A fairly familiar diagram hangs on the wall in Matt Jarvis’ shared office. It’s a copy of legendary basketball coach John Wooden’s Pyramid of Success, building on traits from cooperation to initiative to team spirit to competitive greatness.
But the picture hanging next to it at 72andSunny isn’t so common.
It’s a cover of “The Onion” with the headline “Holy shit, man walks on [expletive] moon.” Jarvis, partner and managing director at the Los Angeles-based advertising agency, laughs as he explains how the lampoon newspaper serves as a reminder not to be uptight.
“Obviously, to be successful, you have to be very engaged and take things seriously,” Jarvis says. “But things don’t always go your way, and there are bumps in the road, and how you handle those is a mark of a leader.”
With a hybrid leadership style that seems to echo those decorations, Jarvis handles bumps by balancing a serious strategy with a more modern, laid-back approach. For example, the 72andSunny website identifies him as chief strategy officer, which you’d think would warrant him an office of his own — or at least his own desk.
Not at this L.A. agency.
Jarvis shares the company’s only office — and the table in it — with the other partners: John Boiler and Glenn Cole, as well as Robert Nakata when he’s visiting from the Amsterdam location. That sets the stage for the other 103 employees to work together flexibly without sacrificing solid strategy.
“Our entire organization is based upon the premise that people — particularly in modern culture — are hybrids,” Jarvis says. “They are fluent in multiple things, not just one thing. A disease of our industry has been to pigeonhole people into one narrow function that’s really relying on only a small percentage of their skill sets, not really getting the most out of the people.”
By encouraging collaboration in an open environment where strategic initiative sets the pace, Jarvis gets more from his employees and better results from their projects.
