AdNews is following the WFH Diaries with a series of Perspectives, asking two questions: What did you learn in 2021 and what are you looking forward to in 2022? We've also encouraged the industry to glam, dress for the best, and face next year with optimism.
Jasmin Bedir, CEO Innocean Australia
The permanent limbo of life in a pandemic, but also life in a country that hadn’t quite caught up yet with the rest of the world and our unpreparedness to live side by side with a virus affected all of us in different ways.
Personally, I felt that 2021 was a permanent construction site where the builder wasn’t quite sure what we were building and when it would be complete.
Nothing could ever be planned with 100% certainty, not in our personal lives and neither in business. Personally, I struggled with the lack of control and the uncertainty of what one was supposed to do as a leader, but also as a parent, partner, friend and the daughter of a family on the other side of the planet.
Despite the fact that I started my gig as Innocean CEO in lockdown, restructured the entire company in lockdown and rebuilt the team in lockdown, I still I feel like half of the time I was making things up on the go, based on what’s best for our staff to keep stress levels to a minimum.
This June we hit peak anxiety levels: High volume of work, our first really big pitch, new staff all combined with anticipation of doom/lockdown and just when you think it can’t get any harder, we lost a colleague to a brain aneurysm in the office days before we were shut down.
I had some sleepless nights riddled with sadness, but also worrying how one deals with the collective grief of an agency in a way that does it justice whilst in lockdown? Whilst delivering a pitch? Whilst home schooling and worrying about friends and family and the future? I was supposed to bring this agency forward and be strong, right?
I decided I could only get through this the only way I know: by showing vulnerability and empathy. There is a time and a place for everything in life and in business and I abandoned all the aggressive growth and progress plans we had and decided it was time to just stand still. Regroup, settle, make sure everyone was okay, prioritise mental health, less Zoom meetings, more hours and even days off (sunshine hour and sunshine day).
Staff surveys indicate that this was the right approach to take. Now that we’re surfacing out of our homes yet again, there is a real excitement within the agency for the future. The positivity is palpable - we’ve been through possibly our hardest year yet, facing tragedy on many levels, but we made so much progress: we’ve even won some awards, some new business and our first ever Effie.
If we can do all of this in a year like 2021, 2022 will be a walk in the park, or a trip overseas ….. Right?
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