We are growing. Growth is never easy nor is it comfortable. We have always been a little baffled by companies or corporate mantra that promotes “Growth!”. Its almost like growth is the goal and everything around it is a by-product. If you have spent anytime around us, got to know our hearts and what motivates us, you would know that we are all about relationship, then business. Relationship then business. Growth in our company is not our goal, its a by-product of our growing tribe and those that have continue to trust us with their vision. So, if you are with me so far, lets run these out and see how they resonate with you. We would love to hear your thoughts or comments.

1. Communicate (communicate, communicate). This cannot be over-emphasized. Communicate within leadership, communicate within staff, communicate within clients. Communicate, not chatter. Effective communication states succinctly and builds expectations that should be understood, not implied. Its not just emails, not just voice mails. Its connecting in a meaningful way that builds bridges, dispels assumptions, and plants a path forward.

2. Don’t plan. Those smart guys over @37signals have it right. Like they taught all of us in Rework, we are not fortune-tellers. Plans truly are “guesses” (the harder one for me is ‘strategic guesses’–brilliant!). Planning removes the organic and the creative genius that is formed at the cusp of leading. Improvisation is opportunity for trust, development, and *real growth. How do you plan improvisation? In other words, grow leadership. Don’t plan on it. Do it, don’t plan it.

3. Celebrate. Create, foster, and cultivate a culture that celebrates. Celebrate the wins, celebrate the great jobs, celebrate the birthdays, celebrate plans done well. Celebrate individuals. Celebrate teams. Try to maintain a “celebrate to correct ratio of at least 4:1″. There are lots of opportunities to improve, encourage, and coach someone into being more of who they were created to be. Growing pains present these opportunities in ways that creatively give leadership those important moments of fostering vision and ownership to that vision.

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*Real growth is not head counts. Real growth is growing people, not companies. Growing people is learning to communicate, walking organically together, celebrating each other along the way…at least, that’s our definition.

Telling your own story is a really hard one to do at times. There are so many things that we think are important about  what we do, but the goal is to share what we hope you guys think is important. As we hammered on the dry erase board for ideas, we came to a pretty solid conclusion, and one that we hope you like. We decided to share who we are. All the things that make up our culture and how we do what we do.

We have shifted our focus from things like our services and work to our blogs, opinions, favorite music and office playlist. We treat our client engagements as partnerships, explaining the “Collab” in BigBadCollab. One of the phrases we continually use to describe our role is as “Stewards of Vision”. We figure if we are asking to join in on your journey, you should get to know us a little more than just what you would read on our resumes or whatever. Who we are as a company comes from who we are priviledged to work with, the topics we study and research and the elements of our daily grind.

If we’re way off and you want us to show you all the cool stuff we’ve done, and talk awesomely about ourselves, and big league you on things that you’re lame if you don’t do, then you might not want to hang here. Otherwise, be looking for additions to this site in the future as we continue to try and expose more of who we are and what we are up to.