Keith Scandone Of O3 World: Five Things You Need To Be A Highly Effective Leader During Turbulent Times
An Interview With Fotis Georgiadis
Be present. One of the biggest challenges for me personally has been the distributed nature of the workforce these days. Being in the office enabled us to share experiences, success, failures and generally set the tone. Not having that forces you to “show up” more regularly whether it be in Slack to everyone, or direct messages, or a team meeting.
As a part of our series about the “Five Things You Need To Be A Highly Effective Leader During Turbulent Times,” we had the pleasure of interviewing Keith Scandone.
Keith Scandone, Co-Founder, Chief Executive Officer, O3 World.
Keith focuses primarily on the consultancy’s strategic goals, as well as fostering a unique culture of innovation, leadership and teamwork. Along with Co-Founder Mike Gadsby, Keith also leads the company’s Ventures initiative, which aims to accelerate business growth through investment partnerships. Currently, O3 has Venture projects with Urvin, an artificial intelligence agency, as well as REC Philly, a studio designed to support creative entrepreneurship in the arts.
From spearheading the Forge Conference, Innovation Day and the 1682 Conference, to co-founding the Philadelphia chapter of the Awesome Foundation and Pay It Phorward, Keith continuously looks for ways to bring industry leaders together and strives to create community around O3’s shared interest in innovation and emerging technology. His efforts to consistently craft and refine organizational culture have led to the firm being recognized as Entrepreneur’s “Top Company Cultures” and “Best Entrepreneurial Companies.”
Keith has also sat on several boards, including the Philadelphia Global Identity Partnership and Venture Connect, a mentorship group helping aspiring small business owners.
Thank you so much for your time! I know that you are a very busy person. Our readers would love to “get to know you” a bit better. Can you tell us a bit about your ‘backstory’ and how you got started?
I’ve had a bit of an unconventional path to get to where I am today. I moved to Los Angeles right after college to pursue acting, and while I did some acting, a lot of my time was spent pursuing acting instead. And therefore I had many odd jobs along the way. The most interesting, and valuable of all of them, was actually as an entertainment reporter. However, the most formative experience I had professionally was when a play that I wrote got produced. I also acted in the play, but it was the producer role that taught me the most about myself. All duties fell on me from hiring the director and the other acts, to handling the set design, to promoting the show. I soon realized that I was much better at bringing those pieces together than I was at the acting and writing piece.
When we started O3 World, I became responsible for producing new business, working collaboratively with my co-founder, and for the strategic growth of our company. In many ways, it’s like being the producer of a movie or a play because I’m involved in most of the areas of the company’s growth.
Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lessons or ‘takeaways’ you learned from that?
One of my first official meetings as a business owner was with an advertising agency in Philadelphia. My partners and I dressed up in suits to go to the meeting, which were not something we’d usually wear. When we arrived, everyone at the advertising agency was in jeans and t-shirts. They had quite a laugh at our expense! They were nice enough about it, but it reminded us to just be true to ourselves.
None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person who you are grateful towards who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story?
I personally believe that it is important to have more than one mentor in order to gain a variety of insights from different people who work at organizations different from my own — whether in size or in type. I like to learn from them, take those lessons and then apply them to O3.
That said, I am extremely grateful to Lee Mikles, former owner and CEO of The Archer Group. We met over a decade ago and I learned so much from him. I learned alot from what worked for him as an owner, how he grew his company, why he left and pursued other passions, ultimately transitioning his career entirely.
The other person I have learned a great deal from is Michael Lebowitz from Big Spaceship. Michael was the keynote at one of our Forge conferences years back and we have stayed in touch. I admire him and his company so much, so speaking to him is like looking into the future of where the digital agency world is heading.
Extensive research suggests that “purpose-driven businesses” are more successful in many areas. When your company started, what was its vision, what was its purpose?
True innovation in customer experience design and development services has always been at our heart. Innovation is our agency’s lifeblood; it has been from the start and remains our default approach to everything we do. In 2005, Philadelphia, where we’re headquartered, wasn’t known as a hub for digital and interactive, so we hoped to bridge this gap and help our clients meet the needs created by a rapidly digitizing world. We also have been very deliberate about our contributions to the industry and the local community in Philadelphia as well. In fact, the locations of our offices were both chosen with the idea of growing WITH the neighborhood, as both we’re very much in the beginning stages of gentrifying when we moved into them.
Thank you for all that. Let’s now turn to the main focus of our discussion. Can you share with our readers a story from your own experience about how you lead your team during uncertain or difficult times?
The pandemic forced us to re-evaluate some of the ways we operated. Our entire history, we had been a 100% full-time, in-office team that now had no choice but to become distributed, dramatically altering our work philosophy and moving us to a dispersed workforce model.
Facing this new reality, our leadership team recognized that we would need to focus more time and attention on internal team collaboration and communication. We also didn’t want to lose our sense of community and wanted to continue to help out our neighbors in the Fishtown, Philadelphia neighborhood. We knew it was up to us to set the tone for engaging with each other during such a tumultuous time. We focused intensely on creating feelings of positivity, building team camaraderie and continually checking the pulse of how our team was feeling. We’re still working on this effort and are committed to creating and fostering a positive and healthy work environment no matter their physical location.
Did you ever consider giving up? Where did you get the motivation to continue through your challenges? What sustains your drive?
Many, many, times. I have been in this business for 17 years. There was the recession of 2009, the pandemic of 2020, and then just the consistent stress and volatility that comes with owning a business. In the last 5 years the intensity and emotional capacity had increased dramatically in running a business. So yes, I have considered giving up. But I hold on because I believe in the company, the vision, the mission, the people. I believe that we’re here for a reason. And we’re not done fulfilling our goals about what we can accomplish as a team.
I’ve always been an all-or-nothing type of person. I go whole-heartedly at everything I do, and after 17 years, I’m still compelled by the allure of problem-solving and building something bigger than me. You can always find opportunity; if you’re talented, motivated, and passionate enough, you create your vision and narrative of what you want to be.
That said, it’s been a tough two years for all of us. My team and our work helping clients sustain me to get up every morning and do my best work.
What would you say is the most critical role of a leader during challenging times?
The most critical role of a leader during challenging times is to remain positive, have humility and always be honest. It’s important to be real, sincere and genuine with your colleagues about what is going on both inside and outside of your organization. At the same time, you need to be honest about the fact that just because you are a leader does not mean you have it all figured out. Be confident enough to share that you are doing the best you can and stay transparent.
When the future seems so uncertain, what is the best way to boost morale? What can a leader do to inspire, motivate and engage their team?
If you can find the positives in a situation and communicate that to your teams, it can be an effective motivator. During the early days of the pandemic, it was tough for our close-knit team to be away from each other. However, pieces of our hybrid approach have worked well and that we’ll stick to in the future.
Supporting a distributed team now offers us a more diverse talent pool and new and different perspectives that are incredibly valuable. Calling out team wins and sharing your optimism and enthusiasm as a leader is critical. It’s easy to look at the obvious negatives, but finding and sharing in the opportunities and benefits helps frame a more constructive narrative for our team.
What is the best way to communicate difficult news to teams and customers?
The truth is there is no one good way to communicate difficult news. We have tried every way possible but there is no standard approach that works for everyone. Also, communicating difficult news to one’s team is different than communicating the same news to customers. At the end of the day, being honest is important and so is recognizing the significance of whatever the news is and how it impacts whoever you are speaking with.
How can a leader make plans when the future is so unpredictable?
Given the future is so unpredictable, it’s important for leaders to make more bite-sized plans like an 18-month business plan, even if your goals extend out three years or so. It’s also important to make sure that strategy is being communicated to your employees. Again, being honest and transparent about the business’ plans and why the company is focused on shorter length plans.
Is there a “number one principle” that can help guide a company through the ups and downs of turbulent times?
Communication is the key to help guide a company through the ups and downs of turbulent times. Our leadership team leans into the importance of over-messaging and communicating with our team. It’s absolutely vital to set the tone and maintain a sense of community when you have geographically scattered employees.
Can you share 3 or 4 of the most common mistakes you have seen other businesses make during difficult times? What should one keep in mind to avoid that?
Over-communicate and show up for your team: Don’t take for granted that your team shows up and works every day. Share and celebrate their wins and the wins of your company. Show your team you appreciate their work, check in on them and keep them apprised of the company’s direction. Do this all the time. Even if your team feels supported, acting on their feedback and showing them you care is one of the most important things I can do as a leader.
Do not let teams operate in silos: An extension of number one, creating a sense of community is entirely different when you have a hybrid workforce versus everyone in the office. Being alone at home makes it easy for employees to focus only on their contribution and get siloed on what they are doing. With remote teams, you have to be more deliberate about establishing a sense of closeness and collaboration.
Don’t overlook or ignore the mental health or morale of your staff: We strongly emphasize mental health and well-being and actively encourage self-care. When we were in the office, it was easier to see if someone was having a difficult time or a rough day. It’s not as easy to do this when everyone is remote. When we first all started working from home, some team members weren’t always comfortable opening up about their concerns. We have established processes to encourage people to share and open up with each other.
Generating new business, increasing your profits or at least maintaining your financial stability can be challenging during good times, even more so during turbulent times. Can you share some of the strategies you use to keep forging ahead and not lose growth traction during a difficult economy?
During a difficult economic time, it’s important to take a consistent, balanced approach. During COVID, we learned that what got us to where we are as a business today won’t necessarily get us where we are trying to go. As a service-based business, the majority of our annual budgets are salaries because that is the biggest expense. So, how we manage not just growth but also profitability has changed. Over the last few years, salaries have increased but clients don’t necessarily want to spend more money so that margin is decreasing. It’s important to leverage the skillsets of the senior employees and find some more junior talent to strike a balance. It’s also important to have honest conversations with clients to collaborate on expectations in pricing.
Here is the primary question of our discussion. Based on your experience and success, what are the five most important things a business leader should do to lead effectively during uncertain and turbulent times? Please share a story or an example for each.
- Be present. One of the biggest challenges for me personally has been the distributed nature of the workforce these days. Being in the office enabled us to share experiences, success, failures and generally set the tone. Not having that forces you to “show up” more regularly whether it be in Slack to everyone, or direct messages, or a team meeting. Every day I try to work even harder to connect with people individually and to be present with employees. Now that our team is distributed, it just means we have to work harder, and perhaps travel to connect. For example, I visited an employee in Los Angeles and met another in Virginia. During both visits, we worked alongside each other, had lunch together and dedicated meetings. I am finding unique ways to connect with employees and connect them with each other.
- Double down on vision and values. While I think this is always critical to do, without having the face-to-face and regular touch points we used to have, it’s even more important to let people know that there is a vision and values behind the work being done. It’s important to be clear about where the company is going, and why current and future employees support our vision and growth plans. We had five core values prior to the pandemic. After listening to the team, we collectively created five new core values to better represent where the company is today and where we want the company to be. We also created a long-term incentive plan with company performance and individual performance goals. Our hope is this will help employees see how their collective hard work can lead to greater achievements and financial rewards.
- Take the blame, and give extra props. Business leaders are still human and make mistakes. But when we fail, we need to acknowledge that and learn from our mistakes so that we can lead by example. It’s important to take responsibility for everything and turn mistakes into opportunities. And, leaders need to give credit to their team because it’s their work that is leading to the company’s success. As an example, let’s say someone left the company in a less than gracious way. Your job is not to give your opinion on that person, their motivations, how they left or the state in which they left the company and that person’s peers. Your job is to take the high road, focus on the opportunities for the remaining people, and take blame that they, and the company, are left in this vulnerable position. And at the end of the day, while there are two sides, that’s the truth. You’re responsible for the hiring of that person, and the fact that there is going to be a significant gap in their absence. Your job is to protect your people as much as you possibly can. Regardless of what’s happening around them.
- Be proactive and keep recruiting. As employees continue to leave jobs at record rates, you cannot sit by and think that the team you have is in it for the long haul. Leaders need to be proactive and engage employees. Make sure you are constantly working with your HR or recruiting team to nurture prospects so that when a team member leaves, you are prepared to kick off the hiring process and bring in support for your team. You don’t want your team to get burnt out or suffer because an employee moves on. We’re a small company, and yet we have a full-time Director of People, Employee Experience Manager, who plays a huge role in recruiting, and we are even looking to hire another recruiter. That is quite a bit of overhead for one department in a company our size. But I believe you need to spend more in certain areas at certain times, and due to what’s happening in the world right now, where nothing is normal, you need to alter your budgets and reassess what worked for you two years ago likely isn’t going to work for you now.
- Take care of yourself. Leaders need to take on much more of an emotional burden for the others that are just simply wiped out. That means you need to also make sure you’re living a healthy life, getting sleep, taking time off, spending time on things that give you positive energy so that you can inject that right back into the company and the people. For me, self care is being outside, in warmer climates when possible. Even if I just go for a walk, or work outside for a bit, or ideally, exercise, it helps. If I’m a mess everyone picks up on that. No one wants to be around, let alone led, by someone who is always in a foul or anxious mood.
Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?
“Great things are done by a series of small things brought together.” ~Vincent Van Gogh. I discovered this quote after a visit to the Van Gogh Experience. It absolutely resonated with me. It sums up my thinking in so many ways. For one, as someone with a sports background, there are a lot of factors that can make you successful but there are also a lot that can make you unsuccessful. Most of these factors are often small and often not given attention by themselves, but over time, collectively, they all add up to who we are and where we are individually and professionally. Only in Hollywood do you all of a sudden wake up and become an immediate success story. And maybe crypto. But the real world doesn’t work that way.
How can our readers further follow your work?
Thank you so much for sharing these important insights. We wish you continued success and good health!
Keith Scandone Of O3 World: Five Things You Need To Be A Highly Effective Leader During Turbulent… was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.
