Maurilio Amorim

Author: Maurilio Amorim

  • The A Group 10th Anniversary Celebration and Open House

    Yesterday was a big day for me. Our entire team celebrated 10 years in business and moving into our new offices. There were a lot of details to come together since the save-the-date email was sent prior to even moving in. I’m so proud of my entire team, specially TAG’s President, Shannon Litton, for making it all come together seamlessly. The food, flowers, gifts, and many details all turned out the way we envisioned. I’m so proud of my entire team for pitching in and making this happen.

    Here are some of the pictures:

    The A Group Lobby
    Jenny Cupero, Kristen Pope and Taylor Searfoss at the lobby
    The A Group tech area
    The tech area
    Maurilio Amorim The A Group open house food
    Yours Truly around the conference room table now transformed into a banquet table
    Pete Wilson Maurilio Shannon Litton
    With Pete Wilson and Shannon Litton

     

    The A Group collaboration room
    The collaboration room where you can connect wirelessly to the monitors and, well, collaborate
    The A Group OPen house conference room
    The conference room with our enormous and amazing touch screen, white board tv

    To see more pictures of our open house click here

    How does your organization celebrates its milestones?

  • Why We Need Deadlines

    Deadlines are critical in order to get things done. Most of us, myself included, need deadlines to avoid procrastinating on things that might be important but are not urgent. Both at home as well as work, I try to bookend our projects with an event that forces everyone involved in wrapping up lose ends and making sure the project is completed in time for guests to see it.

    deadline

    I decided to schedule an open house for The A Group’s new offices less than three weeks from our moving in date. I knew it would be a tight deadline. It’s staggering the amount of work that goes into moving offices, computer systems, phone systems, workstations, furniture, signage, and on and on. And while in the midst of all of that, still get work done. The tendency is to get enough done to be functional and continue to  fix things up as time allows. Well, time never allows for much. So after years of moving in, all the good-intentioned things we had in mind for the new space is forgotten and abandoned as the newness wears off.

    Right now our new offices are frantically getting put together. Our entire team and vendors are working hard to make sure this space is done in time for our guests to walk through it. After all, we don’t want to say, “in this space we plan on putting a collaborative conference table with multiple monitors so we can connect to screens and share what’s in our computers, and we also want to create artwork based on some of our projects.”

    Right now you might have projects that are in perpetual limbo. It’s functional but not completed. I suggest you set a date, invite people you care about over and give yourself a hard deadline to be finished.

    What came to mind as you read this post?

  • Work Smarter Part 2

    Working hard and working smart are not synonyms. Yes you can work both smart and hard, but you can also spend a lot of effort and fail at the end of the day. Here are 5 more principles that will help you create and maintain a healthy and productive work environment. Ignore them at your own risk.


    work smart

    Rebuke privately. Praise publicly. Getting these principles right has the greatest impact on morale for both paid or volunteer staff. One time I almost, and should have, fired a staff member for publicly scolding a volunteer that was late for a key rehearsal. The same is true for praise that’s done privately. If you’re happy with someone’s performance, make sure you praise them in front of their peers and superiors.

    Monitor morale. Leaders are always looking ahead to figure out what’s the next move. If morale is eroding for whatever reason, it’s your job to identify the issue on its inception and deal with it quickly. A team that loses morale is ineffective at best and a poisonous cancer (I know this is strong language, but I feel strongly about this) for the entire organization. Do not allow rudeness, bickering, or lack of respect to enter your organization. Once these traits find their way in, they will eventually create a culture of cynicism and conflict. Nothing good comes out of that…nothing.

    Respect the organizational structure. As you grow and move up in the organizational chart or the organization grows deeper, the tendency is for those whom you’ve know for a while to bypass the chain of command and go straight to you, as oppose to the newly appointed direct report between you and your eager friend. Avoid the temptation to engage in a professional conversation and make sure you work the organizational chart. Unwittingly, you will be undermining your new hire and create a system of inefficiency and team hostility.

    Listen intently, but reserve judgment. The tendency of a manager or leader is to want to help fix someone’s problems as soon as possible. However, the worst thing you can do is agree with a disgruntled person based on the “facts” of his or her story. I have learned that there are two sides of every conflict and the truth might be something altogether different. While you should listen, stop short of making a judgment call until you’ve done your work and heard the rest of the story.

    Be as loyal to your leader as you would like for your followers to be to you. This is my number one rule in business as well as ministry. Internally we might argue over a course of action, but once a decision is made, then it is the entire team’s responsibility to defend it. If you don’t agree with the decision, you have two options: defend it or leave. People with their own agenda will always try to get to a leader through someone on his team that they think can be easily manipulated. If you agree with a disgruntled client, church member or donor and allow them to feel a sense of righteous indignation, you open the door for a lot of trouble.

    What other principle would you include?

  • Before Creating an App, You Need a Mobile Strategy

    Many of my current conversations start with “we need our own app.” I usually answer this question with one of my own, “why do you think you need an app?” The usual answer is something similar to what junior high boys give their parents when they want a new game console: “All the cool kids have one.” But before you try to keep up with the cool, rich kids of technology, I would suggest you take a step back and think about creating a mobile strategy first.

    mobile devices and strategy

    Much like creating marketing pieces without an integrated marketing campaign is not a smart idea, creating apps without first designing a mobile strategy is not a good move. Sometimes your best app is not an app at all, but a killer mobile version of your site.

    Recently, Google put out some good thinking on mobile strategies. Following are 4 questions you should consider when crafting your mobile strategy:

    How does mobile change our value proposition? Define your value proposition by determining what your consumer wants to do with your business in mobile then benchmark against others in your industry for ideas.

    Is our organization adapting to mobile? Assign a mobile champion in your company and empower them with a cross- functional task force.

    How should our marketing adapt to mobile? What is the experience like for a consumer trying to find you and connect with you? Take 5 minutes today and search for your brand in mobile as a consumer would. Discuss the result with your team.

    How can we connect with our tablet audience? Check out your web experience on a tablet. Take 5 minutes today and search for your brand on a tablet as a consumer would. Maximize the tablet format with rich media creative.

    How much thinking has your organization done on your mobile strategy?


  • This is Not the Way to Thank Someone

    A handwritten thank you note is one of most personable and kind things one can do whether in a business transaction or on a personal level. I don’t care how bad your handwriting is, it’s always a pleasant surprise to receive a note from someone who went to the trouble to write it out and mail it to you. I love it, and I don’t know anyone who doesn’t. But sometimes even something simple as a thank you note can backfire if it’s not executed properly.

    thank you note

     

    So you can imagine how glad I was to get a thank you note from someone on his personal stationary. However, the label with my name on the envelope should have given it away, but I still opened it hoping for the best. It was not to be.

    Obviously this was a generic “thank you” printed on personal note stationary. And to make it even more disappointing it wasn’t even signed. The whole thing was ruined for me. I now wished the person hadn’t even bothered to tell his secretary to send it out. Maybe I’m too sensitive, but I’ve tried to think of the gesture, but the botched execution is the only thing I can focus on.

    Moral of the story:

    No matter what your intentions are, you’re going to be judged on the execution.

    I heard it just today “he’s a visionary, but he can’t execute anything.” I call that happy talk: it means nothing, just hot air. Too many people have a vision but only those who find a way to make it happen will be rewarded.

    Am I too sensitive on this issue? Should I have been happy with the generic thank you, since at least I got one?

  • The Case for My Smallest Office Yet

    The A Group has just moved into its new offices. This is the third, and the largest, office space I have helped design for my company; however, this is the smallest corner office I’ve had since the beginning of our company 10 years ago. The shrinking of my personal space and the growth of my company is both symbolic and practical. It’s been a slow learning curve for me to lead a growing group of highly talented professionals. Here are some thoughts about my shrinking office:

    Executive corner office

    The A Group is much more than the sum total of my skills. At one point I ran a business that was mostly, if not solely, dependent on my abilities. When you hire smart people, they will not stay around unless you allow them to grow, find their place, and make their unique contribution. You cannot do that if you believe that every great idea must come from one source, and that being you. I’ve watched my team flourish over the past years and continue to do so.

    It is important to put our resources where it will best serve the organization. No one in our executive team, including me, got new furniture for their new offices. But we bought state-of-the-art Herman Miller workstations for our entire tech team. After years of working shoulder to shoulder, these guys deserved the upgrade. The executive team unanimously decided that it was the best way to invest our resources.

    I am more secure than ever before in my team’s abilities to do amazing work instead of my personal brand. The entire organization has become the source of my professional pride and not my over-sized office or ego. I’m not saying that if you have a big office, you have a big ego. But it was true for me. And while my ego is still rather large, I have realized that the quality of what we do is more important than the wow of a large corner office.

     

     

  • The Fun Theory

    Intuitively we know that the more fun we inject in activities, the more likely people are to respond positively to them. When my boys were small I used to play let’s-see-how-fast-we-can-put-up-the toys game. They would clean the room in a matter of minutes as opposed to the whining and gnashing of their teeth that would be manifest during other chores.

    This video is another reminder that people will choose even a more difficult path if we make it fun.

    Where have you experienced the fun theory at work in your life?

  • Christianity, Hospitality and Immigrants

    “The great majority of Christians in America will never host a meal for someone from another culture making his home in the US,” said my friend across the table.  I immediately thought of my fortune not only in having been invited for dinner, but to have been “adopted” into an American family my sophomore year in college. In retrospect, it made all the difference in the world.

    Milton and Elizabeth Hollifield

    I though it was a silly, frivolous prayer at the time. But in the depths of my lonely days as an international college student, I prayed to God for a family–more precisely, an American family. I had grown weary of not having a place to go during breaks, specially the long summer breaks. My parents in Brazil were financially struggling to keep me in school, my student visa limited the amount of hours I could legally work, and flying home during school breaks was just not a possibility. I never thought I would see that prayer answered, that is until Milton Hollifield Sr, a country preacher from the North Carolina mountains came looking for me. I had met “preacher Hollifield” and his entire family a couple of months earlier during a speaking trip to several congregations in the foothills of Black Mountain, NC.

    Milton Hollifield

    They were a gregarious, loud, and even obnoxious bunch. I thought of my own crazy, loud, and obnoxious family as I experienced dinner with them. But now, out of the blue, Milton insisted I visited them during the Christmas break. “We’ll figure out how to get you there and back. You just need to plan to be with us.” There was no arguing with the man. So I did.

    I was never the same.

    I spent every holiday and school break with the Hollifield clan for the next several years until I got married and had a family of my own. Milton and Elizabeth made me one of their kids, even though I was closer to the age of their grand kids. I embraced corn bread and greens, livers and onions, and the Sunday morning staple of burned cinnamon rolls. I stuck out like a sore thumb in a rural community and loved every moment of it. I learned so much about love, family, grace, and acceptance from my new family.

    I watched Milton get up every morning, read his Bible and pray for the growing-list of people in his life. Once you got added to the list, only death removed you. At 81, Milton still prays for me everyday. He reminded me of that not long ago.

    I cannot imagined what my life would have been had a man whom I met only once, and briefly, not insisted I joined his family for Christmas. There are more people like me everyday in communities all across the country–college students, families, and professionals who are making America their new home. For their sake, as well as ours, I hope we can open our homes and invite them in.

    Have you ever opened your home to someone new to country? What happened?

  • Job Advice to Young Creatives

    I love artists. My parents owned an art gallery growing up in Brazil, my father is a plastic artist, and I have done a lot of graphic design in my past. My company is always looking for creatives in video, web, and print. I love meeting young talented people who bring fresh ideas and new sensitives to our portfolio. Good work from young creatives is like looking at the world through a fresh set of eyes. But often, managing creatives can be difficult and downright painful. I often get asked during the interview process at our company what I’m looking for in a creative hire. Here’s my wish list:

    Speak up. Don’t be afraid to bring your perspective into a project. That’s what we want from you–your youth and everything that comes with it.

    Be teachable. Your design video is not God-breathed and, believe it or not, it can be improved with input from your superiors and, shockingly, even your clients. Remember, you can learn from anyone.

    Deliver the goods. Concepts, ideas, and visioning are great, but deliverables are what count at the end. If you can’t deliver the goods, than you won’t last long. In the real world, deadlines do matter.

    Keep drama away. If you can do good creative work without drama, you’ll be ahead of a lot of your peers. The earlier you realize that every project is not about you and that your job is to please the client, you’ll go far. I will hire a low-maintenance, low-drama creative who’s good and wants to grow before I’ll hire the prima donna who thinks she’s already great.

    Work hard. There’s no substitute for hard work. Be willing to put in the effort and hours that take to get the job done.

    What other advice would you give young creatives?

  • You Can Cultivate Talent But Not Teach It

    You can cultivate talent, but you cannot teach, coach, or even motivate people into developing skills they do not posses or are not naturally gifted. I used to believe that with enough effort, people could do anything they want. After all, I was told growing up that I could do anything I wanted to do as long as I set my mind to it and worked hard enough at it. Well, that’s a lie. A big fat lie.

    talent

    One of the reasons for whatever success we have seen at The A Group rests in our ability to hire talented people and challenge and resource them to continue to grow. I’m proud of the work of we do, but I’m mostly proud of the team that output so much quality. I have seen companies twice our size that are not able to accomplish as much.

    Here are some skills you cannot teach people:

    attention to detail
    pride in their work
    eye for design
    desire to learn
    problem solving skills
    conscientiousness
    hospitality

    While some might argue that with enough training and coaching you can help someone do most anything, my experience tells me that’s a waste of time, resources, and a huge frustration for both parties. Do it right in the first place. Find the talent or skill set you need and put your efforts into growing someone instead of trying to shape them into something they can never become.


    What else would add to this list?