Mission North Goes Back to “School”

Although the days of picking out new colored pencils and backpacks are behind us, there’s something about the end of summer that has us looking forward to a fresh start. While we might not be heading back to school at Mission North, this August marked our third annual “University” offsite, an all-day session of workshops focused on learning new things and working smarter.

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This year we focused on something that’s important to Mission North'sethos: diversity and inclusion. From politics to Silicon Valley scandals, conversations around diversity and echo chambers have reached an all-time high. Our professional development committee felt it was important to spend some time reflecting on diversity in a way that relatesto the work we do every day.

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No two successful PR programs look the same thanks to the incredible diversity of our clients, and the different backgrounds and skills we each bring as team members. Diversity isn’t just about our identification and our backgrounds; we work together like the dream team that we are because of—rather than in spite of—the fact that we all have fairly different working styles.

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We kicked the day off with an analysis of our DiSC profiles, talking about the different things that motivate or stress various personality types, and which we see most often reflected in Mission North’s culture. Half of us thrive during collaborative meetings while half of us prefer to work in a quiet room; some of us prefer messy docs and quick results while some of us live for precise plans (and pretty much no one adores rules as much as I do).

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We had eye-opening conversations about how we can better respect individual working styles to become even better teams.

Just as we are different in important ways, so are our clients. We invited a few of them (LinkedIn, Betterment, UTC, ThoughtSpot and more) in for an after-lunch panel discussion on what PR programs look like at various stages of a business. Our panel talked about how PR fits into the business strategy for a startup vs. a publicly traded program, and we had the chance to get some candid perspectives on how they all work with agencies in very different ways. Our teams came away with a better appreciation for our clients’ very different needs and the opportunity to adapt our PR programs to be even better partners.

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Finally, we all participated in Social Content Writing 101, taught by our very own digital team. We practiced the art of writing catchy tweets and brainstormed the ways a more strategic digital strategy can amplify the media work we’re already doing for our clients.

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It turns out back to school season can be just as fun as grown-ups, especially when it’s infused with some important self-reflection—and rooftop time.

Sound like fun? We’re hiring on both coasts and would love to get to know you. Check out our open positions here.