Empathy as a Vehicle for Cultural and Client Success
Since 1998, Jump Associates, a strategy consulting firm, has helped its clients create the new products and services that spark business growth. Their people live and breathe innovation, having seen success in creating new businesses and reinventing existing ones, remaining ever sensitive to what's next.
It's no surprise, then, that the workplace, culture and practices within Jump helped establish it as a Top Small Workplace in 2008. Keeping a pulse on their people and finding new ways to address the needs of their clients is tied to an innate sense of empathy which, as Jump's founder and principal, Dev Patnaik explained, is at the very core of each of us. For Jump, fostering the ability to understand each other has led to some very effective business practices, many of which will likely help other firms to navigate these trying times.
Jump is known for conceiving new products, connecting to new customers, predicting new markets and helping brands leverage the qualities that make them most effective. And Patnaik has been there from the beginning, having built the company with four other partners in 1998. "We started five minutes away from the dot-com crash," he recalls, "which added some uncertainty."
Uncertainty is once again at play – not so much at Jump as in the climate of doing business with their various stakeholders. While many small and especially large firms – several of which are Jump clients – are looking at their balance sheets to see what can be eliminated from an operational standpoint, Patnaik has led his business the last few years by looking at how it can make the most from its current resources. This especially includes his people.
He has nurtured his associates and Jump's culture so that everyone works off their innate ability to reach outside themselves and connect with others to realize great things.
"I've been passionate about this idea of empathy for a long time," Patnaik says. "It's been sitting right in front of my face for years."
He's been so consumed by the power of empathy, in fact, that his thoughts on this became, with the help of his Communications Lead at Jump, Pete Mortensen, a forthcoming book called Wired to Care. The book provides shining examples of businesses that have fostered open and organic relations with their employees, clients and greater community, and achieved great things as a result.
"Empathy in business is having a shared, intuitive understanding of how your decisions affect other people," says Project Lead and Senior Associate Conrad Wai. "It's about seeing the people around you not as users, consumers, conquest sales, FTEs, head count, or employees, but as fellow human beings. Really caring about these people helps determine the right thing to do."
This gut-level awareness and concern for both client and coworker, Patnaik argues, has helped Jump develop a sense of clarity and mission and reinforce good communication. The work at Jump is done in teams and workplace culture is distinctly front and center. As Senior Associate and Project Lead Isabel O'Meara explains, "It is a strong culture that will click with some and not with others. Therefore, hiring is tricky."
Most employees come to Jump through their "Externship" program, a four-month engagement to work on a project alongside others and trial period of sorts for all parties involved. Patnaik says they're looking for lifelong learners, and try to emphasize that in the program.
Beyond this, the Jump "On-Ramp" serves as a comprehensive integration program for new hires, which Patnaik describes as a constant work in progress. Complete with a master's-level course in design and company-wide reading list, the program is often led by relatively new hires, and Patnaik makes it a point to go out to lunch with employees after their first month to see how things might be improved.
"In a consulting and professional service firm, who's on which project matters a whole lot," he says. Although he has been able to pass along much of the day-to-day management tasks, he admits staffing was one of the last items which he could let go. "We're fairly insidious in how we get the right folks in the right seats," he adds.
In fact, at Jump the seating arrangement is a distinctive mark of their culture. "I'll be honest. This is one of those, 'If you really don't like X, you probably won't enjoy working here' things," admits Wai. The previous Jump office was one large, open space. But with growth in recent years having necessitated a move to their fourth location, Patnaik says they have a better sense of which processes and environments work for them, and some of these elements have become more fixed in the architecture itself.
The design is meant to be highly flexible, and is based on internal social networks –producing a collection of "neighborhoods" – where work is kept collaborative, dynamic and stimulating. There are places designed for solo, group and pair work, including their "Zen Room" and O'Meara's current favorite, the train-car café.
"Rarely do people work only at their desk," she says.
"We're asking people to be creative and collaborative," says Patnaik. "We've designed a space that's supposed to look right and beautiful when it's messy, when you're surrounded by all the information that you're working on." Far from being a business where people keep their efforts confined to their work station or laptops, the very walls of Jump seem to be alive with the people and projects currently thriving within their space.
Jump's success lies in precisely this passionate, opened-up and empathic approach. As Wai puts it, "We don't have a foosball table like some offices and we don't have free meals like others, but we do try our collective best to maintain a ruthless commitment to each other, our clients, and the world."
Company: Jump Associates, LLC
Web site: www.jumpassociates.com
Industry: Consulting
Location: San Mateo, CA
Number of Employees: 50
