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SHAPE-ing a Culture of Success: Apply Digital's Playbook for Putting People First
Here’s how we take small steps every day to build a people-first culture.
- Article
- 5 MIN READ
- Nov 4, 2024
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![Angela Hountalas [EU]](https://a.storyblok.com/f/234030/629x838/3176df038c/angela-hountalas_headshot.png/m/629x838)
Angela Hountalas [EU]Chief People Officer
Summary
This article is part of our ‘Connected Thinking, Connected Results’ series at Apply Digital, where we bring to life our unique approach to driving impact for clients.
In part one, we unpacked our core philosophy around connected ways of working. We outlined the key principles that underlie our ‘Connected Thinking, Connected Results’ approach that seamlessly brings together strategy, tech, data, and operations for our clients.
In this article, we’re taking a closer look at our people practices, and how our ways of working at Apply Digital position our employees for individual and collective success.
As Apply Digital was growing rapidly in 2018, co-founder Gautam Lohia was inspired to “codify” culture. To support the company’s rapid growth and ability to scale, he and a small group of leaders set out to define the company’s North Star with the SHAPE acronym — Smart, Humble, Active, Positive, and Excellent — to encapsulate our values, which continue to guide the company today.
Since those early days, Apply Digital has grown by leaps and bounds. Today, we have over 650 employees across our eight global offices, and we’ve delivered digital transformation projects for some of the world’s top brands. During eight years of rapid growth, we’ve also had to evolve our processes, adapting to ‘growing pains’ while staying true to our values.
We are a work in progress and we still have gaps to fill, but we’re incredibly proud of how we’ve maintained our core focus — creating the conditions for people to do their best work — while accomplishing so much in a highly competitive industry.
Here’s how we take small steps every day to build a people-first culture, and why this journey is so important to us.
Connected teams create connected results
As we’ve grown, so too have our teams, projects, and processes. We continually reflect on how we can best deliver strong value for our clients, while building an internal culture that thrives on empathy, collaboration, and excellence.
By design, Apply Digital is a highly collaborative organization. Our teams work both horizontally and vertically to solve problems and drive impact for our clients. We decided to formalize this dynamic in an approach that has become our company tagline: Connected Thinking, Connected Results.
Put simply, it’s the empathetic connections between our teams, and between our people, that enable us to deliver great results for our clients. Our ‘One Team’ philosophy complements this approach: whether working within a team, across disciplines, or with clients, we always come to the table with a collaborative and inclusive mindset.
When it comes to operationalizing how we achieve Connected Thinking, for Connected Results, here’s how we do it.
1. Create Account Leadership Teams (ALTs)
ALTs are unique, cross-functional teams that bring together people from different disciplines — for example, Tech, Business Development, and Strategy — and truly epitomize the ‘connected thinking, connected results’ approach. By combining great minds from across the company to support client accounts from multiple perspectives, we gain insight into what’s working, what can be improved, and identify areas of opportunity for growth.
ALTs support client accounts from multiple perspectives. They also act as an ideal opportunity for future leaders, empowering team members to lead from the front and build skills critical to succeed in a consulting environment.
2. Foster a culture of feedback that leads to growth
We’re committed to the long-term success of our employees, and we nurture their growth through a culture of regular feedback. Our teams are building out well-defined career frameworks to illustrate the skill sets and core competencies team members need to have in their roles to better support ongoing projects and provide value every step of the way.
Critically, we help our employees play to their strengths, while creating a path for them to develop over time. Our employees and leaders work together to plan for growth through their assignments, formal learning, knowledge transfer, and consistent, constructive feedback. This process helps ensure we’re excelling as a company and doing our best work at all times.
We take a ‘360’ approach to performance coaching, where team members are evaluated from all directions, including by their direct reports, peers, and managers. While this might sound intimidating, the approach provides the person with a complete view of their role in the company and equips them with the info they need to grow.
We also encourage our people at all levels to share transparently about their work experience, including about how we can continue to improve our organizational processes. Clear, ongoing communication helps to create an environment for employees to thrive and collaborate to drive client impact.
3. Amplify high-performing team members
When an individual excels in their role, we encourage the person to develop a ‘minor’, or secondary specialty that complements their main role.
For example, a high-performing Marketing specialist may pursue creative skills related to User Experience or Strategy. These hybrid roles further strengthen our ‘connected teams’ philosophy by upskilling employees who can then leverage and teach those skills to our client’s team, while building empathetic bonds between roles.
The secret sauce is having good processes, tools, and teams. We pull together the right people at the right time and give them space to do the work they need to do to meet and exceed our commitments. With this cast of high-performers in place and a high level of consistency and improvement in our tools and processes, we create the conditions for them to over-deliver and become invaluable to the client, engaging with them in creative ways that lead to better solutions and better results.
4. Stay true to your values while growing your culture
As we’ve grown as a company, I believe our unwavering focus on our SHAPE values has guided our success at every step of the way. Different perspectives and hard conversations are inevitable, but when you navigate them in a collaborative, respectful way and work with people who help you make smart decisions and drive impact, you know you have something good.
From the people we hire, to the clients we choose to work with, to how we operate internally, our values continue to inform every decision we make. Moving forward, our values will remain front and center in all we do.
If this resonates with you, we invite you to connect with us. Let’s make an impact together.
Interested in learning more about careers at Apply Digital? See our open roles here.
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