Happy Teams

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Happy Teams examines how organisations create effective company culture. Each episode explores team management, remote work, and employee engagement through discussions with business leaders. We talk with founders about their remote leadership strategies and workplace wellbeing in modern settings. Our guests share insights on effective remote communication and team productivity, including what helps with employee retention and what doesn’t. David and Bachir from Prodigi sit down with guests who’ve mastered remote team management and hybrid work models. They discuss building remote team culture, maintaining positive work environments, and developing employee wellbeing programs that deliver results. Our guests share examples from their experiences, including the missteps and breakthroughs. They explain their approaches to virtual company culture that works across all settings. Listen in as we learn from leaders who’ve developed practical ways to help their teams stay, perform and succeed.

  1. vor 8 Std.

    18 Rules for Creative Problem Solving and How AI Is Changing Agency Creative Teams: Spencer from Art and Science on the Happy Teams Podcast

    Spencer from Art and Science didn't set out to codify his agency's culture. A colleague noticed he kept using the same turns of phrase with clients and suggested they write them down. Over about a year, they captured two or three dozen, then workshopped them into 18 rules for creative problem solving. Those rules now run through everything. Prospective clients reference them in meetings. Departing employees have quoted them back to Spencer when they felt the agency wasn't living up to its own standards. One rule, "never have a sixth rule," is their tongue-in-cheek way of saying don't work with difficult people. They've fired clients over it. The 18th rule came later: be human. It grew out of the pandemic, when interpersonal communication got compressed into Slack messages and Zoom calls. "Somebody told me, Spence, every time you use that emoji, it terrifies us," he says. A winky face was being read as passive aggression. Feedback delivered over text was landing differently than intended. "It wasn't the what. It was the how." Spencer now does quarterly one-on-ones with every team member, because the old method of reading the room disappeared with the office. "I used to walk through the entirety of the office to get to my desk," he says. "It was a vibe check." On AI, his team no longer searches for stock imagery. They generate it. The traditional art director and copywriter pairing is, in his view, collapsing into a single creative role. And his analytics team can now vibe code working prototypes that previously took 18 months of failed handoffs between analysts and engineers. Listen to the full conversation with Spencer on the Happy Teams podcast.

  2. 6. Juli

    How a 25-Year Digital Agency Nearly Tripled Its Margins: Dave from Numiko on the Happy Teams Podcast

    Dave from Numiko admits the agency used to do what most digital agencies do: hire good people and hope they'd figure it out. "I think we were setting people up to fail," he says. Remote work made that approach impossible. So Numiko mapped out everything a new hire needs to know, layered across their first six months. The first week covers who does what. The second introduces playbooks. By three months, there are clear expectations for their seniority level. By six, the onboarding hands over to a performance framework. The pay structure got the same treatment. Salaries had drifted because people who asked loudly got raises and people who didn't were left behind. The gender pay gap was widening for the same reason. Numiko built transparent bands tied to consistent expectations across every team. A lead project manager carries similar responsibility to a lead developer or lead UX designer, and gets paid accordingly. Numiko specialises in four sectors: museums and galleries, charities, higher education, and public policy. That specialism means they can estimate accurately, turn down work that won't be profitable, and avoid reinventing the wheel. The menu system was the turning point. A UX designer would make a small change to how a navigation worked. An hour of design time. But it meant the front-end team couldn't reuse existing code, adding a week of build. "I challenged the team to identify the three best ways of doing this thing," Dave says. They standardised interface behaviour across their most common components. Margins nearly tripled. Listen to the full conversation with Dave on the Happy Teams podcast.

  3. 23. Juni

    12 Years With No Managers, Then They Brought Them Back: Ben from Geonetric on the Happy Teams Podcast

    Ben from Geonetric ran a flat structure with no managers for over a decade. No hierarchy. Team-based accountability. A high degree of autonomy. On paper, it looked efficient. Every person was doing client work rather than managing other people. "For a period of time I think it worked well," Ben says. But the overhead showed up in other places. There was no playbook for performance management without managers, no established way to run promotions, and no clear mechanism for delivering difficult feedback. "It is hard in a peer-to-peer world for everyone to be expected to deliver hard feedback," Ben explains. When Ben took over as CEO two years ago, he surveyed the team. The responses were direct. "I don't know if I'm doing well or not." "I wish I knew who my boss was." People valued the autonomy but needed structure around career progression, mentoring, and feedback. They reintroduced managers and business units. Teams still have input into how work gets done and how things are prioritised, but there is now someone doing monthly check-ins, giving career guidance, and delivering the kind of honest feedback that peers wouldn't. "Nobody wanted the things that bad managers do," Ben says. "But they needed the things that good managers bring." Geonetric has operated as a healthcare specialist for over 20 years. The temptation to diversify comes up every couple of years, but the specialism gives them an edge in competitive pitches and keeps the sales cycle manageable. AI adoption is growing, shaped by HIPAA compliance requirements that limit where tools can touch live data. Listen to the full conversation with Ben on the Happy Teams podcast.

  4. 8. Juni

    Scaling a Creative Studio From 7 to 200 People Across Global Offices: Nick from Territory on Happy Teams

    Nick from Territory describes himself as the restless pragmatist. His co-founder David is the visionary dreamer. That pairing has driven Territory from a seven-person studio to over 200 people across global locations. The dynamic works through respectful sparring. "I'll say, I love what you said. What does the first step look like?" Nick explains. "And then I'll catalyse and accelerate." The two have learned when to push and when to give the other space to process. "I never expect an agreement straight away," Nick says. "I plant the seed. Let him process. Have that conversation after a day or two." The hardest test came when Territory acquired Cantina and brought them into the group. They had a roadmap for integration. Then the market turned. Budgets for the cultural exchange work they'd planned disappeared. "You realise the challenge with intent versus capital to execute on intent," Nick says. Communication became the lifeline, and the liability. "If you stop communicating, people will create a narrative," he says. "And it won't be helpful." The instinct during difficult periods is to wait until there's good news to share. Nick sees that as the worst possible response. "You are always fixing something. There's always a win. So you need to put in hard structure around that stuff." When they finally held a global summit and brought everyone to London, the planned format fell apart within hours. "We wanted to share some stuff, but then we realised all these people that have flown all this way, we want to hear from them." They called it out, dropped the structure, and the room opened up. Listen to the full conversation with Nick on the Happy Teams podcast.

  5. 27. Mai

    Agency Growth Breaking Points at 15, 30, and 50 People: Drew McLellan from Build a Better Agency on the Happy Teams Podcast

    At AMI, Drew McLellan calls most agency founders "accidental business owners." They started as copywriters or art directors, got made redundant, picked up a client, and ten years later found themselves running a 50-person operation with no formal training in how to do it. Drew has worked with thousands of agencies and mapped the exact headcount points where things tend to fall apart: 12 to 15, 25 to 30, 45 to 50, and 75 to 80. Before those thresholds, everything works on tribal knowledge. After them, it doesn't. "Nobody can keep it all in their head anymore," he says. The agencies that handle these transitions share a pattern. The owner stays out of the day-to-day delivery and focuses on three things: winning new work, deepening existing client relationships, and developing the team. "Agency owners that stay in those lanes can consistently deliver double digit profit," Drew explains. He's equally direct on revenue. "60 to 70% of your net new revenue every year should come from existing clients, and most agencies don't come anywhere near that." The instinct is to chase new logos. The money is in the accounts you already have. On remote work, Drew is clear that the agencies retaining people are the ones investing in bringing teams together in person, even if it's only a couple of times a year. "There is no substitute for that," he says. "When they don't have that connective tissue to their coworkers, that's when you start to see that revolving door." Listen to the full conversation with Drew on the Happy Teams podcast.

  6. 11. Mai

    Why This Innovation Agency Stopped Pitching and Hires for Behaviour Over Skills: Jenny from Magnetic on the Happy Teams Podcast

    Jenny from Magnetic walked away from pitching. Not because she couldn't win, but because the process had become a procurement exercise that rarely suited the work Magnetic does. "We sell solutions, but we don't always know what the solution's going to be" Jenny explains. "Sometimes we don't even know what the problem is." A client arrives with a brief and Magnetic tells them the problem is somewhere else entirely. That doesn't lend itself to a competitive pitch process with a fixed scope. Instead, Magnetic operates on relationships. It takes longer to start a project, but once it begins, the foundation is already in place. "Innovation takes people out of their comfort zone," Jenny says. "If the relationship isn't there when you start, it's hard." Internally, Magnetic runs a programme called Jumpstart, hiring six to eight people a year into entry-level innovation and design roles. They recruit career changers, returning parents, and graduates, screening for curiosity, generosity, and a willingness to act.  "If they don't have the right behaviours and mindset, they're not going to work in our culture," Jenny says. Their annual book, now in its ninth edition, reaches 8,000 readers. Clients collect them and ask to be featured. During the pandemic, when the team debated whether to produce one at all, Jenny pushed ahead. She dialled into a call with a senior client and spotted every previous edition lined up on his bookshelf in the background. "I went straight back to the team and said, guys, we have to do the book." Listen to the full conversation with Jenny on the Happy Teams podcast.

  7. 27. Apr.

    Paid Recharge Weeks, Minimum Holidays, and Tying AI Adoption to Profit Share: How Seer Keeps 90% Retention at 220 People

    When Crystal joined Seer Interactive, there were five people. Now there are 220. Retention sits around 90%. One policy stands out from everything else they do. "We make people take that time off," Crystal says. "Their first week at Seer is paid time off. They don't show up. They don't log in. They can do whatever they want." The idea came in 2022. Crystal noticed new hires were ending one job on a Friday and starting at Seer the following Monday, still processing whatever they'd left behind. "You can't possibly show up ready to go fresh," she explains. The recharge week became standard. People use it to travel, catch up on life, or do nothing. It also signals something about the culture before anyone has written a line of work: when Seer says take time off, they mean it. Since the recording of this episode, Seer has evolved the concept further into Recharge with AI Week. New hires now spend dedicated time building core AI skills through guided sessions and self-paced learning before diving into their role. It's not a full 40-hour week either, preserving built-in time to recharge while they learn. The goal is to ensure new starters arrive with the confidence and fluency to operate in an AI-first environment. That same year, Crystal introduced a three-week minimum holiday alongside unlimited PTO. Before the minimum existed, around 60% of the team took three weeks. After it was introduced, 90% took more than four. Seer even sends automated reminders telling people they haven't taken enough time off. On AI, Seer moved early. Their policy asks clients to allow AI across engagements, broadly. "It's binary," Crystal says. "You either accept it and benefit from the innovations we're doing, or you don't." Internally, AI adoption feeds directly into profit share. "If somebody is fantastic at their job but has not contributed, they will get nothing for that share." Listen to the full conversation with Crystal on the Happy Teams podcast.

  8. 13. Apr.

    Open Salary Bands, Shared Finances, and Building a 250-Strong CPO Community: CJ from Planes on the Happy Teams Podcast

    CJ from Planes shares revenue, profitability, and the cash flow forecast with the entire team every two weeks. That level of openness runs through everything at Planes, from how they hire to how they handle a bad quarter.   "It all stems from the core premise: hire good people, treat them like adults, and get out of their way" CJ says.   When the first quarter of this year got difficult, nobody panicked. "The whole team got stuck in" CJ explains. "Reaching out to old friends, speaking to old clients, helping put proposals together. What people didn't do is jump on LinkedIn jobs."   Salary bands are open and reviewed every four months against market data. "In a normal job, you turn up and feel like you've got to fight for your pay rise" CJ says. "We've tried to take that transaction out of it." If the team spots market data that suggests the bands need adjusting, they're invited to share it. People on parental leave have received pay rises because someone in the same band was moved up.   Planes also tried unlimited holiday early on and it failed. People took less time off, not more. "Without any way of understanding how much holiday to take, people weren't taking the time off" CJ says. They switched to a fixed allowance and added a month of unpaid leave available to anyone each year. Three people have already used it this year, two to travel to New Zealand.   CJ built a 250-strong community of chief product officers through curated dinners and research. It took 15 dinners before a single brief came from it. "The intention is to bring people together" he says. "We don't pitch people at these."   Listen to the full conversation with CJ on the Happy Teams podcast.

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Happy Teams examines how organisations create effective company culture. Each episode explores team management, remote work, and employee engagement through discussions with business leaders. We talk with founders about their remote leadership strategies and workplace wellbeing in modern settings. Our guests share insights on effective remote communication and team productivity, including what helps with employee retention and what doesn’t. David and Bachir from Prodigi sit down with guests who’ve mastered remote team management and hybrid work models. They discuss building remote team culture, maintaining positive work environments, and developing employee wellbeing programs that deliver results. Our guests share examples from their experiences, including the missteps and breakthroughs. They explain their approaches to virtual company culture that works across all settings. Listen in as we learn from leaders who’ve developed practical ways to help their teams stay, perform and succeed.

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  • Erstellt von
    Prodigi.team
  • Jahre aktiv
    2023 - 2026
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