Expedition Workshop
Brand Development, Born on a Napkin
Resound is a branding agency that helps businesses tell authentic and compelling stories about their brands. Founded in 2009, Resound started with three friends sitting around a table scribbling ideas on a napkin. Since then, Resound has helped many companies, both in and outside of Arizona, discover their brand’s authentic identity and tell their engaging narrative, all with the focus on connecting with consumers in a genuine way.
Growth Means New Challenges
As Resound slowly grew, Mike Jones (Resound’s CEO) knew he had to find flexible space for his team. After landing in MAC6’s coworking space and adding a few more members to the team, Mike and the rest of the leadership started to feel a shift in the team dynamic. At its core, Resound was all about serving people well and forming real relationships with both clients and teammates. After eight years in business and lots of new faces on the team, Resound began feeling gaps in its organizational structure. Mike and Eric Myers (Resound’s new Director of Creative Services) recognized a need for Resound’s processes and people to be more aligned, but they couldn’t quite figure out the right answer amidst the distractions of the day-to-day grind.
Upon learning about MAC6’s 8-week Expedition workshop, Mike and Eric realized it was best to get ahead of these surfacing issues. The team dove into the immersive program. The workshop focused on building higher-performing teams by eliminating dysfunctions, focusing on company values, and building a culture of accountability.
After eight years in business and lots of new faces on the team, Resound began feeling gaps in its organizational structure
An Expedition Ensues
Jen from MAC6 facilitated the workshop with Resound. She structured the experience so the Resound team had to identify their behavioral and operational voids before introducing the tools designed to fill them. Jen created an open and comfortable environment that helped Resound bring issues to the surface over the course of eight weeks. And none of the issues uncovered were unique to Resound. Many businesses face similar challenges, but some go unseen or unidentified when dedicated time isn’t spent focused on them.
By stepping away from the day-to-day, seeing areas of opportunity, and figuring out what held the team back from being higher performing, Eric and Mike realized that the leadership needed to focus on building relationships with the team first rather than pushing operational adjustments.
Looking Back on the Journey
Every team comes out of the Expedition workshop with different challenges and outcomes, but for Resound the workshop gave a holistic view of what a high-performing team looks like. They realized:
- Building internal relationships are the key to fortifying trust.
- Great leaders learn and adapt to employee communication styles, which also helps build trust.
- The level of emotional intelligence across the team affects client relationships.
After taking focused action on their learnings, Resound started reaping the benefits of becoming a higher-performing team. Specifically, the company witnessed:
- An increase in revenue from the previous year and a higher profit margin year over year.
- Achievement of target company savings goals.
- Improved processes, project management, and capacity for sales.
- More internal structure resulting in a more tightly run ship.
- A more structured and focused approach to hiring.
- Improved peer-to-peer accountability.
- Projects trending in a more positive direction (profit- and pace-wise) than prior to the workshop.
While Mike, Eric, and the rest of the Resound team admit they’re not perfect, they’ve come a long way. The Expedition workshop helped them diagnose some lingering issues. They credit the experience with helping them focus on understanding and fixing those issues so they could keep helping brands tell their engaging narrative.
It takes a lot of work to become a high-performing team.
The payoff is worth the effort, though. If your team needs a performance boost, talk to us first. We’ll help you figure out which of our culture-focused leadership programs will help you get there.