eROI Days Email Agency

If you missed Part I of the “Inside eROI” story, please read it before you read this blog post. Read Part I here >>

Part 2 (in a weekly blog series that is a 5-part case study of “A Startup Grows Up”)

Meeting one-on-one with each employee
The first day of one-on-one meetings, I met with 15 employees and I was blown away by their insight and aspirations to make eROI the best company possible. It was amazing! We all wanted the same thing – to produce top-quality creative work online with innovative software tools to support it. But, there was huge friction to get there because we were out of alignment internally. We grew so fast that we began to create silos between departments. For example, the Creative department was not feeling valued by the Sales and Account Service departments. Nearly half the company did not feel they had an equal voice in the direction of the company. There was a lot of merit and reality to what everyone was recognizing. The big realization was that I was a significant part of the problem.

Mentally exhausted after day 1, I spent all evening writing a heart-felt email to all employees. I realized that many employees were new to eROI, to the agency world, and even to the working world (coming right out of top creative, interactive, and technical schools to work at eROI). So, this email provided some context of how we got to this point, recognition that there was a problem, and most importantly, that we were going to do something about it. Here’s what I sent:

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Just like keeping your lists in good shape, we have brought in Yoga every Friday AM to the eROI team to keep mind and body in top notch condition. Ryan was great in arranging this for the team so that we could end each week not behind a keyboard, but in the downward dog bringing the flow of blood to our minds.

Account Execs, Designers, Support and Management took part in the first weekly class.

With the amount of work and stress our team takes on each week, it is a wonderful practice to invest in the team itself. Who knew that our wood floors would be good for things besides break dancing competitions.

If you haven’t had a chance to watch our holiday video, you are missing out on a few good laughs. It’s home-grown, hand made, and poor video production, but the content is original and it’s always fun to watch a group of people that really enjoy one another and have a good time.Check out the eROI Holiday Video >>

www.eroi.com/holiday

So after moving in, we were rewarded with some new toys. I mean Darts, Foosball, Guns and Liquor should have been enough for anyone, but we needed a Lil’ Chick.

This new Green Machine is the envy of inter-office transporation. Living in a “Bike Friendly” city like Portland, we needed to bring the bike inside to really hold up to the hype.

And who can’t solve problems better with an increase in blood flow? We know Lil’ Jeff can.

I got this email from a co-worker who is stuck in Alaska. If the email wasn’t so elaborate, I might not have believed him and thought he was trying to make excuses for missing work, but the story is just so good. The best line is: “Sorry this meessage is so messed up, it’s missing half it’s keys.”

“Just wanted to give you all a little update. I’m currently stuck in Russian Mission calling every airline in western Alaska trying to get to Anchorage. We’ve been waiting for a plan for well over 24 hours now, but due to a serious of blizzards and freezing fog the planes have remained on the ground. So the rest of this trip might be an attemp to get back to work on Monday with no time in anchorage at all. Hopefully that won’t happen though. So far this trip I have caught two 2′ pike from whole in the Yukon. (we fish with a stick and lower a rope into a hole in the ice). We’ve gone on some long snowmobile rides up the yukon which can be little scary when the water sits on top of the ice you can’t tellif you are going to go through or not. At one point we saw a bunch of moose and tried to get closer but got stuck in a snow drift and had to spend a half an hour digging them out of the snow, with the moose staring us down, and stuck in 5 ft. of snow which made it virtually impossiblle to walk.

Hung out with the natives in their sweat lodges and helped pull up a fish trap which is the point at which i fell partially into the frozen Yukon river. It’s cold. We’ll there is a slight chance we will be leaving now so i ‘ll let you go. Sorry this meessage is so messed up, it’s missing half it’s keys.”

Well the time came recently (as you might have seen from earlier posts of Art under his desk trying to make a call) to move into some larger space. We had maxxed our office space as much as possible and were geniunely concerned about an Outbreak of Hong Kong Birdy Flu that would have taken us all down and left us in an episode of LOST other then the world we live in that closely resembles THE OFFICE.

So out with the OLD….

And in with the NEW.

If you happen to be in the area sometime, drop in and see the place. And Check any notions of a CORPORATE environment at the Door. It takes hard work to make a place that works so hard.

What do you do when it gets a little loud in an open office environment? One eROI employee, who was on an important client call, created a sound barrier under his desk. Yep, we’re pretty creative here at eROI.
Cheers.