Why Culture Will Always Be Our Constant

A recent study noted that 1 in 3 Millennials say they are planning to look for a new job with a different employer once the pandemic is no longer an issue. Moreover, nearly half of workers who plan to leave their jobs grade their current employers’ efforts to maintain culture during the pandemic as a “C’’ or lower.

That’s not entirely shocking. No matter if it’s in reference to life or work, for most of us, two “c-words” have defined the past year: Covid and chaos. It’s put everything in disarray and made culture-building for many organizations feel like a nicety, not a necessity. for many organizations.

Conversely, for PB&, Culture has been the most important and impactful ‘c-word’ this past year. It’s been the driving force of our business since we launched in 2016.

Culture has been our constant.

Spending the first part of my career at Fallon, the importance of culture was ingrained in me. Pat Fallon always talked about culture as ‘family as a business model’ and at the center of that was a belief in building strong bonds and a place people could see as ‘home.’ After all, people are what make this business work. People are what make the sometimes crazy nature of this business worth it. People — and culture — are why employees stay and thrive.

Throughout my career, defining and driving a strong culture has been a passion of mine across every agency I’ve spent time with. I’ve seen it when it works and I’ve seen it when it doesn’t. Starting PB&, a strong culture was central to my philosophy: one defined by collaboration, curiosity, courage, and caring. That culture would offer personal and professional growth, job satisfaction, and loyalty.

Covid challenged every tenet of our culture:

• Collaboration, a cornerstone of our model, looked and felt different, but also all the more critical.
• Curiosity would be paramount to not just finding new business opportunities, but fulfilling people’s need to grow themselves.
• It would take newfound levels of Courage to maintain, let alone build, our business in new and different ways, especially given that one of our largest clients had been in the tourism space.
• Caring took on a whole new meaning — both at a community and individual level.

But those tenets also gave us a strong anchor for what makes PB& special and what would propel us forward despite the strongest headwinds.

We have looked for every opportunity to live our culture over the past year, despite being apart.

• Early on, our team huddled and launched Til We Dine Again, a program designed to give locals a streamlined way to purchase gift cards at local restaurants to keep local businesses afloat, an opportunity to use our powers for good.
• We converted our Curiosity Days, typically days where we’d venture out to learn or experience something new together, to virtual formats — touring Brooklyn’s street art together online, learning to ‘aquascape’ and touring team members’ WFH locations as they worked from various parts of the world.
• Parking lot parties allowed for some human contact, conversation, and a cocktail as the months wore on. Famed office donuts arrived at people’s homes from time to time to give them a taste of office life.
• We rolled up our sleeves, mined contacts, pitched — and won — different types of business — unlocking the opportunity within each.
• Daily stand-ups became a way of checking in on each other, not just the work, and creating a sense of connection.
• Ensuring job stability for our full team through all of it reinforced our conviction that people make us who we are.

But perhaps the biggest exemplar of our culture came through the power of music. Fifty-two weeks ago we launched our Friday Playlist on Spotify — a team collaboration around various themes inspired by team dynamics, culture at large, or things we were just missing. We’ve created ‘music brackets’ that have rekindled a love for some genres and sparked debate. We even included our extended PB& family in our Holiday Music Challenge during our virtual party.

It has been a constant way for us to laugh together, discuss poignant issues together, be creative together, share together and put all of that out into the world.

Seattle’s own Macklemore said “Music is therapy. Music moves people. It connects people in ways that no other medium can.”

That’s been true for us. So even as we prepare for a return to the office, albeit, in a different way, music will continue to have a role in our company culture.

Our playlists are anchored on collaboration and curiosity. The songs in them celebrate both courage and caring. This tradition is an ongoing reminder of how our culture connected us through chaos and Covid. And why culture will continue to be at the center of how we move forward.

Happy listening.

Originally published at https://pbandseattle.medium.com on April 23, 2021.