Meet me at Camera 3, Portland Agencies.

Starting to really drag on me, as I talk to potential clients, how many have been burned by multiple PDX agencies over the years.

— Matthew Oliphant (@matto) May 15, 2017

Tonight, my nascent company almost lost a project. We’re pitching some work that, on its surface, is similar to some work done last year by a local agency for this particular prospect.

“Did they talk to your customers,” I asked.

“No.”

“Did they present a plan for what technology should support this service and how it should be implemented?”

“No.”

“What did they provide you with the discovery project?”

“Basically it came down to 4 words that should drive all the changes we needed to make. Aspirational things. There really wasn’t much to it.”

My prospect told me how much he paid them. Our proposal is twice the amount, so I get why he and his business partners are hesitant. The company that did the work for him last year came very close to losing this project for me.

This isn’t the first time I’ve crossed paths with bad work from a local agency.

We had a proposal out to a prospect earlier this year. Part of understanding what the scope involved looking at work an agency had done for him as part of their discovery work.

We found a document filled with half-formed recommendations, placeholder text (literally lorem ipsum), and content from one part of the document pasted in to another part, but contextually irrelevant. And this was a final deliverable.

We attended events during Design Week Portland and Startup Week and had a lot of conversations with people who work at companies around town. Lots of good people doing good things, but a surprising amount of people we met who are doing work similar to what we do had unsatisfactory answers to some basic questions. Such as, “Do you talk to customers?”

“Uh, no. Not usually. We’d like to though.”

“We’re a dev shop, but Discovery seems so lucrative.”

Will you talk to customers?

“We focus on stakeholders.”

Customers?

“Stakeholders.”

C, u, s…

“S, t, a…”

At this point, if I had access to The Daily Show’s Camera 3, I’d invite you to join me at it.

Now, while I know in my heart of hearts this post won’t get more than 12 views, I have to imagine that one of those 12 owns or works at a local agency. Be it an agency of 2 or 200, size doesn’t seem to matter. As one of the 12, you might be thinking, “But, Matthew, my company isn’t like that at all.”

Are you sure? Like, really sure? By my count there’s nearly eleventy-thousand agencies in Portland. Based on random sampling, my guess is that at least half are terrible. And you’re making it harder for those of us who are good at what we do.

Now, we all make mistakes. Including me. But the stuff I’m seeing goes beyond that. It’s a fundamental indifference to doing good, proper work, and it seems to be top-down-driven.

I cast a wide net here is because I know it isn’t limited to the handful of companies I’ve directly or indirectly interacted with over the past 6 months who are demonstrably terrible. Basic population sampling tells us it’s a bigger problem.

None of you owe me anything. But certainly you owe it to your customers to be better. We all do. It’s something we should all be constantly aware of and working toward. And while you don’t owe me anything, I’d really like it if a good portion of you stop making it so difficult for me to win business.

If you think your agency is not doing its best work, whether you’re a leader or an individual contributor, perhaps it’s time to say something. Then do something. Your options are, roughly: Assess your current state and fix what isn’t working, quit your job, or shut down the entire company.

The first two options are reasonable. The third option should absolutely be on the table to underscore how seriously you must take this. In order to assess your current state and fix what’s wrong (the best choice!), I have a few suggestions…

Owner Camp.

I know several Portland agencies have been to this. Chime in if you’re one of them. Owner Camp is a great event that’s well run and offers a lot of insight into what other companies are knocking out of the park and what they are struggling with. Things get laid bare and you get to find out you are not alone in the struggles you’re facing.

The Buddy System. Likely, you know someone who works at or runs a company in town who’s doing similar work better than you. There’s something core to Portland that makes people want to help other people be better, even if they are the competition. Find the person/people who you think might be able to help and reach out. I bet you’ll find someone glad to hear from you.

Edify.

Because of how circles-of-friends works, several of you who read this will know about Edify. If you haven’t hired Kristen to help you, do yourself a favor and at least go talk to her. She works with companies who are ready to replace bad employee experiences with ones that work though onboarding, manager development, and knowledge management.

Studio VO.

While our focus tends to be external to a company, with a focus on the user/customer experience, at its core what we do is examine, enhance, and rebuild processes. We look at the things a company needs to do in order to do good work that customers want to continue paying you for.

Last week, we were at a gathering and someone asked us to explain what we do. Our tagline du jour is, “People are weird. We figure out why.” But we don’t solely focus on people outside the company. We look at the company itself. And in the course of that conversation I tested out a complimentary tagline: “We help your company get it’s shit together.”

No, it isn’t very business-y. But it’s kinda what we do. And like “people are weird…” it resonated.

I’ve only listed a few options, but the fact that these options exist should be enough to convince you there’s opportunity to step back, possibly bring someone in, and look honestly at what you are doing and why you do it. It can be hard and it can be transformative.

I want us all to be better. Even if it means stiffer competition. I’d rather lose a project because someone better beat me than because the companies who came before me failed to deliver. It’s less disheartening for all of us if business is tough, but the world is being made a better place because we’re all doing what we’re supposed to be doing and we’re doing it well.

While I’m pretty grumpy about the specific issues I outlined at the start of this, I remain hopeful that this is a fixable problem.

If you want to talk, @ me, email me at matthew at studiovo.co, respond here, fill out our contact form on the SVO site, contact Kristen at Edify, go to Owner Camp, and/or find a buddy who will talk honestly with you.

The truth is…

I’m upset because I know we can do better. You can do better. I can do better. We are not alone in this. Let’s work together, even if we’re competing, to do good work and leave our collective industries better than how we found it.