Arnold Ziffel, Personality & Digital Success

Arnold Ziffel was more than just a pig, as the star of Green Acres in the late 60’s and early 70’s, he showed that his human-like abilities and lifestyle meant he became a much love member of the Douglas family. His talents defied logic, yet his personality made him something meaningful in the Hooterville universe - his legendary status was even reinforced in the 1994 cult classic Pulp Fiction. So why was Arnold Ziffel so damn popular? Because that talented little guy was charming and had a great personality, as Samuel L. Jackson’s character Jules in Pulp Fiction eloquently puts it, "personality goes a long way".

And what does a talented pig on telly with a charming personality have to do with the success of your digital efforts? According to global learning institute Hyper Island, 78%* of respondents identified personality as the most desirable skill in a colleague. Personality can be tough to define and there have been countless attempts to do so, we like to think that personality is the driver for how we act, which in turn, impacts on how we interact with others and create relationships.

While we cannot broadly apply a personality label on anyone working on a project, at Switch we always aim for a balance of conscientiousness, openness, agreeableness with a touch of extraversion - mixed with a good sense of humour, we find that the combination of those traits enables us to find the common ground on challenges within projects and to come up with creative solutions.

This is crucial at the requirements gathering phase of projects, as we align the resource within our business that are best suited to deliver the most successful outcome for our customers, this has resulted in many benefits during project development, post launch throughout SLA and onto future roadmap planning. Common outcomes that we have achieved with customers include:

• Broader Team Diversity
• Better Objective Alignment
• Creative Problem Solving
• Greater Motivation
• Project Self Awareness
• Stronger Communication

This has helped us to deliver high quality and successful projects for our customers and build a reputation as a trusted partner. For teams on both sides, this has meant that we can :

• Identify & Resolve Challenges Early
• Build Trust
• Share Knowledge
• Align Expectations
• Achieve Transparency
• Enjoy Flexibility
• and Strengthen Relationships

Personality is essential in enabling digital teams to be motivated to succeed, whilst delivering an innovative and high quality result, on-time and to budget. By establishing the best solution quickly, we can ensure that regardless of how people like to work or the challenges that arise, we can accommodate it. In doing so, we’ve been able to transform awesome ideas into digital success and great experiences for customers.

So how do you inject your personality into projects and enable your team for digital success? We recommend trying the following :

• Empower Your Team
• Be Solutions Driven
• Embrace Failure & Learn
• Acknowledge that People Make Projects Happen
• Value All Opinions
• Allow Team Members to be Challenged
• Be Yourself

The very essence of how we work with customers is based on these factors and more, which means that there are many tangible benefits for a project. Achieving digital success extends well past technical capability into how we work together with customer to get the right outcome, regardless of the challenges.

Ultimately it’s the personalities involved in the project help create the relationships that will result in the best outcomes.

— Steve Nelson