Our Greatest Strength, Part II
This is the second of a two-part post about the CRAFT team.
In Part I of this post, I mentioned The CRAFT Experience. What is that? CRAFT was created with the expectation that the partners would not be the sole focus of the firm: any interaction with any CRAFT team member must and shall be a valuable experience. By extension, every team member must be valuable: every member of our team is a contributing, valued member of the Body CRAFT: they fill multi-faceted roles, lending their perspectives, leadership and talents. It’s not just a job – they bring their A game and move the team (and themselves) forward toward success together as one unit.
For example, when Congresswoman Ann Kirkpatrick (AZ-2) walked out of her own town hall meeting with constituents to avoid their questions about the then-pending Obamacare bill, members of the CRAFT team collaborated closely with the National Republican Congressional Committee to turn YouTube videos of the incident into game-changing TV ads. The result? Arizona voters booted Ms. Kirkpatrick from office. These ads, conceptualized and produced by the CRAFT team, played a major role in facilitating Ms. Kirkpatrick’s departure from Congress.
There are many instances like this, where CRAFTers collaborated both internally and with external partners to deliver hard-hitting, effective messages that resulted in tangible change.
So when someone at CRAFT says that our people are our greatest strength, our finest, most valuable asset, they’re not just whistling Dixie. This is a deeply ingrained CRAFT value that we all embrace and nurture. We live it. We breathe it. We eat it for breakfast with our granola.
We don’t worry about being “greater than the sum of our parts” because the sum of our parts is already so great. We are CRAFT.
Our Greatest Strength, Part I
This is the first of a two-part post about the CRAFT team.
“Our greatest strength is our employees.”
If you’ve spent more than four minutes with any CRAFT partner, you’ve probably heard this – or some variation thereof – at some point in the conversation. A lot of companies make this assertion: a firm is only as good as its people, and it is the thing du jour to aim a spotlight on the employees. But at the end of the day, that is spotlight firmly redirected back onto the star: The Company. Anymore, it is almost a thing taken for granted that saying nice things about employees is expected. But do companies really mean it? No, I mean really?
About a year ago, I decided to join CRAFT, based in large part on the importance the firm’s partners placed on the contribution of every individual in the firm, as well as on the painstakingly nurtured CRAFT culture. CRAFT’s got a definite vibe, and it comes straight from our heart: our people. We are blessed with some impressive folks, the kind who are hip without effort. They also happen to be some of the most talented people in the biz, as a review of our work and accomplishments easily makes plain.
We handpick our team members for their unique blend of talents, skills and qualities, attributes that add value for our clients. They are the crème de la crème, and both CRAFT and our clients reap the benefits.
Chances are you’ve seen their work on your TV. Chances are you’ve read about issues that our folks are shaping. Chances are you’ve visited websites they’ve built, or viewed strategic advertising they’ve placed. And they do it with enthusiasm, with a hunger to make each project scream excellence…and with a dual sense of professionalism and, well, fun.
CRAFT intentionally incubates creativity and encourages the professional and personal development of our team through several strategies, including:
- Involvement. Team members have their hands in everything, know everything that’s going on with our clients. They are knee-deep in exciting projects for nationally known organizations, candidates and brands.
- Access. Every individual, from intern to director, has unmediated, direct access to each partner, providing constant opportunities to absorb partner expertise, industry strategies and professional insights.
- Contribution. Team members are encouraged to let their voices be heard in a variety of contexts, and they are urged to accept the ideas of others with open minds, humility and grace.
- Humor. We take our clients and our work seriously, but we don’t take ourselves too seriously. We enjoy what we do and who we do it with, creating a lighthearted atmosphere that permeates our working environment.
- Bricklayers. Each team member is laying the bricks that are building the CRAFT house. We want builders.
We trust our team members implicitly to deliver The CRAFT Experience to our customers, because we know they recognize their own success in CRAFT’s.
