As a CEO, I get better work out of people by being transparent

• Razorfish's Josh Campo said the Publicis ad agency used rituals to reinforce its values post-office return.
• He said he believed these efforts had led to company growth and strong retention.
• This story is part of "What's Next," a series about business leaders' strategies for workplace productivity.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Josh Campo, the CEO of the ad agency Razorfish. The following has been edited for length and clarity.

We're a services business, so obviously we work on number of [billable] hours. But that's not a very useful metric for productivity. We look at how we're driving success and the relevance of the ideas that we come up with. We're essentially an idea company — we come up with plans to solve a client's business challenge. The relevance of those ideas really dictate: Are we growing and winning more clients and doing more work?

As we've expanded to almost 2,000 people, the challenge has been to figure out ways to maintain the values and culture that got us here.

We mandated that people come back to the office three days a week, but we have always been pretty invested in providing flexibility. Teams and Zoom are great, but there's a certain magic when you're in the room together trying to hash out a challenge and figure out the right solution for a client.

Before there was a policy, people were starting to come back in, but you could show up on a day and maybe see three people. As much as it would be great for everyone to be self-organized, when Publicis is almost 90,000 people, and Razorfish is almost 2,000, you do create a sense of disappointment when folks come in and they're one of 10 people, as opposed to one of 100.

While there has been skepticism around that approach, it does provide for a better experience overall knowing people will be there.

During the earlier COVID days, when we were all remote, we found ways to connect with folks and instill the values of the organization. As we came back to the office, the muscle memory of what we had done for years and years was not there.

From listening tours to Taco Tuesdays

We had to come up with new rituals to create consistency among team members. That was probably one of the most significant challenges for us.

So before the return-to-office mandate, at the beginning of 2023, we started office tours. Our president and I did a "10 cities in 10 days" tour and just went to go talk to people, saying, "Hey, this is what the year is going to be about." We had other leaders go and do listening tours. We also had remote sessions for everything, so everything is done in parity.

Another thing we do is monthly Q&As we call "Open Doors" where anybody can ask me and other leaders any question they want.

Other rituals we started were quarterly monetary awards that recognize the values of the organization: accountable, entrepreneurial, progressive, passionate, and kind. And "Razorfish Week," which is focused on celebrating aspects of the in-office experience, with things like a service day and leaders talking about their careers.

We also brought back pre-COVID rituals like Bagel Wednesday and Taco Tuesday. Food is a big part of social engagement, creating those bonding moments for folks and reminding them of some of the upsides of being in the office.

The city-rollout tours are pretty popular in terms of how well they're attended. I'd say we're probably at about 80% of folks in any given location. The Open Doors sessions can be quite well attended. I think they resonate because of their transparency.

We ask a lot of our people in terms of working hard and delivering for our clients. We owe them transparency on basically anything that we can tell them about, whether it's the business, whether it's about clients, whether it's about policies. I do think that that is one of the most appreciated aspects of our people and working at Razorfish.

We do get tough questions sometimes. Some days I feel like we've got a couple hundred people, and other days there's almost 1,000. I'm always wondering when I join and there are 1,000 people, "Oh, what is somebody going to ask?"

We're having success in terms of winning new clients and expanding our relationships with existing clients. And that, to me, is ultimately the best metric of productivity. Another area that I would look at is talent-retention rates, which have been better than the industry average, even through very highly competitive periods of the past couple of years. We do engagement surveys, which, by and large, come back favorable for us.

There's always room for improvement. We're still trying to figure out what we do next and iterate on the rituals that we've come up with. There's a lot of things outside our control. It's a huge plus if you can create trust and transparency with your team so that they come along with you and understand you don't control everything but that you're all going to be in the boat rowing in the same direction.