You can have these dreams about a cool design agency, but in the end, you have to treat it like a business. But if you treat it too much like a business, it becomes something else, something you might not agree with.
This blog post is about purpose, strategy and vision. Three highly conceptual topics. I believe this post might not be everyone’s cup of tea, but linking it to the right persons will help me on my journey.
Purpose
I was asked this question this week in a survey:

What is the purpose of your firm? Please rate with:
- 0 as a minimum: Maximising shareholder value is the main driving force when making business decisions.
- Middle: When making business decisions we carefully balance financial, social and/or environmental objectives including the interests of our stakeholders.
- 7 as a maximum: Our company is deeply committed to both positive social and/or environmental outcomes. Purpose shapes our core value proposition and is a top priority of the company’s leadership.
When I answered, I put Obra squarely in the middle.
I had lots of thoughts lately about someone who made a statement that an agency is essentially a margin business; someone works for you, and then you take a margin on their wage/a cut on their freelance rate, and that’s it.
This comes with lots of philosophical questions; obviously my agency is providing employment for myself. It is providing employment for others (currently 3 freelancers & growing)
Obviously we have to make profit to exist.
But that’s not all there is to it.
- You want to work on projects you ethically agree with.
- You want to provide quality work that you are proud of. If my work was a dumpster fire but I got paid handsomely for it, I wouldn’t be happy.
- You want to grow as a person & team
- You want to build a team; there’s a social aspect to the job.
So within the range of “maximizing shareholder value” and “fully purpose-driven”?
Let’s find a good middle ground. Maybe shift it a bit more to purpose-driven if we have enough stability/money and thus the luxury to do so. Then another question that made me think:
Strategy

To what extent is your company planning the strategy? Please rate with:
- 0 as a minimum: We have some idea about the strategic direction, though there is no clear strategic plan.
- Middle: We have a strategic plan, but we did not carefully generate alternative strategies to determine this plan.
- 7 as a maximum: We have clearly determined the firm’s long-term strategic plan and generated and evaluated alternative strategies before we determined this plan.
For this one, once again I put Obra straight in the middle.
But to be honest, it should probably have been 1 or 2: “We have some idea about the strategic direction, though there is no clear strategic plan.”
I determined strategy and planning are 2 entirely different activities (thanks to this helpful video); then put my own spin on it.
So these things are separated: a strategy comes from identifying a market opportunity, then checking if your company can do it better, faster or cheaper, by applying tactics. These tactics lead to activities.

These activities can eventually be planned. So in a way, there is a thing as “strategic planning”, but how you get to it is not by starting with the planning.
So for example, a market opportunity I determined is doing something with the rise of LLMs that can basically generate entire front-ends now. Combining this with earlier vast experience in HTML prototyping and design skills as a team it leads to an opportunity to do something unique (see; slides on LinkedIn).
Such a market opportunity can be mapped on a strategy board. But then the actual activities to get there (make the slide deck, present the deck, determine the workflow, create project templates etc.) are a different process.
Like the referenced videoa above states, too often these things get conflated.

Vision
Another thing I was triggered by this week is this checklist in the intro of the book Traction.
Specifically I was triggered by the first five points in the “Organizational checkup”:
- We have a clear vision in writing that has been properly communicated and is shared by everyone in the company.
- Our core values are clear, and we are hiring, reviewing, rewarding, and firing around them.
- Our Core Focus™ (core business) is clear, and we keep our people, systems and processes aligned and focused on it.
- Our 10-Year Target™ (big, long-range business goal) is clear, communicated regularly, and is shared by all.
- Our target market (definition of our ideal customer) is clear, and all of our marketing and sales efforts are focused on it.

Do we really have a clear vision, in writing? Currently, we work with 3 freelancers, so it’s not that important to go all vision on them. But as we will progress towards having more business partners, payroll employees, more collaborators etc. this will become increasingly important.
The book Traction was written specifically for a company that’s doing semi-well, 2M revenue with 10 people (in US market), but that’s kind of stuck where they are. The author argues that with their plan they have basically led these kinds of companies on a growth pad to unlock a better business.
I find most business books to be summarizable in a few key sentences. One book that helped me a few months ago was the eMyth – it’s also referenced in this book. Another one I need to look into is profit first.
When it comes to vision, with Mono our goal was to become a reference in UI design in Belgium, building high quality designs to serve our clients.
High quality is very specific; how do you even determine quality? (Dear reader, this question would lead us to far, but I certainly want to give this topic a go later ;))
A reference is in the eye of the beholder: who are you a reference to? Do you seek the respect of peers? What is “recognition” anyway?
Obra Studio is in many ways a continuation of what we did with Mono, but I feel like this time around, I need to work more on the business instead of in the business.
The core logic of wanting to do quality work stays.
But there are so many new factors around this time, from AI to me living in Mexico to how the UX market is evolving (in weird ways). I guess the challenge is to keep chipping away at the problems, tackle them, and build the business.
If this blog post vibes with you in any way, feel free to e-mail me: johan@obra.studio . I removed the business partner listing from the website but I am still looking to collaborate with the right people to make this happen.