Jeremy Tidy Tells the Happy Graphics Story

Yes, happy graphics. I'll go through and explain why it came about. But I guess to start off with just to explain what the graphics are, what we do did any of you watch any of the V day over the weekend in terms of ceremonials and the concerts and things like that? So basically, any graphics that you would have seen on those on those BBC shows came from happy graphics.

Running very smoothly. Other shows that we work on as well Strictly Come Dancing, but Sophie, no, I do not, I have no, my dancing is zero. but anything graphical that you see that's on live TV shows, like Strictly, Voice, Jump, and other entertainment and, it's a real mix going from VE Day to the Jump is a variety, which to me is also a very important thing to get some variety in what we do.

So why? Why happy? I have to go back a little while because it is a new company. And basically from bad times, really. So around 2011, the company that I was running was my father's company that I'd taken over was struggling big time with attitude culture, the whole philosophy of the company was 30 40 50 years old really, and it was a 50 year old company very, very hard to try and bring into a new world that was very challenging at the same time as trying to go through an adoption.

Which, as you can imagine, social services weren't very happy that I was spending far too much time trying to save a company that clearly was in big trouble and trying to keep a marriage going as well. and in the end we had to take the decision to put a voluntary insolvency in place for the company because we just felt like what we needed to do, what we needed to do with the culture was just impossible to do in that organization.

Social services weren't happy and pulled the adoption. And marriage ended as well. So basically in a nutshell, at 40, whatever years old, I always describe it as someone pressed the reset button and basically said, okay, you've got no business, no marriage, no son, no, no, anything else. Start again. Which is a big massive, massive low.

I can't explain how, how low you can be in terms of all of that happening in one moment. In the back of my mind from a, Presentation ages ago, there was an HR person that talked about happy computers and to have a look at the culture and the philosophy around that, and in the back of my mind, that sort of stayed put in terms of what could I do to change the world that I'm in to make it a better place.

And so starting off with the first book and having a quick read of that because it's nice and small. So same as a manifesto. It's a quick read. But the fundamental thing that I got out of that was that people work best when you're feeling good about yourselves. Which is what I needed, but it's also what I needed in terms of people around me, what clients wanted to gain from me as well.

So, so that was the, the most important part of taking from that relaxed book and has carried on through everything that we do. So creating a new company, it was logical to me was to use that word happy because it then meant every day of your life you were thinking about happy.

People were talking to you about happy. People were just wanting to know about why happy which why it works. It works for me because not one day can you ever look back and then think maybe in terms of all those, you know, the bad things that have happened that it forces you to always think of the happy So I read that was obviously the inspiring part of it and then reading the manifesto then meant, okay, it's not just a name, it's not just a label, we've got to then think about some of the cultural differences that have been a problem in the past and how we deal with those in the future.

So one of the, one of the things that, that we've certainly looked at and actually that has gone, It's alright. That's one slide that hasn't happened there. But anyway, we'll go back to that. One area that's really made a massive difference for us in moving forward and getting the success, you know, we're talking about two, three years that this is all, this is what happens to get the likes of BBC, Strictly Come Dancing, 13 million viewers, et cetera.

You know, these are massive contracts for us. And the important thing that we looked at was, was around goals. Yeah. That's good for us for what staff need, but it's also for what the company need is looking at goals, tracking them. Associating them with the values of the company so that we're not just going for goals that are just out of line with, you know, with the values of the company and also affirmations, which is something that was all felt a bit almost American to me in terms of really, you know, is this sort of thing that you know that we work with.

And so what we've got, we use goal planning sheets. A system that we've used very successfully. And this is a blown up version of what we use for goal planning. I think in the past, in the corporate world that I was in many years ago, thinking about appraisals and having these, these deliverables and these targets and smart deliverables and things was never a very attractive thing.

Never really believed them and, you know, very easy to slip and not to deliver to what we wanted, but to go to a goals based way of working has certainly changed us for the better. So the goal tends to be the thing that we agree together on. So if it is a staff members goal that we're looking at that goal is agreed in terms of captured to us to start off with.

But then it's the other things that have actually helped us to really sort of get those goals really sorted out. So what are the benefits of that goal? What? What do we gain by achieving that goal? But also thinking about what are the losses that we that we need to avoid at the same time. So it's trying to prepare people for something that can go wrong, because quite often goals can be missed in their deliverables could be missed.

So, you know, what we're trying to do is prepare people for things that might go wrong. And deal with them accordingly. What are those obstacles to achieving that goal? And if we do hit those obstacles, what are going to be those solutions that we're preparing for potential obstacles that are going to happen in the future?

Then, from an individual point of view, we then can go away and develop those action steps on our own, where it's that accountability. And desire to want to succeed the agreement of that goal, but very much what the action steps to actually go away now to achieve that what tracking progress we can put him in place so that we know that we're that that plan is being achieved and that we can get through those steps to get to that goal.

Then dealing with affirmation so that we're feeling as if that this goal is something that is achievable. We're talking about it. You know, in the present tense that it's something that it is achievable. So you can visualize it can visualize us being, wherever that place is, whatever it is that we're trying to do.

And as I said earlier, trying to associate it with values as well. They're big, you know, these have worked very well in the company. They work in a personal situation as well. Very much being very goal based now has changed my, certainly my life in terms of what I want to achieve outside of work.

And also with the business. So to me a big success for us has been as goal based planning for staff. And it's also if you can think about because we're quite a small company and young as well. What we've had to do is bring a lot of freelance type resource in to start off with us as we've tried to get new projects and grow.

So these goals have also had to work in, you know, in a freelance environment as well, which, it's different because freelancers do have a different you know, attitude and priority. But they have goals as well and how we can work together to achieve those goals together. So it has been a success in a freelance world as well as a company owner.

So that's, that's what we've done with goals.

Get to tease you with that white slide that clearly has not. That's not worked. That seems to be.

That's a different slide. What it should be anyway. I will work around that. What we've done, and it's just trying to look at Small acts of kindness. Now, you know, I think we've heard of random acts of kindness in a happiness environment. What we've looked at are what we can do that are small that have made a big difference to our relationship with clients and with staff.

And it is the most smallest and simplest thing, but it's just those things that, for you to think about in terms of what can be done. If you ever see the end credits on a TV show. Where it's always the big wigs that are always the last few people that will always get the end credits. The people that are important to us are actually the ones that are lower down in the packing order.

They're the people that obviously create the relationships, create the budgets, and create the environments. And what we do are create very simple little postcards that move them to the end credits. Which is a nice little surprise. It costs pennies to actually, you know, to print these things. The surprise and happiness in the smile that you create from these people is bizarre.

You know, you think of how influential they are and the type of work that they're involved in. And actually little simple things like that can make a massive difference because these were important projects to them. And these little keepsakes and that can quite easily working, you know, with staff and with clients as well.

So it's really just to think about those little those little things. It's not just money. It's not just, you know, it's not on about, you know, career path and development is it is actually those little things that come about as well. I'm a bit worried that this is probably going to go on toe. Yeah, yeah, these are the right version of the slides, which is a little bit worrying.

Strengths. Is a big eye opener for us where we looked at the happy workplace program, which a few of the people here have been on over the last few months. It's a big eye opener for us as well. Is that again back into that into that corporate world, what you were looking at appraisals was looking at people's development needs, what their what their weaknesses are focusing on their weaknesses, how to develop people out of those weakness areas.

With the program and going through strengths finder is a huge benefit and a change to us as well, because it's now just trying to think about how strengths are being looked at. And that's developing people in their training and their learning. But it's also what it's allowed us to do is look at what clients we want to work with and what and it's a very controversial way of doing it, but it's almost sacking clients. If they're not the clients that are going to give you what you need because of the strengths that you've got in that organization, then why? Why try and work with those types of organizations? If you can do without those and build on the ones that do give you the strengths, then you know, then then that's very much you know what we're looking at doing again.

Freelancers is another environment that is tricky for us. But if we can focus on their strengths and develop everything for them, then you know they will deliver and very much be the, you know, the happy environment. Yeah, this is a slightly embarrassing. I'll end on, there's one that one area that we've that we've been looking at, and it's probably very topical at the moment is trust.

I know it's come through quite a lot today in people's conversations. If the slide was there, what we would have seen is Kevin Peterson, the cricketer that's making all the sort of the back page and probably front pages at the moment. He's classing people up. I think people are classing him as not trustworthy, even though he's probably the best cricketer in terms of what he can achieve, what he can do.

So he's got those skills, but the perception is that he's not he's not trustworthy. Now, Some of the behaviours that you can have in trust is things like straight talking. And he obviously did some straight talking, but that's obviously affected the management or the people that think actually straight talking is a bad thing.

So my question, which was gonna be midway through the presentation, was very much around looking at behaviors of trust and what do you think creates a trusting relationship and a, and an environment? Because clearly he thinks he can do the job and he thinks he can be trustworthy, but the management as such, you know, believe that he's not trustworthy.

So yeah, a couple of minutes just really just trying to talk about, and, you know, what behaviors create. A trusting, trusting relationship.