We’re a company of many personalities. So we thought it would be nice to showcase some of the great people who work at Angry Creative and let them tell you about themselves and their experiences here.
I (David Lockie, CMO at Angry) chose Tom as the guinea pig for this series, as I’ve known him for a long time and I could trust him to be kind!
David Lockie: So Tom, how did you end up in the tech industry?
I’ve always liked tinkering with computers and created my first website back in high school when Dreamweaver was the tool everyone was using. It was basically Facebook.
DL: Wait! You created Facebook?
Basically! People could send in pictures of themselves doing a funny pose and then visitors could score them on a 10-point scale. The site was taken down pretty quickly by the school, but after that I got hooked on making websites during the dotcom era and had a continued interest in the industry.
I started working on environmental campaigns, where I met a charming young chap called David Lockie, who introduced me to WordPress. I quickly messed up, trying to install too many plugins and basically doing what every first-time WordPress user does, which makes you realise that you can crash a website pretty quickly! That was in 2010, and I followed WordPress and its development for many years, eventually landing a job at Pragmatic [Note: Pragmatic was acquired by Angry Creative in July 2020]
DL: I remember the conversation, between the initial pitch, the idea of working at Pragmatic, and you actually starting, was only a few weeks.
Yes, I’d worked at the University of Brighton, which used WordPress, but also Expression Engine, and I could get very frustrated. I knew what you could do with WordPress. It was 2013, obviously WordPress had come a long way, just since 2010. So the offer to work with WordPress and a great team was easy to take.
DL: You had many roles at Pragmatic! You were a developer, then a project manager, an account manager, and finally a human resources manager. When did you first realise that you were more keen to work with people rather than technology?
I had worked on a number of projects for different clients and with different teams at Pragmatic. It was the typical startup environment, where you adapt and take on different roles, but then you gravitate to certain areas. I found the people management side had the best balance of challenging and rewarding for me.
I did some self-analysis and thought okay “What does the future hold for me?”. After a couple of years in the industry, I saw an opportunity to work with managers who had challenging people situations. It’s something I’m naturally drawn to and I liked the idea of being able to communicate and try to understand what makes people tick.
I remember when we first started thinking about this role. I had to persuade the management. I’ve really, really enjoyed the role since then, and it’s opened up a lot of learning opportunities for myself as well.
You know we always hear about how AI and new technological advances are going to take over people’s jobs, but I feel like one thing that’s not going to change is the fact that whatever the product is, it’s going to be in the hands of humans. Relationships and communication will become even more important because we actually have to break away from our screens and interact with people. Human-centred roles need to encourage skills development around emotional intelligence, empathy and understanding each other… And it’s important that we don’t forget that and let the good human become a dying species.
Since I started working remotely, I feel it has become even more important to value these things. We’ve been practising remote working for a long time, but not being able to meet up whenever we want is a cultural difference that we have to adapt to. I feel like the community of working really close together in an office is really hard to build remotely. But that’s the work that needs to be done and that’s what I love about my role during these covid times.
DL: Let’s switch gears. So we merged with Angry Creative over a year ago. What have you liked most about this change?
DL: Simple. For me it’s internationalisation. Working with people from different cultures, different backgrounds, different experiences, seeing the different ways people approach work and different ways of thinking, it’s amazing to see.
If you work with people from the same area, with similar life experiences, all in a small room then you will get quite similar answers to things.
Now we work from several different continents, we interviewed a guy from Sri Lanka this morning. We have developed the ability to be much more open, inclusive and accessible. It’s been amazing to see and experience.
I think over the last few months we’ve really seen the impact it’s had on the new team members we’ve brought in. It’s just incredible, the energy and the enthusiasm that we see.
So that’s been the most important thing for me, that I feel like we’re part of a global community now, which is just amazing.
DL: Yeah, that’s cool. So tell me, what is a typical day in the life of Tom?
So the typical day in the life starts early and I’m up early.
DL: That surprises me because you’re also a night person!
Yeah, I guess I’m a bit of a weird hybrid and morning and night person. But getting up early, going down to the gym and having some personal time before work starts is so important and to get into the right frame of mind.
DL: You live in Portugal, is it an indoor gym or an outdoor gym?
One of the things that was really important in my decision to move here was the fact that you have a longer outdoor season, so hopefully that continues until November. You get in touch with nature because the rest of the day is spent in front of a computer screen. It’s important to start the day like that for me. Then check in with the international team, because people come online in earlier time zones.
DL: By “checking in” do you mean proactively contacting people or just responding to incoming enquiries?
I’m definitely proactive, especially with the very small team that I work in. We definitely try to create a culture of “I proactively speak to you, not just when I need something.” Then you usually look at ongoing cases. When staff have raised something, I will spend some time going back and going through messages and following up with: “We solved the problem, but how are you?” a couple of weeks later to make sure everything has gone well. I try to get all my appointments in the morning.
DL: You have a lot of things and people you need to keep track of. How do you organise yourself? How do you remember to check in with someone? Is it just something that comes naturally or do you have a “to do” list?
I am a person who uses reminders in Slack extensively and have lots of reminders pinging throughout the day. I find it useful because we are always in Slack. Trying to keep things there helps maintain context, rather than having a separate tool.
Then I split the rest of the day into important small tasks and some focus time on projects. I tend to have a bit of a lull around 14:30, which is pretty typical in the Mediterranean! I then run errands during the late afternoon and early evening.
DL: That makes sense. You talked about projects: can you give me an example of a project that you’re working on, that you’ve finished recently or that you have in the pipeline?
The projects that we run in the HR department are linked to the employee experience strategy and values of Angry Creative so we listen to what employees are saying through retros, surveys and feedback from managers; we put together projects and solutions that address those issues.
So an example of that might be: staff state that they don’t have enough time for training activities. We will then plan a schedule of activities for the year. Then it will be putting together content and planning those activities and making sure that the programme ties in with the business strategy: looking at what needs or skills gaps there are, or making sure that we keep everyone motivated and engaged.
DL: That’s nice. Sounds like there are a lot of balls in the air.
The thing about it is that you can spend all day with things like the tactical, the day-to-day and health. But we also have to make time for projects that make Angry Creative an exceptional place to work.
That means making time for the broader picture, strategic projects. We are always trying to find more time. Time is the most valuable thing in business. So we, the HR department, have to find ways to show that the work we do has an impact on people and what that means in terms of retaining staff and keeping people happy and productive.
That’s the biggest challenge we have; making sure we can get enough time for activities and also making sure they are actually effective and impactful. We don’t always get it right. There can be projects that in theory sound fantastic, but in reality we get really low engagement. So it’s important to take the time to assess what worked, what didn’t work and what opportunities we have to learn from.
DL: What makes you most excited? If you had a perfect day and something happened or you got to work on something special, what would this type of work look like for you?
I love the idea of tackling cases via collaboration. So, if we have a bigger goal that we want to achieve as an agency, I would love a day of really rapid prototyping as an approach to that. In other words, workshops, understanding what the actual issues are, doing empathy workshops with this team and bringing together ideas and ways of achieving those goals. That kind of work is really great and I love it because it’s just enough workshop time but then also to actually produce something in the end.
DL: In other words, a day of collaboration and problem solving.
Yes, but that you come out with something that is really useful. Often HR-themed workshops tend to be a bit boring. I like design thinking where you actually come out with prototypes that you can test and things that can be used rather than just a list of actions.
We’re a team of tech geeks, we’re all people who use products so that should be the kind of useful prototypes we should come up with. Making the same types of methods work makes sense to me.
DL: During your time at Pragmatic and Angry, is there anything that you maybe didn’t expect to learn, that wasn’t on your radar, or has just been sort of an ongoing challenge for you that you had anticipated but didn’t foresee the complexity of.
The biggest complexity is people. No matter how difficult the technical problem is, there will always be some kind of solution to it. Whereas with people, the solutions and complexities are endless.
The most instructive thing has been that everyone reacts differently to different things. So what you think might be a great idea might be perceived as terrible, or vice versa, you might think something is really going to end badly but instead ends really, really well.
You can never really predict. You can plan and you can strategise but how people actually respond is still quite chaotic. Along with that, everyone is at different stages of their career, different stages of life, different stages of happiness. So if your policies and processes are too generic, or designed to suit everyone, you will get mixed engagement.
The other thing is that once people have reached the risk zone, where they feel that too much is going their way, then it’s really hard to win them back. It takes a lot of time, effort and great management to win people back. when you think about budgets for people projects, it’s really pennies when you look at how long it takes to actually win someone back once they’ve reached the point of no return. And it’s very, very difficult to win someone back from that.
DL: Just like customer relationships?
Yes exactly, or any kind of relationship. Exactly. It takes time to build things up but it’s very easy to break it down.
DL: The last question I have is if someone would be interested in working with us in the team as a client or as a partner, what would you say to them?
JL: Okay, okay. I think it’s very important to carefully reflect what’s going on in the business, with teams and people, because the last thing you want to do is have false expectations.
When I talk to potential new members of the team, I talk about us. We’re working with a global team for the first time, and what you see is that we’re recruiting people who are energised, enthusiastic and with a positive, constructive mindset. That means you get people actively trying to welcome you and engage with the business whether you are a customer or a new employee.
If you present a problem or challenge that you have, a couple of people will try to solve it for you, very quickly. It’s an amazing thing to feel. Even in this world where you have hundreds of miles between people, you have people who come to the rescue, whether it’s been a week, a day, they will help and contribute.
I think it’s because we hire people at all levels and career stages and with different backgrounds. We don’t just hire people who have been in the WordPress community for 20 years, we’ve hired people who have been in different positions and can bring different experiences to the business, and willingly. Hopefully you’ll find a place where that kind of, you know, learning, growth with partnership strategies is fostered and is high on the agenda.
DL: Tom, thanks for sharing!
If you’re interested in working with a WooCommerce-focused company that puts time into their staff, find out more and feel free to contact us!