Three is the magic number

What enabled Captain Chesley Sullenberger, a.k.a “Sully”, to successfully land US Airways Flight 1549 in the Hudson River off Manhattan after both engines were disabled by a bird strike on January 15, 2009, saving all 155 people aboard, boiled down to his single-focused and hardwired MO (modus operandi) aviate (keep flying the plane), navigate (keep absolute sight of where you’re going), communicate (keep the channels of communication open, succinct, precise and clear).  This story was one highlight of Thinktank’s work this year.  As the Mediatree thinktank committee iteration 3.0 comes to its close, opening the way for a new committee 4.0, our blog post this month wants to reflect and acknowledge.

Today we celebrate 3 years, 3 committees of 3 people with 3 videos that you will find in coming weeks on our Instagram (@media_tree), Twitter and other social media.  When thinktank was launched in 2016, we had a vision to create the thought leadership and original IP and affiliated community, including team building, development activity of Mediatree.  Over 3 years we created a platform that brings together our community of stakeholders (team, clients, influencers, partners…) around our ‘inspirational property’.

3 highlights of the past thinktank year

1) We majored on content

We hope you enjoyed our blogs this year:  from tips on how to make your equity story stand out from the crowd, to examining sustainability initiatives and greenwashing, functioning across time zones to having a laugh at work or even asking whether your IR is Brexit-ready.  We hope our ideas, thoughts and observations from the world we operate in are useful and interesting to you.  We were delighted to involve two interns in our work and contributions.

2) We innovated

You will discover our new short animation videos, helping understand that #mediatreethinktank is all about “inspirational property”, and hopefully they will make you smile.

3) We contributed to strategic thinking

One of the highlights this year for our team was to create and facilitate two workshops at the annual strategy offsite, using Sully’s ‘miracle on the Hudson’ approach to inform how our own team performs.  In our line of work, where we deal with crises and solve problems 24/7, what are the failsafe principles that ensure we stay cool under pressure and deliver the results?  How can learning from everything we know –our intellectual property and our collective memory—improve our delivery and client service?

3 reasons we volunteer to sit on the thinktank committee

As we look to recruit our Committee 4.0, we sounded out our current team for the reasons they volunteered and what they got from their involvement last year.  3 main reasons emerged:

1) Thinktank is an outlet for creativity (writing, creating, judgement free space) and learning new skills (editing, blogging, tweeting…) that help reinforce our day-to-day operational skills

2) It develops our project management muscle, learning how to deliver collateral and events in a self-starting way (ie, it’s voluntary, not our day job)

3) We challenge each other and it challenges us on vast range of topics to stay connected and true to the Mediatree DNA

3 key learnings

So what have we learned? And how can what we learned be used in the broader context of our daily work?

1)  Our confidence builds from challenging ourselves

2)  Engagement and feedback from others are important motivators – the team factor and team support and acknowledgement are important factors of success

3)  We learned that there is immense value in trusting the process and trusting our team— trust is the bedrock of success.