There’s no I in Lane

Chris Bruce • 30th Jul 2015

I say ‘we’ because that something special only happens with collaboration from a team of talented folk.

As a ‘suit’, I never get bored of seeing a challenge transformed by our creative team from a brief to an idea or execution that’s nothing short of genius. 

It fascinates me how somebody else can look at something everyday normal, or even slightly dull, and approach it from a completely different and brilliant direction delivering the consumer benefit front and central.

I’ve worked in several teams, but here at The Lane is where I’ve seen the real meaning of the word – where egos are laid aside and the full team works together to create synergy, and sometimes a touch of magic.

The best examples of supreme teamwork is when there is a client emergency or crisis (think: a forgotten deadline, a hot new opportunity, sharp drop in sales).  Those times when a two-week job needs to be delivered in two days – those are times when slick and intuitive teamwork makes or breaks a project.

Its not just because many hands make light work – having people with distinct skills, experience and insight mean that an effective team can dissect a problem quickly and develop the solution from there.

So, in the obligatory ‘top five points’ that all blogs on LinkedIn seem to have, here are the most important things that we try to embrace at The Lane:

Value the full team’s contribution – it doesn’t matter if somebody has defined the proposition for a campaign, developed a groovy app or ordered in the pizzas to keep us going in the wee hours.
Embrace change – “That’s how we’ve always addressed this problem” mentality leads you to getting pretty much the same result as last time.
Positive actions yield positive results –  at The Lane we ask negativity to leave the building, we’ve no space for it.
The sum is greater than the parts – that occasional two-day turnaround can only be achieved because Alison took the call, Ria prepared the brief, Bill booked the time with all parties, Ian planned the digital approach, Ricky created the concepts, Ross developed the designs, Rob did the art work, Iris completed the development, Nat planned the media, Will set up the paid search account and I kept everyone happy in the process, including the client…..
Winning together is better – being able to share the joy of success with those that shared the pain is a brilliant reward.  We enjoyed that very euphoria at the recent Marketing Society #StarAwards15 where, as a team, we won eight awards…

So, after writing this blog I think I’ll change my cheesy one-liner from ‘I love my job’ to ‘I love our team’.

And that’s why I don’t write the copy.