What We Learned in Our First Year Working with Rhythm

Written by special guest blogger, Jess Thompson of Bannerconnect 
Jess is communications manager at Bannerconnect, Europe's leading data and advertising technology company delivering optimal digital experiences. Jess crafts content that aims to educate and inspire around Bannerconnect's mission to innovate digital media by translating industry jargon into plain english.

“Our company has undergone more change and transformation in the past year than we have in our 10 years of existing. In 2014, we were acquired by WPP, the world’s largest media company. This gave rise to a huge surge in growth; we tripled in size within a year with no sign of slowing. We’ve always been a small and agile front-runner in our rapidly changing industry of digital media, but we couldn’t keep running the company as if we were 30 people.” The challenges described by Rutger Tuit, director of operations at Bannerconnect, include welcoming waves of new employees, increasing our global footprint and integrating with a media giant.

”We were concerned that this undertaking would turn our agile speedboat of an organisation into a cumbersome oil tanker. We started looking into methods that would bring more structure and organisation without killing our culture that thrives on passion and resourcefulness. In Rhythm, we found a tool based on a method that would help us to grow with purpose without compromising our culture or agility.”

Reflecting on a year of using Rhythm, we’re incredibly happy with what it’s taught us and how it’s helped us progress. We’re more agile and autonomous by promoting focus, purpose and alignment on our goals.

Here's how Rhythm helps:

1. Long-term planning has never been our focus. As soon we had an idea we would run with it. We were too busy doing to consider how to achieve the best outcome or how it fit into the bigger picture. Rhythm completely overhauled our view of planning by helping us break down our ideas into Think, Plan or Do. By clearly defining and separating the time for planning and action, we can break our goals into a 90-day action plan and have a clear path for hitting those goals, rather than dreaming it up on the fly.
2. We’ve always thought of ourselves as a transparent organization, but now we actually are. By defining our quarterly priorities, communicating and translating them into individual priorities, we create drive through purpose. Each person can see how their work sits in the bigger plan, rather than just doing a set of daily tasks.
3. Rhythm has strengthened our alignment. Each 13-week race focused on a theme centered on one of our four core values (people, passion, resourcefulness, and mastery). The values were decided on and defined by each person to create an accurate and aligned reflection of us as a company. One of the highlights was our Q3 resourcefulness theme ending with a killer car competition and a barbecue labyrinth.

With Rhythm, we’re able to tackle more substantial challenges through better planning, purpose and alignment. By changing how we looked at running a business, we’ve finally been able to realize our dream of creating the ‘organisation of the future.’ This year, empowered by Rhythm, we feel more confident than ever in changing the way people look at advertising and evolving the industry.