Wrap-up 2022: Lessons learned & challenges

In 2022 we hired new team members but also had to “let go” others. Cultural alignment, workflow adjustment, and mental availability are some of the reasons for the comings and goings that were part of our reality – and are part of the challenges of any company.

“A company is made of people, people who may have, like any of us, personal and unexpected situations. As an employer we must be aware and available, being able to accompany team members and help with whatever they may need. Leadership is about creating the right context for team members to shine and do the best job possible. In a remote company, this is even more true” – this paragraph is an excerpt from the opinion piece published in ECO in November – this reference made sense in this context and does in this blog post as well.

Many companies hung in there during the pandemic, spending the last cartridges of their communication and marketing budgets in those two years. 2022 dictated that those companies follow other paths, recruiting to have those resources in-house or defining that communication would not be their priority… 

This reality made us lose some clients that had been with us for several years. It also made us feel the challenge of looking at the market and doing the exercise of understanding what is the market looking for now and how can we differentiate ourselves from other agencies. What can we do, on our own, to be top of mind? There are questions for which we still have no answers, and there are others for which we have defined actions to mitigate doubts and risk. We hope the coming months will answer whether we have outlined the right path.

With the business context shared above, and team members coming and going, one of the steps we took was to hire an Operations Manager – someone who already knew the team and worked with us on/off but who has now taken a more active and involved role in order to make the internal process leaner. Our Operations Manager came to help establish overall processes for different things within the structure, create an internal wiki, adjust the tools we use and, above all, support the team in their management of work and clients. That step was essential to get me free – as the person who’s the face of the agency – and allow me to dedicate myself to the business strategy and effort of the company – which brings me to the next point.

A company like FES Agency, 100% remote, with 11 employees (9 full-time and 2 freelancers), focused on communication for technology and challenges like the ones mentioned above, it was inevitable the effort to stop and (re)evaluate our ambitions, vision, and values. This exercise allowed me to identify, along with the team, points for improvement, service adjustments, commercial push with potential strategic clients, creation of external communication elements to generate more visibility for the company, and a host of other points that allow us to reach the end of this year with an action plan and a more cohesive vision of what the future of the agency will be.

Reading the previous paragraphs, we can see that 2022 was not an easy year. However, all the work of analysis and structure created gives the assurance that we are on the right track, and from now on, everything will be easier, as well as the lightness that we have done everything possible to ensure the path to success.

As we have always said, it is often necessary to take one step back in order to take two steps forward.

We close 2022 with a thank you to all clients, for the challenges they bring us, and partners, for always being able to contribute to the projects we have in hand. And I, in particular, close with a thank you to the team, for always giving their all and helping to push the boat.

2023, we are ready! 🚀