Q: What’s an effective way to engage employees of different departments with each other and promote communication?

A: WONGDOODY, a LA-based marketing, interactive, and branding agency has the slogan, “The Democracy of Ideas.” At WONGDOODY, one of the ways they practice the democratization of ideas is through their practice of dialogue and listening. WONGDOODY encourages staff members to engage with each other in ways that are meaningful both personally and professionally.

For example, employees recently organized a research-oriented “Field Trip” — an afternoon where the entire office went out in the field to gather new consumer and marketing insights in order to inspire interpersonal communication and better inform their client work. Staff members were divided into teams and each team consisted of employees from various areas of the agency, in order to strengthed communication between different department groups.

CEO Ben Wiener explains, “WONGDOODY’s business is all about adding value for our clients through great ideas. The more people we have focused on generating, evaluating and improving ideas, the more value we can add. If we want to be smarter and better than the typical advertising agency, we need to take ideation out of a single department and make it everyone’s job.”

To learn more about WONGDOODY and their democratic practices, click here.