Gut checks and good feelings.

10 years at ilk

This month marks my tenth year at ilk – which feels really strange to write! As the big one-zero arrives, I’ve been mulling over some of the things that I’ve learnt over the last decade…

Starting at the beginning, my introduction to ilk wasn’t entirely straightforward. I interviewed for my position only to lose out to another applicant. Being a firm believer in ‘everything happens for a reason’, I applied (successfully) for another job and off into the sunset I went… until I received a phone call from ilk to inform me that it hadn’t worked out with the previous candidate, and would I be happy to take up the position?

This is where the ‘everything happens’ mantra failed me and I stubbornly stuck to my guns and politely declined the position. Except that I only lasted two days at the job before contacting ilk to find out if the position was still available. By the Friday, I was throwing shapes at the Christmas party.

So, a convoluted start! But I also learned a lesson right there: trust your gut. I got a really good feeling for the team when I interviewed at ilk and it was only stubbornness that stopped me accepting immediately. As I discovered, it’s the same in account management; sometimes you have to judge people and situations on the fly, and your gut is the only guide you have.

What other lessons have I learnt along the way? A key thing is that there’s always more than one approach to a problem. Working in account management means that you see a lot of similar projects coming through, but that doesn’t mean they all have to be tackled in the same way.

It’s always really interesting to see how other people approach a brief, and experience has taught me that sometimes there’s benefit in surrendering control from time to time. I’m someone who is quite rigid in my planning approach, but it can be to my detriment when timelines or costs aren’t quite working. So when I throw up my hands and declare that I’m never going to get a project done on time, or that it won’t be anywhere near the client’s budget, it’s always helpful (and reassuring!) to know that I have a team around me who will all have different viewpoints, and we can always find a solution.

On a similar note, this leads me nicely onto owning your mistakes. When I may have messed up on a timing plan, or missed something off a quote (yes, it does happen!) it’s very easy to shy away from this and bury your head in the sand. And that was my preferred approach when I realised that something hadn’t quite gone to plan (that, and also genuinely losing sleep over it). As time has gone by, I’ve realised that it’s actually much easier to simply own it. It gets you a lot further with clients, gains you respect with your colleagues and actually just gets the whole thing resolved much quicker.

Owning those mistakes and watching others do this over the years has also shown me that the most successful teams don’t have a hierarchy when it comes to most things. Yes, there will naturally be tasks that fall to the more senior members of the team, but when someone messes up, or there’s an ‘exec task’ to be done, everyone pitches in to help out. I will always remember an instance when I was still new at ilk and I had several boxes of merchandise that needed to be branded for one of our clients. It was the two most senior people in my team that worked through their lunchtimes and stayed late in the day to help me, assuring me that there was no such thing as tasks specifically for execs. That was a good feeling, and a powerful lesson.

Finally, because ten years is a long time, it’s important to never stop learning. This doesn’t just apply to a work sense, although it is very easy to find yourself going through the motions and feeling like you don’t need to learn about something when you’ve done it consistently for ten years. Working with different people shows you new approaches to things, so quite often there is something to learn, even when you’re doing something familiar. This applies outside of work too; I’ve found it’s really easy to let the 9-5 take over your life and then you’re ten years into something and you realise that you haven’t learnt anything outside of your job in that time (which seems crazy when you’ve spent the previous ten years only learning!). So this year I took a course in British Sign Language (BSL). It’s something I’ve wanted to do for ages, and although studying alongside work was difficult to juggle, it was also really rewarding to do something for me.

So that’s it! When I first started to write this blog I was dubious about how much I could actually tell people. But I guess ten years is a long time, and it turns out you do pick up a thing or two along the way.