We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Shane Lukas a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Shane , thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Can you talk to us about your team building process? How did you recruit and train your team and knowing what you know now would you have done anything differently?
A Great Idea started the way many design agencies do: on the reputation and skills of a single (or small group of designers/creatives). With a couple decades of award-winning experience in hand, I was in a situation like many where I was determining if I should take my newly available employment status to new companies and begin the process of building up within their infrastructure or respond to the number of asks that were already coming my way from within my professional and activist network.
Beginning to bring on team members then carried a need to make sure I could sustain them and also provide fulfilling environments. So, initially, through contract workers, A Great Idea collaborated with talented folks that could evolve with the client asks as they came. Many of these partners continue their collaboration with us today, and it helped me see that this strategy gave greater flexibility to our client partners. Managing these relationships and the disparate asks, however, posed a challenge. We decided to enhance these relationships with coordinators: roles with people with relevant creative skills (development, design) but who were structuring and managing the project flows.
These roles also needed to be centered on the same principles we bring to the work of our clients every day. My lifelong history in activism—particularly harm reduction—proved to be a unique element in determining if I would move toward independence and particularly shaping the business with the values that have been part of my path. The focus at A Great Idea is to work for mission-driven partners—primarily those serving in education, healthcare, and nonprofit. Every member of our team needed to understand who we are as a brand—our values, our goals, our commitments—just as we share our partners’ unique brand stories through our work every day.
My first coordinator came on board and found the number of clients and workflows very difficult to balance – both because our system had evolved organically and as a small business owner, I was spinning many of the plates for 10-15 clients at the time. This individual had incredible skills in managing one company’s workflow, which is what drew me to them, but I realized swiftly there are different skills to be able to manage and watch multiple flows at the same time and create the balance for our contractors. That coordinator stayed with me 9 months when we determined together it wasn’t a good ‘fit’.
I saw that change as a recognition and opportunity to better define a better infrastructure at A Great Idea. Beginning with my next coordinator, I started to look at shaping the role (and subsequent coordinator roles) where we could stay agile and small so that we could connect our clients to high-quality creative while compensating our creatives and ensuring we maintained profitability and stability.
It’s important to have constructive conversations as you build the business to make sure that your team gets enough transparency that they can see if they feel like its a role that suits their growth and skills as well as the way it impacts clients and other team members. They are hard conversations in the process but necessary to make sure people don’t feel like they ‘fail’ if they move on to a role where they can thrive more easily.
Shane , love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?
A Great Idea is built from a commitment to transform our world by supporting companies and organizations that deliver change on the ground to people across communities.This reflects my own journey from volunteering at age 14 with Planned Parenthood in central Illinois to decades of community organizing and social justice work to advance queer liberation, racial and gender justice, and freedom for every body.
Our clients see that this is something A Great Idea brings to the table—that we put a percent of everything we make to community work and civic engagement initiatives, that we come to conversations with ideas and questions that are inherently inclusive and strategic at building coalition and advocacy, and that we are actively learning from meaningful conversations and community involvement in the world around us.
Even for our clients in healthcare and education who are running for profit businesses, I am proud that they trust us to build strategies and solutions to maintain their stability (i.e. profitability) as a company while staying aligned to their values. Whether it is through email campaigns, websites or a print collateral campaign, we ensure their brand story is authentic and delivered with authenticity and an invitation for stakeholders of all types (staff, customers, donors, funders, volunteers) to join them.
How’d you build such a strong reputation within your market?
Our clients understand that we are authentic because they see it in our own initiatives to engage communities and build advocacy for social justice. We demonstrate our values and our expertise at moving people into advocacy and action through projects like the Out.Vote initiative which encourages greater queer voter participation. Currently, we are working to bring people together in coalition to respond to attacks on reproductive rights, transgender healthcare, and LGBTQ+ rights with our “Freedom for Every Body” campaign. We model what we deliver each day for programs and companies that are actively changing our world by serving our communities.
Can you tell us about what’s worked well for you in terms of growing your clientele?
I think a lot of small businesses are afraid to step into their marketplace or communities with a perspective. I see it a lot in brand conversations when organizations really fear having a point of view for fear of missing an opportunity with some abstract consumer/supporter they have in their mind. Difference doesn’t have to be divisive, and many businesses that are led by having a particular set of values tend to perform better. When I finished my MBA last year, I took time to look into models of companies that were like mine as well as those much larger that I admired like Lush Cosmetics, Patagonia, and the ACLU. Those companies all had clear values and were making decisions that didn’t ignore the marketplace but also recognized they would ‘lose’ people who might not like that they have an identity, an opinion. Yet, these are companies or organizations that perform well BECAUSE they have clarity and stay less generic in their spaces. Small businesses can succeed this way, too.
We have a reputation for high-quality, award-winning work that is matched by our clear center-to-left position on social justice and political issues. We encourage that perception and have turned away partners that did not align with these core values. While it cost us business in one way, the clients see us as a partner in their success and development because they know we want to see them succeed in their missions. It serves us to not be like all the other creative agencies in the marketplace while ensuring we also find joy and meaning in what we bring into the world every day.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://agreatidea.com
- Instagram: https://instagram.com/weareagi
- Facebook: https://facebook.com/agreatideaco
- Linkedin: https://linkedin.com/company/weareagi
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/weareagi
- Youtube: https://youtube.com/@weareagi
- Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/a-great-idea-greensboro-3
- Other: Projects mentioned in the story: https://freedomforeverybody.com https://prideisforeverybody.com https://out.vote
Image Credits
Portraits of Shane Lukas only: Sass Photos