Bob Macdonald
The pandemic taught the world life-changing lessons we won’t soon forget. As I reflect on the past 20 months, I think of two memorable realizations of many I had as the crisis unfolded and evolved.
On the positive side, the biggest aha for me was how extraordinarily adaptable human beings are. Although everyone has felt a tremendous amount of stress in their lives, it’s been remarkable to see how quickly people adjust and make accommodations to new circumstances. While clearly there is really no good time for a pandemic, the timing was lucky in one way, given the proliferation of virtual workplace tools that enabled us to adapt so quickly. I can’t imagine businesses on a mass scale trying to figure out how to work remotely a decade ago.
Our Unique Culture
The big challenge I realized upon reflection is that while our strong culture at Bond is people-centric, it was also very in-person-centric. Frankly, that has been difficult to replicate over the past 20 months of working from home, even though I’m grateful for the aforementioned technology. We have innovated our ways of fostering our culture in this environment, from our diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives to evolving the employee experience with new tools, training, and onboarding for our hybrid world; to our Bond Women’s Network, which recently held a new speed-networking event. Through our focus on innovation and things like our spirit committee, coffee chats and monthly all-employee meetings, we will continue to implement new ideas and initiatives for our virtual culture, while providing new opportunities for those in-person moments that I believe are still important.
When I look back, I’ve got a much greater respect for those brief conversations that would happen when people left a meeting or bumped into a colleague in the hallway. Pre-pandemic, I remember thinking these accidental collisions were perhaps inefficient and easily lost. Now, I believe if the organization is doing a lot of other things right, accidental 
collisions are the difference-maker. They are critical to the way an organization functions. And so, as a growing global business where some of our people will work out of other locations or remotely indefinitely, we’re again looking for innovations in finding new opportunities for people to “collide” in other places, whether it’s the lobby of a client’s office, a coffee shop, an airport, or in our own offices.
While the pandemic isn’t the first crisis we have weathered, Bond has demonstrated resilience beyond what I could have imagined two years ago. There are so many things I’m proud of, starting with the amazing people I get to work with every day. In the face of extraordinary circumstances, our people remained focused on solving our clients’ complex challenges and I’m grateful for their dedication.
Continued Growth
I’m also proud of the fact that our business has grown dramatically in the past 20 months, as we welcomed a number of new clients and experienced significant organic growth with existing clients across North America and globally. Our clients well understand that it’s never been more important—or more challenging—for businesses to truly know their customers and deliver exceptional experiences. As such, they’re turning to Bond to help them know their customers on a massive scale, by understanding the data, science and art relating to their customer base, enabling growth.
To support this growth on behalf of our clients, Bond has created 200+ new roles since March 2020, which represents significant growth in a challenging marketplace. The roles span the organization in areas such as consulting, analytics, digital engineering, digital experience design, and more. At the same time, we weren’t immune to the retention challenges that were well documented in the media. Fortunately, we were able to fill these positions with great, talented people who are contributing to our success.
We are committed to being a better, stronger company—for our clients and our employees. Going forward, we will continue our evolution and focus on customer-centricity with acquisitions of other companies and investments in our people, technology, data, and offerings. We have successfully adjusted to new norms created by the pandemic and will continue to adapt and innovate to meet our clients’ growth needs.
The Power of Purpose
Ultimately, we exist as an organization to connect brands to people and deliver on the promise of our client’s purpose—and finding purpose is becoming a renewed focus for many. As human beings continue to go through a collective existential crisis during this pandemic, questioning what they’re doing and why they’re doing it, and where they live, brands too are asking the hard questions. Why are we in this? What’s our purpose? Would the world miss us if we didn’t exist anymore? As this momentum continues, I think this will create huge opportunities for businesses at a time when many consumers, and employees, are looking to support those that make a positive impact in the world.
Looking ahead, there is still much uncertainty with the pandemic, and the light at the end of the tunnel is flickering as we head into yet another wave. In 2022, businesses must continue to adapt and evolve, as we have done throughout the many challenges of the crisis. I think our ability to do so remains strong, as we continue to find ways to connect and grow in an unpredictable world.
Speaking to our people at Bond, after a couple of employee outreach trips to Ecuador and Kenya, I’ve often quoted the African proverb: “If you want to go fast, go alone; if you want to go far, go together." When times are bad, the only way we can accomplish great things is together. While we won’t know what the future holds, we have the chance to deepen our human connections, as those bonds are what matter most.
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