How did this come about? A little under a year ago I decided to enrol on the The Maydays beginners improvised comedy course ‘just to give it a try for a giggle’. It’s not stand up – it’s improvising and creating scenes on the spot, with a limited input from the audience (if any).  I’ve got so sucked into this wonderful art that I am now half way through my fourth course, six live shows down and planning on starting a 10 week improvised singing course in April. It’s provided me with an amazing forum to unleash my creative side and has also provided me with a set of invaluable skills that are not only good on stage, but also in business.

Drawing on my own experiences, there’s four things I’d like to share with you about how my improvised comedy transfers to the workplace in my life.

Confidence.

My confidence has increased massively. I can think of a key example of how this shows. Some time back I was called at short notice to attend what was meant to be an informal meeting with two client contacts in a government department. Upon arrival, I was alerted that the format had changed, and we had 10 people present, from different areas of the government and department of health and that I was expected to lead the meeting from the perspective of the site build. Two years ago, I would have struggled and had a fair bout of nerves trying to present ‘on demand’ to this group of people, however I felt confident, took a deep breath and the meeting was a great success with a wonderfull project being spawned afterwards. I put this down to the many situations posed to me in improv where I have had to ‘jump in the deep end’ either on stage or with people I do not know and had to be confident in my surroundings to be able to perform to the best of my ability.

Creativity.

Improv has inspired and rejuvenated the creative aspect of my mind and has it bubbling like it hasn’t for a long time. I’m much more confident in putting forward ideas for pitch materials, attending brainstorms and getting actively involved. I find I’m thinking differently about how I might present and run workshop style sessions. It’s generally made me think more creatively and made me want to get involved in the more creative activities that happen around me in and around work.

Listening & Trust.

Improv forces you to listen very carefully and trust what you are given. You’re given a set of specific words, themes, locations or circumstances (much like a problem a client may have) and you are forced to respond in a way that acknowledges and builds on the inputs you’ve been given, not reject them. If someone needs a sock, there’s no point giving them a shoe. I know in myself and in my day to day work that I am consciously trying to listen to people more, respond more appropriately, and trust what I’m told, as opposed to responding in an ad hoc or generic manner.

Teamwork and interpersonal skills.

Improv definitely grows your interpersonal skills and builds your ability to function as part of a team. In improv, we refer to this as the ‘group mind’ – which is the idea that if you are closely aligned with the people around you, you will inherently and sub-consciously strive to achieve the same goal. I’m sure I don’t need to explain how massively beneficial this is in the day to day workings in a busy agency!

So there it is – my four key takings from Impovised Comedy and how it can benefit you in your working life (and your personal life?). If you think this is cool, and want to learn more about the awesomeness that is improv, there’s a few places online I reccomend:

• Check out Peter Day’s ‘‘What can business leaders learn from rock musicians and improvisational comedians?’ Radio 4 show. There’s some fascinating insights in there and I highly recommend that people have a listen. http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00p944k
• Contact The Maydays – they run business workshops as well as general improvised comedy courses
• Ping me a question, via email or twitter or come to one of my improv gigs (also listed on my twitter account)

I’d be keen to hear if anyone out there has any experience of improv, or has an ‘extra curricular’ passion that whilst not immediately obvious, benefits the work they do on a day to day basis?

I look forward to hearing from you!

Matt

Please forgive me: I’ve been doing quite a bit of job ad-type writing this morning, and feel the need to break into a unperfect storm of bullet pointed facts.

Let’s see how it goes shall we? You’re probably not even reading this bit now are you – you’ve already skipped the bullet points with yer fancy-fast internet browsy reading skillz.

• And….GO!
• Whatever it is, NixonMcInnes is different
• Some people think we are an ‘online PR agency’
• Some people think we are a web design and build agency
• We actually think we’re multi-disciplinary
• We have 5 practice areas: Strategy, Communications, Research, Design & Build and Culture
• The labels for each practice will evolve, but this is our plan for now…
• Practice areas combine and overlap – our clients benefit from both depth (an out and out PR expert, or a down ‘n’ dirty Brand professional, or a very clever technologist) *and* breadth
• Our Research practice is valued by our clients and by our own team – it’s amazing working from original and substantial insights
• It’s also blooming exciting – how Market Research is evolving and reconsidering itself in the light of the social web
• We don’t wait for traditional marketing services industries to reinvent themselves – we try to just get on with it
• So we’re looking for a proper clever, ambitious leader to join our Senior team and head up the research practice.
• Job ad here (and here, and here)

Here’s some other blurbage I wrote earlier:

Rise up and become part of the changing face of the market research and wider marketing services world!

This is a rare opportunity to join our unique multi-disciplinary consultancy working with some of the biggest, most significant brands in the world. Our Mission is to help these companies engage in more meaningful and useful ways with their customers by harnessing the rapidly evolving social web.

We are expanding and creating a new board-level role to build and head-up our Research Practice. The successful candidate will stretch themselves amongst our open, democratic company culture and smart diverse team based in Brighton ­ the digital media hub of the UK.

The overall purpose of the role is to continue to build our unique and profitable professional research practice by:

• Leading the way in discovering how to blend digital social media and research.
• Selling in and then profitably delivering measurable business value to clients.
• Providing research insights that help clients understand their challenges and address them both tactically, and by building wider programmes that solve their problems.
• Nurturing and growing our relationships with a small number of clients.

To apply, read this bit and follow the instructions.

One other thing, out of respect for the people we meet and our colleagues we take hiring seriously and try to be really rigorous with our hiring. There will be effort on both sides – just to be clear from the off.

No agencies, thank you.

We feel it was our most rigorous hiring process yet, and there were some really excellent evolutions to how we hire, further emphasising our desire to give people opportunities to directly prove their skills, problem-solving approaches and characteristics rather than talk about them in a traditional interview stylee.

But there were things we learnt and can get much better at. And it was hard work for us and for the potential team mates that got involved in the assessments.

About 80% of our team were also involved directly in some way in the hiring (by directly, I mean more than saying hello or making the tea!), in keeping with our belief of the benefits and power of democratic business practices.

As is our way, our new team mate will introduce themselves sometime soon after they start :)

Until then all I can say is that their career has been working in PR in the media, technology and consumer sectors, and we’re delighted that they’ll be bringing those experiences and skills to bear in their work with NixonMcInnes’ clients.

We also met some seriously talented other interested and interesting people; people who made that final decision very very tough, and people we’re hoping we can work with soon.

Thank you to anyone who got involved or retweeted the original blurb.

A conversation popped up around that recently here in our proudly digital city of Brighton & Hove, where the council is employing a Social Media Communications Officer (or similar title!), had been ‘challenged’ by the local media org, and I wrote about it over on my personal blog. Some of the comments that have been added in the last few days have enhanced my original post.

If you’re an interested tax payer or a public servant with a digital outlook or maybe a rubber duck or a collector of North African butterflies, then feel check it out and join in that conversation.

To find out more and apply, find out more on the Wired Sussex advert.

Key excerpts:

The purpose of the role is to:

• Enable the biggest organisations in the UK to embrace and change with the digital age
• Profitably deliver measurable business value to clients by consistently solving their problems and helping them learn
• Nurture and grow our relationships with a small number of those major brand clients

‘A day in the life of this role’
Note: the particular ‘clients’ here are fictitious, but the scenarios themselves are lifted straight from real-life.

Amongst other things, let’s pretend you look after two major client relationships.

The first relationship is for a very large organisation that touches the lives of millions of the general public every week. The topic matter is interesting and important. The client has a reasonable budget allocated to social media through our agency. What you need to do is work out how to employ that budget to get significant impact and real measurable results against clear goals.

To do that you sit at an inter-agency meeting amongst a community of smart, established marketers of different flavours: media agency people, search marketers, PR people, advertising people. You need your own expertise and listening skills to gather the relevant information from this forum and as well as the communication skills and knowledge to create the context for a successful working relationship between NixonMcInnes and the client and their agencies. To do that you probably need to be smart, likeable, credible, normal, authentic, streetwise, creative and nice. For that meeting to be successful you need to be prepared, to make a valuable contribution and to come back to base and brief and influence colleagues such that they hit the ground running. You need to operate at the speed of a busy agency – somewhere between fast and very fast.

The other relationship is a client just starting out their journey with ‘social media’. They are an international car company. The key client and a few others see the light but there is a normal amount of scepticism internally. They need to change – people write stuff that matters about the brand, useful stuff, really relevant stuff, but no-one at the client’s end is really paying attention. Right now, when it comes to online buzz they don’t understand what to do or how to do it. They are unsure about how to measure ROI and where to start.

Your challenge is to help with this – all of it – to take them on that journey, to gently nurture, cajole and encourage the brand to develop better relationships with the people and communities online.

To do that, you need to:

• Figure out what the internal culture and politics are
• Decide how and where to start
• Plan the strategy and suggest how to execute it
• Understand how to sell it and how the client wants to buy it
• Collectively work out how to resource it and report on it
• Make it happen and then change tack and evolve as it becomes clearer what works and what doesn’t

To begin with they only want to buy in bits and pieces. You have to deliver and also sell-in the bigger relationship that enables us both to get the real results they seek. It’s a big job, this!

You may also need to train people at the client, to analyse performance information to spot trends and insights, to conjure up creative ideas that engage with the target audience and deliver the desired results for the client and the client’s bosses boss. It is fun, rewarding and hard work.

Skills Range: We are open-minded to the benefits that someone from a PR, online marketing, agency planning, market research, or other related discipline can bring.

Salary: 27,000 – 40,000 +

The NixonMcInnes way

We have a refreshing and unique company culture based on a number of guiding principles:

• Freedom: To work the hours that suit you; wear what you want; change and improve things.
• Transparency: Open book accounting so everyone knows what everyone else earns and how much profit is made; open communication and distaste for secrets.
• Participation: Flat company hierarchy; voting on key company decisions; regular guest seat at company board meetings.
• Personal development: Culture of personal development; constant informal feedback, coaching and mentoring; a training budget; books and subscriptions; conferences; a chance to shape your career within a successful, growing company with a wide range of personal and professional growth opportunities.
• Rewards: excellent salary; performance and company profit-related bonuses. 24 days holiday per year plus bank holidays. We like a nice team lunch on the company regularly too.
• Fun: Life’s too short to focus only on money. The team are clear that the company exists to do important, enjoyable work with interesting clients. We are however hugely ambitious in this.

To find out more and apply, find out more on the Wired Sussex advert.

The Brighton and Hove business awards 2009 are with us and we’re super proud to sponsor the awards website for the sixth year running. We’re working with our lovely friends at Midnight PR, who are taking on the mammoth responsibilities of organising just about everything else (EEEEK)

I love being part of the unique business community in Brighton, the awards give us a chance to celebrate the special stuff that goes on all around us, that we just don’t see every day

Last year we sponsored “The most awesome use of digital media award”. The award went to the guys at Locomatrix for their cool GPS based gaming platform

Their slogan is “Jumpers-for-goalposts for the Wii generation, bringing gaming back outside”

They came up with an innovative gaming system that turns your whole body (using your GPS location) into the gaming device instead of your thumbs or how wildly you wave your limbs like on the Wii – although is not limited just to this! It can incorporate any of these traditional gaming interactions to create a unique gaming experience that takes you out into the real world. In the words of Brüno – Fantastiche!

It’s all going on here in Brighton. I wonder what will be on the table this year – something equally cool I hope!

If you think you’ve got what it takes why not enter your company? Its very easy on our lovely Wordpress site at www.bahbas.org.uk remember the awards entries close on the 30th July though so don’t hang around too long

If you don’t want to enter your company, get your posh pointy shoes out and book a table – we’ll see you there

Are you, or is someone you know our new Office Manager / Bookkeeper?  We are looking for the right person to join our fun and lively team of social media experts…

Purpose:

The purpose of this role is to facilitate the smooth and effective running of the company and its team members by providing support across a wide variety of administrative tasks. You will be working with the whole office, specifically supporting the Directors and the Sales & Marketing Team.

As bookkeeper, the purpose is to create accurate and reliable financial records.

The receptionist role will act as the ambassador to the company when answering calls and channelling queries/calls to the correct person in the company.

Key Objectives:

Supporting NixonMcInnes staff where necessary, being the first point of contact for general queries and handing all administrative office operations.  Doing all bookkeeping up to Trial Balance.

Responsibilities:

Administration:

- Answering the phone/general office switchboard – needs ‘on brand’ telephone manner
- Opening mail
- Going to the bank
- Teeing up meetings for team members, co-ordinating internal and external diaries and confirming meetings by email
- Offering admin support for usability testing recruitment and note-taking
- Preparing refreshments for external meetings
- Changing recycling bags and organising pick up thereof
- Keeping stationary levels well stocked
- General errands
- Keeping office clean and tidy at all times
- Completing expenses forms
- Booking transport, hotels and so on
- Organising board meetings and workshops – ensuring venue, refreshments, copies of reports and agendas, and attendees / diaries sorted

Bookkeeping:

- Raising all sales invoices and sending them to clients, preferably by email
- Lodging and recording all debtor receipts
- Monthly chasing of outstanding debts so that they do not become overdue
- Addressing all debtor queries so that they are resolved in a timely fashion
- Sending statements to debtors on a monthly basis
- Recording all incoming invoices from suppliers
- Paying suppliers on a monthly basis and in a timely fashion
- Resolving all supplier queries
- Paying all employee expenses as soon as possible, then analysing the transaction
- Managing the petty cash and preparing the journal
- Processing monthly salaries
- Paying the PAYE/NI on a monthly basis
- Doing the annual payroll returns, P35, P11ds etc
- Paying the corporation tax
- Doing quarterly VAT and ensuring that the payment reaches the VAT office by the correct date
- Bank reconciliations, including analysing all bank charges, STOs and DDRs as received
- Ensuring that the prepayments and accruals are correct; that the prepayments are reducing each month and that the accruals are sufficient
- Providing reports at the month end so that the Management Accounts can be prepared for the Board Meeting held every month – Profit & Loss, Balance Sheet, Bank transactions, Aged Debtors and Aged Creditors

Receptionist:

- Being the first point of contact for all phone calls
- Directing the caller to the correct person/department
- Taking messages when people are unavailable

Specific Functions:

- General Office Functions / Office Administration (including purchases, hospitality etc.)
- Assisting Directors
- Assisting Sales & Marketing administration
- Assisting the Delivery Team
- Helping with the admin and organisation of our HR & Recruitment
- Being responsible for the company’s bookkeeping
- Answering telephone calls and greeting visitors

Longer term possibility:

- Maintaining and implementing Health & Safety, first aid (inspection & training) where necessary
- Developing accounting skills

Programmes used (medium to advanced level competency required):

- Microsoft Office
- Outlook Express
- Internet Explorer / Mozilla Firefox / Google
- Quickbooks (desirable but not essential)
- A.N. other accounts package

Training will be provided:

- SugarCRM contact database
- Basecamp
- NM Wiki
- Boris
- Quickbooks

Characteristics:

- Really, really HELPFUL!
- Ability to get things done – has a can do attitude, works quickly and efficiently
- Highly organised
- People-oriented and approachable
- Sense of humour and fun to be with
- Able to multitask and balance conflicting priorities
- Experience doing bookkeeping /accounts to trial balance
- Accuracy inputting financial data
- Commitment to our highly open, transparent and democratic company culture
- An interest in social media and all things web is always good!

Rewards:

- Up to £20k per annum (pro rata) relative to the amount of experience
- Lots of fun – relaxed environment with interesting talented people
- Will gradually learn about exciting aspects of the ever-evolving internet and its impact on culture, business and the world

The role of Office Manager / Bookkeeper deals with the day to day running of the office (post, maintaining office appearance, taking minutes where needed, booking external / internal meeting rooms, hotels and flights) and also supports the Directors, Management, Sales & Marketing Teams and Developers Den where required.

It includes monthly tasks such as dealing with the petty cash, ordering stock and consumables, making purchases and managing paper files.

There are several elements to the role including assisting the Sales & Marketing function by administrating the SugarCRM database.

Being a team player is a very important element of the role, as they will be working closely with all the members of the NixonMcInnes company team taking care of some HR functions as required; for example managing any recruitment drives and distributing wage slips. The role will also involve the organisation of Christmas parties and every other company outing. The administrator will also be expected to manage all the cleaning for the office when necessary.

Company info:

NixonMcInnes is a digital communication agency specialising in social media, based 200 meters from Brighton Pier. Founded in 2000, we are now a team of 17 – one of only a few agencies dedicated to social media consultancy.

Our clients include T-Mobile, Oxfam, Channel 4, CISCO, Co-op Financial Services, MORE TH>N, BMW, Chelsea FC, NTL and the Department of Health.

To apply for this role, please send covering letter and CV to tina@nixonmcinnes.co.uk.

Thanks to kandyjaxx for the image – http://www.flickr.com/photos/kandyjaxx/

NixonMcInnes is proud to be sponsoring Brightwest; the Brighton variation of Twestival.

On 12 February 2009 more than 175 cities around the world will be hosting Twestivals; bringing together Twitter communities for an evening of tweeting, meeting, raising awareness and money for global causes.  This year’s chosen charity is ‘charity: water’.

The Brighton event will be held at the Black Lion pub on Black Lion Street where the Brighton Twitterati will gather to meet, greet, drink, dance and be merry, play games and of course twitter until our hearts are content; festivities and fundraising begin at 19.30.

The idea of Twestivals was first devised in 2008 by a group of London Twitterers who got together and decided to organise an event for and by the local Twitter community.  The event would allow them to meet up in the real world, have a few drinks and share some entertainment.  Whilst they were at it, they cleverly decided to put their Twitter addictions to good use and do something worthwhile and used the event to fundraise for a local homeless charity.

Most of the event was organised by volunteers via Twitter and in a short, lightening space of time; under two weeks.  Easy huh?

News spread and similar events started popping up, worldwide!  Stories of local Twitter communities coming together, taking action and raising awareness for local and international charities were being reported.  Twestival was born.

What’s the big idea?  If cites can use their local events as a platform to support a wider united cause then together a greater impact can be achieved; demonstration of the power of the social web in action. Lovely – social media goodness.

How do I get involved?  You can take part by:

•    Attending one of the events detailed on the city sites listed on the Twestival home page
•    Uploading or buying music at Twestival.fm
•    Taking part in the t-shirt design competition
•    Donating to charity: water

Follow the Brightwest Twitter stream and get your tickets now.

Follow the NixonMcInnes Twitter stream.

We look forward to seeing you on the 12th.

We are inviting applications from consultants at senior and mid-weight levels to join our growing team of specialist social media practioners. We have one vacancy immediately, and possibly another soon. Please find out more here and apply.

The long version:

A while back I announced, in a blaze of glory*, our search for a PR Pirate – someone to come from the ‘traditional PR’ world and help our clients with their new digital communications strategies.

Unfortunately, no sooner had I launched the search than we won a couple of significant pieces of work which this new team member would’ve – in an ideal world – helped to deliver. Instead, Anna and I went into full-blown delivery mode, which meant that the hiring process went on ice. There was literally no time (OK, not literally).

Being upfront, there were also issues with the hiring process, which was no bed of roses**:

• the title I gave the role of Account Director didn’t meet the scope of the role, which my PR pals told me was more what you’d call a ‘Board Director’ – a naive mistake on my behalf
• the double-bubble challenge of finding someone this niche AND keen on living or already living in Brighton seemed to restrict the number of the most senior-level candidates

Something good has come out of all of this, though.

Having done the work ourselves so far, Anna and I have been able to evolve a much clearer of understanding of what the company does and DOESN’T need. My understanding of how we’re going to shape our teams in the future has evolved, and I’ve been refining these ideas with Jenni, Pete and Tom.

As a result we now have a clearer idea of our needs.

We were building here at NixonMcInnes is a hybrid consultancy offering clients a range of services focused not by the ‘what we do’ but by the ‘where we do it’.

The ‘what we do’ range of services now regularly spans Research, Strategy & Planning, Training, Digital PR and Design & Build. This range gets our clients from ‘don’t know a thing’ to ‘actively engaging’.

The ‘where we do it’ remains the same as we continue to grow and enhance our ability to help clients in the specialised and evolving sphere of social media.

So our needs are a little broader than when we kicked off the search before.

We would still love for a senior consultant from a PR background to be this next hire: that will be spiffing if it happens. But equally we are now more open-minded to the benefits that someone from a market research, online marketing, agency planning or other related discipline can bring. Because our clients need help in a range of areas.

So if you or someone you know is passionately online, and keen to participate in how the internet is changing the world we live in from an HQ here in Brighton, UK, please read the job description and get in touch.

Alternatively, if anything is unclear or you have some feedback, I’m almost all ears. Thank you.

(* and ** are Bon Jovi references. No idea why).