OOOhhh Baby… (Our three-peat feat)

We just had a baby. Three of them in fact.

Before we start debating the biological impossibilities, THP is coming off three maternity leaves that overlapped involving three valuable account leads. How bad is that scenario at least on paper? It was so bad, the third mom delayed telling us that she was pregnant because she was afraid of our reaction.

But after seven months of adjusting, juggling and stretching the truth is it wasn’t bad after all.

In fact it was an extremely good thing, not only for the moms, but for all of us at Hodges.

Here are some of the things we learned:

  • It’s good to stretch: Sometimes we don’t know what our limits are until we reach them. Our team really pitched in, worked longer hours, and helped each other as we were a few women down during this time.
  • It’s time to grow: Since these folks were account leads it was time for others who were waiting for their opportunities to seize the day. And they did in a big way. In some cases not only maintaining the successful relationships but growing them in exciting ways.
  • A lot can happen during 3-4 months: It’s amazing how much things change in agency life during the time of an average maternity leave. People and clients grow, the usual client churn occurs, and because people step up and succeed the spirit of the agency changes in surprising ways.
  • Flexibility increases: As the moms came back to work we found the jobs they came back to changed as well. They had more “capacity” to work on different accounts. We had more opportunities to experiment with their assignments especially as they realized that those who stepped up were doing a solid job.

Sometimes agencies don’t change until change is forced upon them. As leaders we are content not rocking the boat when things are going well because, well….why should we?

But change is good. We are a better place because of these new members of the THP family. Better because there are three new members of our extended family.

But also better because of what we’ve learned and accomplished as a result of them coming into our world.

Jon Newman

In 2002 Jon cofounded The Hodges Partnership and has helped to grow it into one of the country’s largest public relations firms (based on O’Dwyer’s annual rankings). Jon has taught communications as an adjunct professor at VCU, speaks regularly at conferences and meetings and blogs and tweets about public relations and marketing issues.

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