The reflections of a Rebel

The Christmas and New Year period is a time for over-indulgence (guilty!), a time for reflection, and a time for making resolutions for the year ahead.

As a relatively new Rebel, I’d like to share my reflections on my experiences so far. I joined Good Rebels back in September, tasked with the challenge of helping clients navigate their way into the future – a task as stimulating as it’s always been – perhaps now more than ever, given the increasingly diverse ways in which digital and social can be used to tackle business challenges. No two clients challenges are the same, so it follows that every strategy we develop and every set of tactics we recommend are unique to each individual client. Every challenge demands fresh thinking. Never has that famous quote by Henry Ford been so relevant:

“if you do what you’ve always done, you’ll get what you’ve always got.”

Reflections

At Good Rebels, we’re lucky. Our corporate culture is fabulously inclusive and energetic, it’s one in which we’re all encouraged to immerse ourselves in new thinking, innovation, and the forefront of social marketing. We work with a breadth of clients across a wide variety of sectors (such as automotive, finance, retail, healthcare and FMCG) and locations. This provides us with a rich and ever changing set of challenges and experiences from which we all benefit – as do our clients.

Allied to this, our experts are spread out across our four international offices (Barcelona, Brighton, Madrid and Mexico). We work closely with clients to help them overcome each challenge and share these learnings internally so that the knowledge gained from one client in one sector in one office feeds the entire network.

So far, so inspiring. But what about looking into the future?

Resolutions

The other day, as my children were getting ready for their first day back at school after the Winter break, I encouraged them (as I regularly do) to “try their hardest, do their best and ENJOY it.” It occured to me then this isn’t an approach I’ve brought with me, at least not explicitly, into my working environment. Yet, there’s such simplicity to it – and, by extension, such power. It’s a well established truth in training and educational theory that if people enjoy what they do, they’ll try harder and their skills will improve.

It’s also true (it must be as it’s such a cliche!) that the more you put in, the more you get out. Or as South African golfer Gary Player once put it, “the harder I practice, the luckier I get.” Yet, in my experience, we rarely incorporate this way of thinking into our working week. At best, it’s touched upon in a formal year-end review or appraisal.

I realise the cynics may dismiss this way of thinking as childish – all well and good for school children perhaps, but not within the working environment. However, the reason we teach our children these things is because we want them to develop good habits – we want to give them the best foundation possible for growing up. Every once in a while, it doesn’t hurt to go back and review these lessons ourselves.

So for me, 2019 will be all about being honest with myself about the work I’m doing. Have I tried my hardest? How well have I organised my time? Have I reached the high standards that my colleagues and my clients expect of me? And then, extending this mindset to my colleagues as well, the question we need to ask is – have we done our best?

Because if the answer to that question is a genuine and resounding ‘yes’, then we’re halfway to having a successful 2019. Simple, really!