Metajive Values: A Focus on Growth

Put the word “Growth” in the Merriam-Webster dictionary, and one of the definitions is “progressive development”. When we talk about Growth as a Metajive value, this is exactly what we’re referring to, and it touches three distinct areas of our existence:

Growth, when seen as progressive development, allows us to continually be better, and a growth mindset is part of the culture here at Metajive. What’s more, each element of growth is interlinked. When our employees grow through personal development, it impacts the larger growth (both literally and figuratively) of the agency. That, in turn, ladders up to growth for our clients too.

“Growth inside fuels growth outside”. – John Maxwell

We’re going to come right out and say it: the personal employee growth journey is one of the things that sets Metajive apart as an agency, and we bake development into our daily work life. Whether it’s hard skills growth that helps someone go from Art Director to Creative Director, or soft skills growth that helps someone reach a managerial role, we’re always focused on the individual pathway. Nothing makes us happier than seeing career and salary growth within our team.

We look at growth from other angles too when it comes to our employees. When we grow the relationships between people and teams, we help establish our culture and create better work. When designers and developers know each other, they share the same vocabulary for the same aligned outcomes.

Yes, we’ve grown exponentially the last couple of years, but none of it has been just for growth’s sake. What really matters about Metajive’s growth is how it has impacted the work we create and our relationships with our clients. Last year we made #11 on San Diego Business Journal’s List of Fastest Growing Companies and were ranked #2446 on Inc. 5000's National List (our second time on that list). We also grew our team significantly and added a whole new level of director and leadership level roles including Director of Production, Executive Creative Director, UX Director and Design Director. Even more rewarding, is how many of our employees got promoted from within. We had producers scale up to senior producers, Art Directors to associate creative directors, associate creative directors to creative directors and much more.

With this kind of growth you start to really evaluate who you are and who you want to be as an agency. Everytime you hit a goal, you pick a new goal. Our growth is testament to how we are in constant movement, always looking to make a bigger difference to our team and our partners as we embark on increasingly complex projects, making increasingly bigger impacts for our partners.

When we work towards the growth of our individual employees and the overall agency, it’s all with one idea in mind: to grow our impact on our partners’ business goals. We kick off every project by defining what our clients’ metrics of success look like and how we can measure that. As we’ve grown as a team and an agency, our relationships with our clients have grown. They have evolved to become longer lasting, cover multiple engagements, and become more in-depth. This kind of growth has allowed us to become a more integral part of their business, as well as solve bigger challenges.

Take School of Rock. Five years ago, we set out to create a new website for them. Today, our relationship is continually growing and evolving, and has led to us building their CRM and establishing hugely successful email campaign integration. HP is another example of the growth we’ve seen with our partners. From a small inceptual project to the work we do with them today that is helping drive and shape the company in new ways, our relationship – and our work – continues to grow.

So what does our growth look like as we continue to move forward? The beauty of growth is that not every detail of it has to be planned. By being flexible to evolving markets, client needs, and the world around us, we can grow in a way that keeps our roots strong while our branches can adapt with the changing winds. In other words, we will continue to grow, but always be mindful of how and why we do.