An Open Manifesto for Business
Earlier this year, a few folks from sparks & honey were interviewed about the story of s&h. We have taken excerpts from that interview and translated it into a 5 part “Story of Us.” A special thank you to Kendra Clarke, VP Data Sciences; Paul Butler, Chief Operating Officer; Camilo LaCruz, Chief Strategy Officer; Kristin Cohen, Head of Marketing and Business Development; Jared Alessandroni, Chief Technology Officer; Rob Gaige, Managing Partner Q™ and Laura Chiavonne, Managing Partner Transformation for your support and being part of the interview.
Our Open Philosophy…...
“Why did we open access to the technology around which we built our consultancy?” asked Terry. “There are several reasons. First, we believe that almost every agency within Omnicom can leverage Q™ to differentiate its offer in unique ways. That’s why John Wren invested in Q™ and why we integrated Q™ into the Omni platform. It’s also why John gave us a shout-out on Omnicom’s Q4 2019 earnings call:”
“Our pioneering cultural consultancy, sparks & honey recently launched Q™, a first of its kind SaaS platform, that combines human and AI-powered intelligence, to help organizations predict change before it disrupts their business.”
“Collaboration with our Omnicom siblings is just one motivation. We also have substantial commercial goals for Q™. To be clear, we never intended Q™ as a cost center or purely internal tool, so two things have been non-negotiable from the start – everyone will pay for Q™, and we will sell it directly to clients as a SasS platform…”
“Do we risk cannibalizing our core business by doing this?” continued Laura. “That question presumes some sort of stasis in our consulting environment, which is preposterous. We have already talked about how Q™ continues to advance our consulting capabilities, and there are would-be competitors experimenting with AI. If a stand-alone AI product is going to cannibalize us, we want it to be ours.”
“Sharing Q™ also reflects the philosophy on which we founded this business, our Open Manifesto, which you saw on the wall as you entered our office:” It impacts every layer of s&h.
AN OPEN MANIFESTO FOR OPEN BUSINESS BY SPARKS & HONEY. This is our manifesto for open business. Being open is transforming business outcomes and changing businesses for good. In the spirit of transparency, co-creation and collaboration, we are sharing it with you. It is yours to use, adapt and build upon, and share. We believe in being Open. Open to new ideas, new thinking, new imagining, new possibilities. This is how we will build the future. Together. We believe the future is not just about us. But about all of us. We believe in inclusiveness. And in business that stands for something bigger than profits. We believe in bringing the future to the present. And that future requires collaboration to solve challenges big and small. We believe that in an always-on, fast-moving, connected world, it is business-critical to let the outside in and that in this age of exponential change, no one can do it alone. Our fortunes and futures are inextricably linked, and the time of secrecy, guardedness and closed doors is in the past. We believe that walls are for sharing, not shielding. We believe in open source and co-creation. And that ideas can evolve and make quantum leaps when they are shared and freed and built upon. We believe in being open to the outside world, because that is where the most fascinating and curious minds exist, and they can challenge us and inspire us and help us on our journey. We believe in a business where people take ownership. Where people bring themselves to work with all their humanity, diversity and passions, free of judgment and are valued and rewarded for their candor, for their eclectic, exhilarating, unpredictable ideas, abilities and viewpoints. We believe that our actions build upon each other, adding layers of knowledge and experience, and in doing so they bring us together as one in an amazing journey to open minds and create new possibilities. We believe being open is a journey. And a journey can start from anywhere and take many paths. But it always begins with just one step. This is our Open Manifesto for Open Business. We believe that Open Business will change business for good. For the better. And forever. So this Open Manifesto is not just ours, it’s yours. To build upon and share again.
“We believe ‘to give is to receive,’” commented Terry, “and when we started s&h we said, ‘Why don’t we take that approach and see what happens?’ It has been an incredibly fruitful philosophy that we see reciprocated every day. Just look at the hundred guests who consistently come through our doors every week for Briefings. Opening access to Q™ as a SaaS product reflects our continued commitment to that Manifesto.”
Open As A New Diversity OS
“Our open philosophy has also helped us build out our diversity roadmap and make it core to our DNA. Organizations must be committed to diversity at every level of their organization (inside, outside and at all levels)’ said Paul.”
Our open philosophy allowed us to build diversity into our operating model. As we recently discussed across the firm, we have some big diversity challenges and work ahead of us.
We must see a full spectrum of visible and non-visible diversity across every team, at every level of our company. We must build an organization where everyone on staff, at every level, feels that they will succeed on the strength of their work--and that will not be held back by their race, gender, or gender identity. We must build a culture where everyone feels equally heard and valued for their unique voices and perspectives, including their voices and perspectives that are directly informed by their racial, ethnic, gender, ability and other identities. We must build a company that is anti-racist.
We recently shared the next leg of our diversity journey to tackle these challenges.
The next leg of our journey (as of August 10, 2020).
We are committed to being an anti-racist organization. We will report on our progress quarterly with no less rigor than our quarterly financial reporting.
Define Strategy from Personal Experiences: As part of our regular calibration of our diversity OS, we will conduct a Quarterly DEI survey to help shape our goals and initiatives from the ground up.
Removing Our Blindspots: We are conducting company-wide training to support our DEI efforts. It isn’t enough to have a visibly diverse workforce, it requires continuous improvements and removal of blindspots. We’ll start with two critical topics on Building a Shared Vocabulary and The Interconnectedness of Systemic Racial Inequities and Our Biases.
Recruiting of Black Employees: Over the next 12-months, we will focus on hiring and retaining Black employees, and increasing the number of Black high school and college students in our internship program. We have 12% Black employees at sparks & honey. We plan to push for a minimum of 20% Black employees by September 2021 along with these added goals.
Ensure we have Black representation at all levels of sparks & honey. Our immediate focus is on expanding Black female executive leadership, as well as building Black leadership at middle management at s&h.
Build the new programs and environment required to retain our Black employees and more broadly all people of color.
Expanding our commitment to LGBTQ employees and initiatives. We want to maintain, and grow, our LGBTQ numbers at all levels from our summer interns to our executive team. Today, 14% of our employees are LGBTQ. We plan to push for a minimum of 20% LGBTQ employees, with a particular focus on trans and gender non-conforming employees by September 2021.
Partnerships and Collaboration: We will continue our DEI commitment beyond our walls, including strategic partnerships and collaborations that bring critical thinking and solutions through, Daily Culture Briefings, ADCOLOR Briefing Series and a new body of work, the Disrupting Hate Initiative.
Re-examining What We Honor/Recognize: We are actively conducting a review of the company-wide calendar and celebrations with a planned relaunch for 2021.
Committing to Age Diversity in Our Talent Pipeline: We will expand to a minimum of 50% diversity in our summer internship program and also reboot our cultural apprentice program which brings in apprentices with more than 30 years of experience.
Be On Record With Our Clients About Our Commitment To Diversity: Outline our Diversity OS commitment in every proposal and scope that goes to our clients. We will make our diversity POV core to the way we engage with clients.
Use our platform to shape programs and efforts across our holding company and industry.
Terry is the CEO of sparks & honey. His deep understanding of consumer behavior, digital and technology platforms allowed him to architect the sparks & honey model. Before sparks & honey, Terry joined McKinsey & Co in Greater China, working to incubate new startups and Internet companies in Asia.