Admire the image above, the mighty little ant holding up the goliath leaf. The image shows the familiar characteristics of the Leafcutter Ant; strong, dependable, organised. Appropriately a similar picture is found on the ‘Who We Are’ page on the website and is important because what this ant represents is the seed that forms the integral part of the Leafcutter story.
The Idea & Our Purpose
The Leafcutter Creative Agency was founded on an idea. The idea that we could do more as a group, a group who are focused on creating real value through digital technology by leveraging it to powerful effect.
We have proved that by leveraging our passion and knowledge of digital technology, whilst being able to craft it through clever design and in depth strategic decision making, we can drive cost and time savings for businesses both at home in Australia and abroad.
Some examples of where our works have provided powerful outcomes for our clients needs are; marketing, service delivery, process efficiencies, customer engagement, internal process efficiencies, fundraising and other priorities that drive either money or time savings across a business.
The Characteristics of Leafcutter
Underpinning our idea and purpose are the characteristics of the Leafcutter ant. Strange as it may seem for us to say we emulate qualities we see in ants, let me illustrate a few examples that may shed further light as to why we are named Leafcutter.
Organisation
This is the key. Any smooth operation is extremely well organised. Think of a Formula 1 car when it pulls into the pits for a change of tyres and top up of fuel. The machine is so finely tuned because each expert engineer understands his or her section of the car better than anyone. They are able to get a car in and out of the pit lane with added fuel, new wheels and any other minor details that need to be addressed within a matter of seconds. This wouldn’t be possible without exceptional organisation and attention to detail. Leafcutter ants are much the same.
Each ant is highly specialised (effectively an expert) at its role. The power of a colony working together in a highly organised and planned manner enables seemingly insignificant creatures to accomplish incredible feats and overcome unbelievable hurdles. These ants create highly intricate and intelligent homes with a complex grid of chambers designed for specific purposes e.g. raising young, accumulating food, disposing of waste and more. Bringing the focus back to our team, being organised means having highly robust and efficient systems and processes in place that have proven themselves over time. It means team members understanding in minute detail the activities that have to happen at each stage of the process.
The Leafcutter team hard at work in our Sydney office.
It means documenting our processes and using best-in-class systems as the foundation of our operation, tools like Google Apps for our file storing, emails, calendars or tools like Wrike and slack which we use to keep track of our projects progress and to communicate with our own team members internally.
Teamwork & Cooperation
When Leafcutter ants act as a colony, whether it be relocating home (ants nests) or searching for food for example, the individual ants combine to become a super organism. A colony of Leafcutter ants is made up of an array of specialised ants. For example, soldier ants designed to guard the ants nest in case of an attack, hunters who seek out food for the colony, carers who look after the queen ants eggs and more. Each ant forms a piece of the larger puzzle and when each highly specialised ant pulls together towards the same outcomes, they achieve astonishing results in even more astonishing timeframes.
This ‘stronger as a team’ mentality that Leafcutter the digital agency lives and breathes day in and day out allows us to deliver high quality, result focussed outcomes for our clients in very reasonable timeframes. It is the bringing together of each of our team members specialised skills and expertise (UX, Design, Data Analysis, Development) that results in best of breed outcomes for our clients.
Focus on Outcomes
Leafcutter ants as mentioned are highly focussed and purposeful creatures. Their work ethic is immense and when they decide on an outcome, they achieve it. The same holds true for our team who dedicate their skills and expertise every day to understanding and delivering outcomes for our clients. It is this commitment and demonstrated expertise that makes us more than just a digital agency. We are deliverers of outcomes and results. The work we produce is but a means to an end, the outcomes are where it counts. Without performance, an investment yields little tangible return.
Versatility and Adaptability
Leafcutter ants are highly adaptive and versatile creatures. This is important because nature can be a highly unpredictable force for which creatures need to be ready for at all times. A rainforest flood can have dramatic effects on the homes of Leafcutter ants. Ants have demonstrated their adaptability by being around for many thousands of years, over the course of which they have beat the odds through their ability to adapt to the challenges and opportunities they faced. In our agency and for our team, this translates to being able to effectively tailor our processes to accommodate client needs – launch dates for example.
It means scaling our operation effectively and reliably to take on both simple client project requirements as well as highly complex ones. Most of all, it means staying on the pulse of digital technology and making sure our team and skills represent the highest quality, most cutting edge and useful technologies available for businesses today and in the future.
Getting the Job Done
Leafcutter ants are finely tuned creatures thanks to many years of evolution. So much so that they are laser focused in their lives and the role they play as part of the broader colony (team) structure. Ants will find their way around, over or through anything. When they are on a mission (and they mostly always are), they get the job done. This is a hugely important cultural and community mentality to have for our team. It is this proactive mentality that sees our team find a way around the most complex of scenarios time and time again. We know why Leafcutter exists and we are passionate about getting the job done, on time, on budget and most of all, do it whilst exceeding expectations.
Members of the Leafcutter team networking with the Christo Hall, founder of Basic Bananas.
Pretty amazing how much an ant can inspire – wouldn’t you agree? Indeed, nature holds many impressive secrets that with careful observation and critical thinking, we can uncover and apply to our own lives and businesses.
So there you have it. 5 years from our inception, the founding principles of our business are intact more than ever and this is largely thanks to the strength epitomised in each of the characteristics of the Leafcutter ant.
Our Role, Creating Value Through Technology
But what does all the above actually mean for the people and businesses (clients) who chose our team to bring their ideas and visions to life through digital technology?
Well each ingrained characteristic plays its part in ensuring that we can, as a team, deliver value based outcomes to our clients.
For instance:
- Confidence – our level of organisation and the detail within our processes, which has proven itself time and time again on each of our projects, instils our clients with confidence in our team’s ability to manage and deliver the required outcomes without any major unforeseen issues. Being organised goes a long way to mitigating risks and every client wants the least amount of uncertainty and risk possible – don’t you?
- Results – our focus on understanding our clients objectives and how they tie back to their KPI’s and the strategic objectives of their businesses ensures we can uncover the outcomes our clients aim to achieve via their investment in our services. This in turn puts our team in the best position possible to deliver solutions for our clients that achieve their objectives.
- Clarity & Understanding – our teamwork spirit coupled with our dedication to client service and communication ensures our clients are able to follow along on projects that are quite often, highly technical in nature – thereby ensuring clarity and understanding from our clients point of view. Educating our clients and ensuring they are clear and aware of what we are doing as well as why we are doing it is important to us and is part of our team’s DNA. This has proven itself time and time again as a much appreciated value add amongst our clients.
- Consistency & Reliability – our investments in always improving our processes provides our clients with both consistency of end deliverables and reliability that the outcomes will be delivered to the agreed plan. Knowing this puts our clients at ease through the understanding that no matter who in our team produces the final product, the quality expected from our work and our commitment to outcomes delivery reins true each and every time. Rest easy knowing what you expect to get in return, isn’t that what all buyers of digital products and services want?
Looking Forward
So what does the future look like for Leafcutter? As we grow, the importance of our values and character traits continue to grow with us. As our team expands and welcomes more and more highly intelligent, passionate, experienced, committed and knowledgeable team members, the roots of Leafcutter’s foundation need to dig deeper, and hold stronger in order to keep our finely tuned machine running on all cylinders. Think of a building – the taller you want to build it, the deeper and stronger your foundations must be.
Working with the great people from the RSPCA.
Our foundation values and characteristics are the basis for performance in our team. They ensure that all members of our team are performers who bring the utmost value to Leafcutter and to the clients who work with us to bring their ideas to life through digital technology.
From a technology and project angle, we continue to make the move into increasingly innovative and pioneering territory, as our reputation as solutions strengthens over the years. Clients are approaching us with ever more exciting ideas that in turn are often highly challenging to bring to life and require top calibre experts to deliver on. At the end of the day, it’s all part of our passion for digital.
We have big plans for 2016 and 2017 and we welcome all those reading this post to be part of the Leafcutter journey and story – let’s make history! Or at the very least, let’s create fantastic, technology-driven results.
