who could support us for a while and I knew this was probably going to happen. So when I lived in New York, I did do like a year of pullback in New York where I was like, I’m not gonna go to the bar tonight. You guys I don’t need to buy for drinks. Like I’m trying to save my money. Because I know eventually I’m moving and I’m going to need that. That little nest egg so I don’t feel so stressed out about it. And I can show you’re like practically I’m incredibly practical and logical. I’m a Capricorn. So I do I’m not like fly by the seat of your pants impulsive, but I like to plan so that I can be impulsive, which makes no sense.
Adam Pierno 9:30
Well, how does that help? Before we before we go to that thread, you also said when you when you move to the Bay Area and someone said, oh, you should come meet these people at the agency. You said something about being a Junior is such a grind. Yeah. Talk about that now with the wisdom that you have. That you’ve earned. Yeah. And kind of how you lead. I’m sure especially right now as people are as agencies are churning and people are jumping from job to job that how do you help new people, young people in this industry navigate that.
Carolina Cruz-Letelier 10:05
Yeah, I think I now reflect on that timing a junior. And it was such a grind. But everybody that I knew, back when we were all juniors, the great ones are doing these incredible things in our careers. And we talk a lot about it now, that those moments where you were like, Yeah, I was, I was in an edit suite with my creative director until two of the morning because that thing had to just get done, I was sitting on the floor looking at proofs for these print ads, with, you know, as it with a red pen, marking things up. And you know, it’s just like a weird time. And, and all of those moments, were those moments that make you who you are in the future and in your career. So they’re, they’re going to always be those building block moments. So now when I have juniors, and it’s juniors, there’s such a wide range now, right? It could be zero to four years, really, I mean, you’re you’re growing and learning every day. And marketing and advertising is evolving so quickly, that you could be a junior in one aspect of your career, but really senior in another. So they think it’s just the constant learning that you’re doing. But I try and remind everybody that those moments are the ones that you’re going to learn the most from, I tell my teams, the failures, obviously, is where you’re going to learn the most actually more than the successes. And I think they take that to heart a lot. And I think now knowing what a grind, it was, for me and for juniors, I tried to spend more time having one on ones or encouraging their direct reports to do more one on ones with them. Because I think that’s one thing that a lot of people maybe didn’t do a lot with us in our generation, which was, yeah, pull you aside and be like, Hey, today was really tough. Let’s talk about why it was really tough. And like, what are we learning from this moment? And like, how are you feeling about it, and just like having that, like 10 minute conversation that I think actually goes a really long way. Yeah, and having someone under feel like they’re being supported and nurtured and that they can see the nugget that they need to take away from this moment and a way that maybe we would have had to do more self reflection to get there. But you can have that conversation that they have that lightbulb moment, much sooner. So their growth can be accelerated, which I think in this moment in marketing that we’re living is necessary, because things are evolving really quickly. So you want to help people get there faster,
Adam Pierno 12:28
or even if it’s even if the growth is not necessarily moving faster. They’re recognizing milestones. So you they still I’ve sure I had to make some mistakes three or four times before I was like, Oh, I get it now. But at least sitting down with someone who says like, what did we learn from this? They still might make that mistake again. But at least it’s a stronger registration of it for them. Yeah,
Carolina Cruz-Letelier 12:51
the recognition is there gonna be it’s gonna be there sooner. Sometimes I’ll sit there and just watch my team make mistakes, because I’m like, it’s not going to be a bad one. But they need to learn from this moment right now. And then we’re going to talk about it. And I think the experience,
Adam Pierno 13:06
yeah, and you let them find their way through it, because then they’re able to also say, Yeah, I know, I did make this mistake, here’s what I did to fix it. And then you’re talking about the positive outcome that was achieved, ultimately,
Carolina Cruz-Letelier 13:19
yeah. And you don’t want them to get the like, let me tell you how I would do it. To your point, like, we need them to feel like I’m going through the motions, I’m feeling this feeling. I know what the conversation needs to look like, what are the words I’m using to get this in this outcome to happen like it’s coming from them. And I think that’s going to have a longer lasting effect on their like, growth and trajectory than me telling them exactly what
Adam Pierno 13:43
should have happened. But you do not seem like a preachy no person at all. So how do you show them like this is the right path? And how much vulnerability Do you show when you’re, when you’re kind of walking them through that or letting them letting them explain or do you know, doing that, that, you know, post post event discussion?
Carolina Cruz-Letelier 14:11
I do a lot of listening. I do a lot of listening. I think that’s something that this gym, this like entire world doesn’t do enough of to be honest right now. So I try and sit back and listen a little bit more than actually speaking, I also try to make sure that they’re feeling really supportive. So I tend to be more vulnerable, I think, then probably a lot of people in my position because I want them to understand that I’ve been there before. I know what they’re going through what they’re feeling. And I think having someone express that vulnerability is going to allow you to feel like you’re in a safe enough space for you to express your vulnerability and then ask questions, because I think a lot of people also just don’t feel safe enough to ask questions. And those are the types of environments where You’re not gonna get the best work. So it’s about just creating those spaces where people just are okay, feeling vulnerable. And, and being able to open themselves up to to accept other outcomes that maybe they hadn’t considered.
Adam Pierno 15:15
Yeah. And how do you get them to get there? You know how sometimes, either, especially when you’re new in your career, you don’t want to admit? I don’t know what I was doing. Or it’s hard to say that, especially in a pretty competitive industry, that we’re in failures, not everybody has the same attitude about failure, as you just shared. So how do you get them to say like, oh, yeah, I really screwed. I really screwed that up. But you need you need to be able to do for yourself if you’re gonna grow from it.
Carolina Cruz-Letelier 15:46
Yeah, I honestly think it’s about consistency. So I’m constantly having trying to have those conversations, giving them a little slack and going like, Hey, tell me what you’re thinking about that. I’m just trying to be there. And I think that consistency allows them to feel like there’s safety. And they can trust me. And I think trust is a huge thing as well. So I’ll hand in hand. And I also do the same coaching for the direct reports so that they are like in the same behaviors being from the top to the bottom of the chain, just knowing that if there’s a constant conversation feedback cycle, that eventually people even if it’s not the first time or the second time, and they’re like, Oh, my God, I totally messed up. But eventually, they will get to a place where they’re feeling safe enough to be able to say those words. And I think a lot of it also is myself sometimes saying in these moments, like, oh, my god, you guys, I totally messed up, it’s on me. And having them see that I can do that as well. And it’s the I’m still feeling safe enough to do that, hopefully will allow them the same space.
Adam Pierno 16:52
Is that is that kind of the foundation of trust is being able to share your own mistakes and proactively say like, well, let me tell you how I let me tell you how I messed this up for you. I think
Carolina Cruz-Letelier 17:06
so. Yeah. And I think it’s the same with client relationships. In the same way. We’re, I find the best relationships come from transparency, when you’re like, here’s what we’re doing. Here’s what the thought process was. Here’s what might scare you. And here’s why we think it’s exciting. And then have the client go through a meeting with some sort of expectation set. And then after the meeting, then be it feeling hopefully good enough to call up like you were right about everything you just said. Also, that was horrendous. And you could be like, I totally understand why you say that. But at least you can have a one on one back and forth, back and forth and have them against feel safe enough to be like, let me tell you everything. Yeah, we’ve created that back and forth. And that sense of trust and, and transparency, which I think is critical.
Adam Pierno 17:54
It’s a fine line to because there’s there’s some things that happen in the day to day work that looked like they could be the Hindenburg. And let’s just navigate through it. We don’t have to call anybody let’s not let’s figure out we were going to come up with a solution. And then after the fact, you could go, Hey, look, this is what happened. This got screwed up. But here’s what we did to fix it. And you’re reporting it that way versus like a blow by blow freaking everybody out over over at the brand that’s saying like, what are they doing over there?
Carolina Cruz-Letelier 18:22
Yeah, totally. And you want those clients, somebody expressed to me recently, you want to get to a place where you’re in a text conversation with the client, because that’s when you’ve achieved a level of trust, where it’s like I can, I can interrupt your Sunday brunch really quick and be like, Oh, my God really fast. This interesting insight just happened. I got a text from the creative director, are you cool? If we pivot a little bit and you want someone to be like, Yes, that sounds great. Or actually the CEO is already expecting XYZ, can we not? And then you’ve already established that. And that’s the same for your team. 1,000%
Adam Pierno 18:57
you want to get to that same level of intimacy of being able to reach out to someone and get them I think we underestimate how intimate it is to be able to get into someone’s like, particular I’m holding on my phone here. I’ve seen this there a particular space and their device, you know, it’s one thing to be a creep and slide into someone’s DMS. But when you’re in a in a text exchange with someone that that’s, that’s in the palm of their hand. Yeah, there’s something to that, that we we pretty much underestimate, I think.
Carolina Cruz-Letelier 19:27
Yeah, I think for sure. It’s almost like the new phone call. Like now, when your phone rings, you’re like, Who’s calling me
Adam Pierno 19:34
What’s psycho pushed actually knows how to use the phone app
Carolina Cruz-Letelier 19:38
is this. But with text messages. It’s like, especially with clients, I would say that’s a specific level of intimacy. I like that word, actually. That is a new frontier for me where I’m like, Oh, I I do have great text message conversations with a lot of my clients. That’s great. I’m excited about that. You didn’t really you’re
Adam Pierno 19:59
like Oh, I’m good. Good. Yeah, I’m
Carolina Cruz-Letelier 20:00
like I’m doing already. It’s exciting. And then I guess, to your point with my direct reports and things that they feel safe enough to just text me randomly, and I’m like, Yeah, please do that. I would prefer you do that, then hold it in and be upset.
Adam Pierno 20:14
Yeah, and especially now, since we’ve been remote for I mean, you’ve mentioned before that you’ve been remote for a while, but going on to year three of of craziness of what we’ve been dealing with, how have you managed to transition from everybody in the building to everybody remote, to whatever the next frontier is going to be? How do you maintain that level of trust, when, when you’re a person on a box and a glass screen,
Carolina Cruz-Letelier 20:42
it’s really difficult. Like, if I were to sit here and be like, it was amazing, we were great at all things, I would be lying. And anyone who tells you that they’re great at all those things is fine. It’s really hard. I also think in our field when you’re talking about creativity and the vulnerability that it takes to get to wonderful ideas and, and also the level of coordination when you’re thinking about marketing plans and comms, and there’s just a lot of people required to get to great work and fields. And so it’s really, I think it’s really, really hard. What we’ve tried to do is make sure that people to the point about text messages are finding other ways to communicate that are outside of zoom. Because like these spaces, at first were like, really awesome. You’re like, I have a background. I’m in Paris today. I’m in Tokyo yesterday, you know, virtual backgrounds, and all kinds of things. And that stuff got old really fast. And you tried to find really a different ways to make it a really inspiring place to be in the conversation with someone. Yeah. And I do think over time, this now became so normal that it’s the thing that you’re like, Oh, I gotta get another zoom, I have to run to the bathroom laundry two minutes late. And so we’ve tried to just encourage people to find the, this the text, other things, not rely on Slack all the time for everything, just try to meet people where they need to be met, and have those conversations so that teams can align on what they need to be successful. And it’s not easy all the time. I mean, there’s definite tension. And there’s definite, like, all of a sudden silos start to form and you’re like, we need to rejigger the machine because people aren’t talking to each other, respectfully, appropriately, there’s just dynamics that are being missed. And so once the world started to slowly open up, we also tried to encourage people to, like, how can we fly you to one place so you can regain that team dynamic, critical being in person, if everyone’s comfortable, like you don’t want to be there, that’s totally fine, too. But it’s necessary over time, you don’t need to do every day. But you definitely need to find that. We have found that when we meet with our clients, for example, in person after two years, you just get you you’re like sitting in a conference room. And the the little The thing is coming down to the screen and you’re getting goosebumps, and you’re like why am I getting goosebumps, this is amazing and magical. And you forget the energy and the and the work that really gets done sitting in a room with someone. So we’re you know, we’re just trying to encourage people to be flexible and communicate. And then when things feel icky. Express that, because I think that’s where it you actually need to just like, have that conversation and have everyone talk about that. So that you can move past it and find the dynamics shift that needs to occur so that you can continue to do the work that everybody came to this agency to do.
Adam Pierno 23:33
Yeah, the allure of slack for agencies and for enterprises is that all those text conversations would be funneled into one place. Slack wants you to believe that it creates some kind of historical document which is horseshit.
Carolina Cruz-Letelier 23:47
You can’t pretend it’s the worst search ever. I
Adam Pierno 23:49
know. It’s a great idea. But come on, guys. It’s not when there’s already wikis like this already existed, if that sort of, but the idea of encouraging people to communicate in the channel that they are more comfortable with, that creates kind of a burden in its in a way because then you have to be aware of oh, well, maybe they messaged me over here. Maybe they message me over there could be an email, it could be a text, it could be you know, now I have to do this. So how big is mateesah? Kafir?
Carolina Cruz-Letelier 24:20
I feel like we’re like 60 ish.
Adam Pierno 24:23
Okay, yeah, that’s the thing. That’s what I think is the magic numbers. 60 becomes like the culture really has to be clung to when you get bigger than 60. From my from my experience, how do you keep everybody clinging to it? Oh, my gosh. Or how have you so far? Yeah.
Carolina Cruz-Letelier 24:46
I think that we have a weekly meeting on all agency, which we can still do because we’re you know, 60 ish people. It’s sacred time. So we try to make sure that everyone can attend we don’t really encourage manage anybody to book client meetings and things over it? I think a lot of our clients realize that that’s sacred time for us, especially now that we’re all remote. And we’ve got, like I mentioned before our call, nearly half of our workforce is forever remote, which is super cool.
Adam Pierno 25:12
Was it? Was it that way before? No, no. So overtime, you’ve just started hiring talent,
Carolina Cruz-Letelier 25:17
one person who was permanent remote, and that’s because they sat on client site before the pandemic, and now we’re nearly half permanent remote.
Adam Pierno 25:26
Wow, that’s a huge switch. I wonder how common that is from in the agency world. If you talk to other people that are going through the same type of growth trajectory,
Carolina Cruz-Letelier 25:35
I you know, what my talent human has told me that a lot of agencies are trying it. But at the same time, there is going to be a default where people eventually won’t be making that accommodation, and they just are gonna want to at least have people close enough, where if they wanted people to come in, they could, I think we’ve just realized that we’re never going to get to the place where we have the best talent for the briefs that we’re getting if we limit ourselves to Bay area only. So I really think we have like 10 people who are sitting in LA right now, like, we just, we’re just cool with it. And as long as the works getting done, and at the quality that we all expect, and we’re available to ourselves and our clients, then it’s fine. Cultures tricky, for sure. Because you’re trying to make sure that you keep the things that matter, intact from a culture standpoint. So we’ve always had these like moments during the year that we consider really critical to culture, our summer party, so cliche agency, but is epic, always. So we try to do that we haven’t been able to do that now for two years. So this year, we’re like it’s gonna happen, fingers crossed our Christmas party. And then we do like bi annual meetings for the entire company that comes together, we kind of talk about the vision for the year and things like that. So we try to keep the milestones in place at least. And then at that weekly meeting that I mentioned, we try to infuse a piece of conversation that’s guided by a creative director, or strategist or whomever, to keep the culture alive. So people understand what we mean, when we’re talking about our agency vision and all those things. But it’s definitely not easy.
Adam Pierno 27:14
How do you, you know, you mentioned keeping people glued to or aware of those things that matter? How do you even define those things that matter? It’s when everybody’s in one space, you know, even for your company meeting, everybody was in a conference room together potentially, or in the lobby or wherever you had the meeting. But now with people diffuse, and that might be their only exposure is looking at 60 rectangles for that duration of that meeting. And then they go back to their work, which is, which is meetings with smaller groups and their own individual work. How do you point out what is important to the the agency and what is important to the culture? You know, what is it that you’re threading through everything?
Carolina Cruz-Letelier 27:58
Yeah, I do think that we try to make sure that all of our department heads and leadership have a really clear understanding of the vision and what we’re trying to achieve and, and what that means to us. So that they can continue, even in their smaller conversations, continue to articulate that, and make sure that that meaning is known. I think that’s one of the bigger things that we try to make sure is happening. And this is really random and small. But again, our head of talent and HR team, they are constantly just sending out little things during holidays and making sure and working with our creative teams, for example to make to write like little pieces of coffee or whatever that just continue to make that vibe that you would have felt when you walked off the elevators ran like sending it to you with like, a whole tray of doughnuts. We were very into cookies over this break. So there’s a company in LA not not a sponsored ad, but this place called stuffed cookies in LA and they’re amazing. And so they became the thing and the agency was like, where am I stuffed cookies. It’s like it’s St. Patrick’s Day, where’s the delivery? Like? They I mean, there’s those little things like that, where people come to expect but they’d be like, randomly become pieces of culture and and it’s just something that the teams will self reflect on one another. And then that, that, that feeds that culture, so it doesn’t always have to come from the top. If you’re doing it. Well.
Adam Pierno 29:24
That’s awesome. Yeah. When you’re when you’re hiring, how do you look at culture as a criteria, you know, there’s always this debate about culture fit and whether that was good or bad. Now, now that we’re all remote, or you’re at least 50% remote, has that changed the way you look at? You know, is this person culture fit or what do they add to the culture or how does that conversation change?
Carolina Cruz-Letelier 29:50
Yeah, we stopped talking about the word culture fit actually. Yeah. Probably to a year or two ago. We just tried to shift how we were thinking about Hiring we’ve got, we tried to do this whole trying to remove bias from hiring. So we’re doing more formalized questionnaires and things, we have different departments of people meeting with all of our candidates. And I think that’s been really helpful because you do get a wide swath of like, very junior very senior creative strategies, meeting all types of people, not necessarily even like if they’re coming in to work on one client, maybe they’re meeting people from another client group. And I think that helps everyone feel like they also have a, not an opinion, but they can bring forth an insight from a conversation they had with a candidate, and say, this felt interesting to me for this reason, or I loved how they talked about X,
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/adam-pierno/support