Building Purpose and Depth Through a Manifesto
“Anything you wanna do for next year regarding YL and work?”
We were having sushi at a standing bar near our office at Nagatacho around this time in December last year when we started reflecting on the year that passed and the year that was just about to begin. I had just started working at YL about 3 months prior, but have had enough time to settle into the work and the group environment. As the latest addition to the crew I was tasked to take a look at the website renewal of the company and see if there was anything to add that was overlooked.
Biting down a piece of fatty tuna nigiri, one thing instantly popped into my mind.
“I think it would be interesting to create a manifesto for YL”
Knowing the co-founders from before and being familiar with what kind of agency YL was, I had the outside point-of-view as well as becoming familiarised with its insides. Being a bilingual creative agency in a monolithic culture such as Japan is a rare thing, as you can find yourself being torn by different sides of work ethics and ways of communication. As a foreigner living in Japan I have learned to adapt to the differences of high context (Japan) and low context (Sweden) culture and how it looks in daily working life. In Sweden, you will tell a person directly what you expect from them, but in Japan, you are expected to read between the lines or sometimes just tell them by ‘nuance’. When you have different people of different backgrounds working together, you have not only a more vast view of the world and its many cultures but also a powerful team that can think differently and be more open-minded than others. By owning your uniqueness, you can grow further and find like-minded people that share your values. In order to do this, we needed to dig even deeper into what makes YL, YL.
What do we believe in? What do we stand for? What visions do we have for the future?
Questions like this and an HR-related questionnaire about what kind of work environment we want to create together were made and discussed among the team over a couple of months. We began creating a vision board on Miro, allowing team members to add anonymous answers to each question pillar. Not only asking questions about how they view and feel about YL, but also what things we would like to explore or try out but have yet to express.
After collecting all the responses we started to categorise the answers into two pillars, ‘external’ (aimed for client) and ‘internal’ (aimed for ourselves) made out of our different set of values and beliefs. Slowly we had come to an understanding what was important to us as individuals as well as to YL.
Naturally, some questions gave similar answers, some completely different, and some were fresh new information. The challenge was balancing the various opinions to make both the team and the company happy. In our case, we were already quite aligned in core values regarding work ethics, although perhaps lacking in thorough communication with context. Also, having members in different countries emphasizes the importance of these internal conversations as it becomes even more difficult to communicate on different time zones. Even if it is not directly a part of the final written internal manifesto, it is something we discovered along the way and found we could further improve.
By checking in among ourselves like this, we were able to see our work styles from each other’s point of view, learn what we can work on, and how to support each other better. At its core, if we don’t feel like we’re part of something meaningful or our efforts aren’t recognized and valued, it becomes challenging to find the motivation to truly immerse ourselves in creativity and fight for it.
Based on the post-its and team feedback, our CEO/Creative Director Yoichiro selected the 10 key points and created the manifesto.
Below comments from Yoichiro:
Our manifesto starts with the “Spirit of Oceans 11,” inspired by the keyword “collaboration” that came up in our internal workshop. The word “Projects” in our company name reflects the idea of bringing together professionals from different fields to work as a team and achieve something bigger.
Think of it like Oceans 11, not Fast & Furious. Each person has the skills to work on their own, but by collaborating, we can take on bigger projects. This spirit is shared in both Oceans 11 and Oceans 8, where people with different strengths come together to reach a common goal.
The second principle, “Be confident in our value; only YL can create it,” highlights YL’s greatest strength: diversity. We’re a team of people from all over the world, and the best creative ideas come when we mix different perspectives and experiences. That’s why the value we create at YL is unique, and we deserve fair compensation for it. This compensation should then be reinvested into new challenges and growth.
The third principle, “Don’t sell unnecessary services; provide what the client truly needs,” focuses on delivering real value to our clients, even though fair compensation is important. This one comes from my own experience. Our business relies on collaborators and clients who believe in us.
We built our manifesto around the core idea of creating an Oceans 11-style team. Everyone brought something valuable to the table, and that made it possible to create something meaningful.
For YL, creating a manifesto was a way to delve deeper into what makes the agency unique — a bilingual creative space bridging work ethics and diverse experiences. Ultimately, a well-crafted manifesto is a declaration of identity and purpose, uniting teams under shared goals while allowing space for individuality to shine.
Looking back at what we wrote earlier this year (nostalgia already kicking in), I am reminded of how important it is to maintain focus on the things we wrote on those small digital post-its. They represent the closest thing to our core: our moral beliefs, our happiness, and our ambition for the future. Like most things, it is not created and then checked off a list as being “done”; it is a springboard to be further developed as we go forward and grow as an agency, reaching one inch higher than before.
Written by Nathalie Cantacuzino
