An opportunity has presented itself...
To be clear: nobody here is panicking and neither should you.
5 years and counting.
Five years ago to the day, near enough, Rob joined Knapton Wright to lead the technical side of our business and shake up and smooth out our operations. He’ll still be doing that, but mainly while we’re asleep or just waking up. Karratha, where he’s going to be based, is GMT+7 and doesn’t have daylight saving hours, so there’ll be a few hours’ crossover each day, allowing the team to catch up and hand over our 24-hour operation.
On a practical front, although Rob is our technical lead, we have Amias (junior web developer), Katie (digital marketing exec) and Emily (digital marketing apprentice) in the UK to handle anything urgent on blighty time, all three of whom have been moulded by Rob over the past 1-3 years, so they know their stuff. We also have a fantastic group of technical and creative partners we can lean on for anything that can’t wait for Rob to come back online.
Change isn’t always easy but it also doesn’t have to be hard by default.
The past couple of months have been a challenge as we make sure everything is ready for him to be here but not physically here (he’s moving, he hasn’t passed away) but it has given us the opportunity to take a really close look at the business and the way we do things, which has actually been fun, in some ways. Given that Rob has been planning how to get his family from Northern Lincolnshire to Western Australia, I think we’ve done a really good job of keeping the agency moving forward, delighting clients while wading through HR and tax conversations.
What does this mean for Knapton Wright, for our clients and partners?
You’ll see less of Rob in person unless you’re anywhere near Perth, in which case look him up, but other than that, nothing will change. For me and the team, it means we lose the energy he brings to the office, so they’re stuck with just me (sorry folks), but we retain his knowledge, his technical acumen and his passion for sharing this with us all.
You’ll have the same awesome team (I’m biased, obviously, but they are pretty good) doing awesome work, but rather than having one of us out in Australia, there’ll now be two - that’s right, for those of you who don’t know, our creative development manager, Tim, moved out to Melbourne in October 2023 and has been successfully running the night shift since then. This piece was nearly “Hey look, we’re opening an office in Australia!” but if you know us or me well, you’ll know we don’t do attention-seeking nonsense like that. Rob and Tim will both be working from co-working spaces out there, 2,750 miles apart, we aren’t setting up an Australian division or anything grand like that, not until I’ve been out there to properly check it out, anyway!
A decade of hybrid working.
From day one of the agency’s life some ten years ago, when it was really just a consultancy, we’ve worked in a hybrid way, enabling people to work where they feel most productive and comfortable. Fortunately, or perhaps because of the culture we’ve created, everyone has felt that being in the office for at least three days a week has made them productive and comfortable. The Pandemic Years (™) meant that most businesses adapted to that way of working, of course, which has been helpful for us as it means most clients are happy with video calls as an option when face-to-face doesn’t make temporal, environmental or financial sense. You’ll still see him and he’ll see you. He may well be sporting a cork hat and a singlet and bear the scars of having wrestled a koala, but he’ll be there for you and for us.
fostering an inspiring, modern culture.
Louise and I set up this agency to not only do great work with great businesses but also to provide an environment of positive challenge, to give people the opportunity to work in a way that suits them (and the agency and its clients!) and to bring together smart, fun, creative minds. The fact that Rob (and previously Tim) has been able to take the opportunity of a lifetime to move to Australia and still wants to be part of the agency is hugely flattering, and quite a relief, if I’m honest!
The core team will still occupy our creative corner of Caistor. We will still be working with brands that put the planet first. And we will still love doing that. We’ll just have to make do with a papier-mache model of Rob. Perhaps in the future AI will kick in and we’ll have a Rob-ot, but until then we’ll have our Australian outpost and enjoy following his journey out there.
