A 1991 Chrysler LeBaron convertible coupe in good condition, sold on the street, is valued at about $1,100 by Kelley Blue Book. In stark contrast, a 1991 Mercedes-Benz 500SL convertible coupe in good condition, with similar mileage, is valued at about $5,000.
I drove a Chrysler LeBaron for a bit (I borrowed it from my great-grandmother). While I’ve never driven a Mercedes 500SL, based on my generally underwhelming experience driving my grandmother’s car (and possibly as some sort of subconscious response to the covert laughs my high-school friends had at my expense every time I drove Grandma’s car into the high school parking lot), I’d go for the Mercedes any day if I had to choose.
The catch, of course, is the relatively steep price. The Mercedes, even today (some 20 years after the two cars were manufactured) will cost you five times the value of the LeBaron. Some creative entrepreneur, though, came up with a way for car owners to “have the Mercedes experience at the LeBaron price”. They created a body kit (replete with those distinctive blocky Mercedes taillights and star emblem) that can turn a ’91 LeBaron into a Mercedes 500SL.
Well, mostly. Actually, it really only makes your LeBaron look kinda like a Mercedes. I saw one recently, and my first thought was, “there’s something strange about that Mercedes.” My next thought: “that’s something masquerading as a Mercedes.” It struck me that dressing up a LeBaron as a Mercedes isn’t all that different from a lot of management literature that I read. Consultants, writers, thinkers and academics alike spend a lot of energy trying to devise ways to improve management and organizations—an admirable quest (and a goal I share). But so much of what I read is tantamount to wrapping Mercedes-shaped body panels around a LeBaron and calling it a “high-performance, luxury vehicle”.
A "Merbaron Benz"
Much of what I read wraps creative ideas around the same old management philosophies that have served as the foundation of our organizations for over a century. All you really end up with, though, is marginally improved business as usual; incremental improvements that don’t really tackle the fundamentals underlying the way we see management and organizations.
The real thing--a 1991 Mercedes-Benz 500SL
Unfortunately, I think that we who are leaders in organizations have been far more receptive to this model of improving management than luxury car buyers were of the “Merbaron-Benz”. Many companies now refer to their employees as “team members”, and their managers as “team leaders”—a positive step, to be sure. But they stop far short of addressing the fundamental philosophy; very few companies have gone so far as to say, “authority should flow from the bottom up; let’s let the true leader emerge by choice of the ‘team members’.” Many organizations have acknowledged that “worker empowerment” will positively impact their organizations, and so they “empower” their employees to provide input to their managers—who ultimately make the final decision. Again, a great thing; but almost nobody has flipped the underlying philosophy on its head and said, “let’s truly empower employees; let’s build a mechanism by which employees can ‘veto’ their managers.”
The potential for improvement is enormous, but we’re conditioned to management systems that are built on a foundational philosophy that Frederick Winslow Taylor characterized vividly before Congress in 1912 when he referred to:
“the man who is…physically able to handle pig-iron and is sufficiently phlegmatic and stupid to choose this for his occupation is rarely able to comprehend the science of handling pig-iron.”
It’s a sentiment that few of us share, yet our control systems; our arduous processes of getting projects and ideas funded; our rigid methods of defining jobs; our policies of “need-to-know”—they all flow directly from a philosophy that makes the same assumptions about our employees as Taylor made.
So here’s the challenge: let’s approach the reinvention of management beginning with our philosophy. Ask yourself: what are my fundamental beliefs about my employees? Are they uncaring automatons, simply out to take advantage of me? Or are they, at heart, passionate, driven, thinking human beings, with a great deal of insight and expertise? If your answer is the latter, then begin with that as your foundation, and ask yourself: what principles will allow that passion, drive and intellect to flourish? What management systems will focus that insight and expertise toward maximizing the value our organization creates?
When we approach the problem as a matter of philosophy, then we’ll begin to truly re-invent management. Until then, we’re simply driving the same old car with high-performance body panels bolted on.
The Canadian
Snowbirds Demonstration Team has been thrilling audiences at
high-performance air shows across North America since 1978. A branch of
the Canadian Air Force, one would think such a group would be rigidly
hierarchical—but it’s not. It’s really quite
self-managed.
One of the joys of working with the Morning Star Self-Management
Institute is scouring the world for examples of self-management in
action. Frequently, we find self-management in unlikely
places.
One question that comes up is: how important is coordination
(a.k.a. teamwork) in a self-managed environment? The answer: it's
everything! A core traditional management function, coordination (or
the lack thereof) among team members can make or break an organization.
Self-management is unlike Peter Drucker’s famous metaphor of organization as
conducted symphony. To continue with the music metaphors, it’s much
more like a cluster of jazz bands roaming around Bourbon Street. The
trick is not to direct them, but just to make sure that each band is
relatively harmonious and doesn’t clash with all the other
bands.
In an organization with multiple geographic locations, one can
speculate about the myriad levels of coordination that have to occur: between
locations, between functions, between businesses, and between domains like
sales, strategy and human resources. Pretty complex, right? Now
imagine an organization of self-managed professionals in an unlikely
organization, creating scores of high-risk public performances for six months
out of every year—where coordination is (and, tragically, has been) literally
a matter of life or death.
A few quick facts about this Canadian icon, the Snowbirds Demonstration
Team:
• The Snowbirds (431 Air Demonstration Squadron) consist of
approximately 88 people based in Moose
Jaw, Saskatchewan, consisting mostly of mechanics and support
staff.
• The team includes 11 pilots, two of whom serve as ground controllers and
nine of whom fly the nine Canadian-built Tutor jets.
• The air show season lasts from May through October, taking the team
throughout North America.
• The jets are circa 1964, making them older than the pilots.
• The team is somewhat low-tech, moving equipment around the continent in a
semi truck and trailer.
• The Snowbirds are eminently accessible: anyone can call up public affairs
officer Captain Marc Velasco and seek information at any
time.
• The pilots fly in tight formations at up to 600 kph/400 mph, are
incredibly athletic, and pull up to 6 G’s during performances. The
first female Snowbird pilot, Maryse
Carmichael, is now the Commanding Officer. There have been six
fatalities over the years. It’s not a job for the
faint-hearted.
• There is a two-foot-square box of vertical space above and below each
Snowbird jet flying in formation. Pilots cannot see above and
below—they must trust their fellow pilots to avoid
catastrophe.
• Snowbird jets fly horizontally about six to eight feet apart, wingtip to
wingtip. This may seem like plenty of room, but not when they’re flying
at four hundred miles per hour.
• Pilots debrief after each show and each practice. There is a lead
pilot in the #1 plane, referred to as the “Boss.” The Boss is not
called the Boss because he or she gets to boss everyone else around.
The title carries with it enhanced decision rights and responsibilities,
accepted by everyone (i.e. whether to fly in particular weather conditions,
etc.). Even a flock of geese flying in formation needs a lead bird to
follow. That is one function of the Boss—to be the #1 lead
bird.
• The team engages in six months of intensive preparation, and includes
more than fifty
different formations and maneuvers.
• Finding new recruits is not a problem: being a Snowbird pilot is
considered one of the most prestigious jobs in the Canadian Air Force.
Making the final selection cutdown is challenging, especially since there are
so many talented pilots available.
• Turnover is deliberate: the Snowbirds intentionally replace one-third of
their nine pilots every year (how would that work in most
organizations?).
Some critical success factors emerge from the Snowbirds
preparation and execution:
• There is an extremely high sense of mission focus. The Snowbirds
represent not only the Canadian Armed Forces, but the entire nation.
As ambassadors for their country, they carry a sharp sense of
responsibility to achieve excellence in every performance.
• The pilots engage in highly effective time-compressed group visualization
before every practice and performance. The exercise allows them to
imprint a vision of a perfect performance in their brains before executing it
in real time—leading to continuous improvement.
• Hierarchy melts on the road, since the Snowbird pilots live out of
suitcases in hotels across North America for six months out of the
year. Yes, there are different military ranks among the pilots.
They become like a family, however, developing trust and
camaraderie.
• Trust is paramount: since pilots can’t see directly above or below their
own planes, there is simply no way to perform without trust.
• Feedback is a constant—visual, cockpit instruments, voice communication,
etc. And every practice and performance is videotaped and
debriefed. The Snowbirds are committed to a relentless pursuit of
perfection. They engage in unemotional, unvarnished critiques of
themselves and each other—again contributing to continuous
improvement.
• The particular role played by each Snowbird pilot (i.e., piloting the #7
plane, for example) is conducted for each show according to a specific
written plan for that show. If a pilot has to break off a formation to
avoid a flock of birds, for example, it’s referred to as a “missed
contract.” Each pilot has an overall mission (i.e., be the #7 pilot),
and a mission for a particular practice or performance (i.e., perform X
maneuvers in Y formations). And all guided by an oath to the Canadian
Armed Forces and the nation. Before a pilot takes off for a
performance, it’s pretty clear what his or her job is at that
moment.
The Snowbirds perform at San Francisco’s Fleet Week on Saturday and Sunday,
October 8 and 9, 2011 https://www.fleetweek.us/index.html.
Check out this video and turn on the sound for a preview of what
to expect when self-managed professionals coordinate like their lives depend on
it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tFl_6O5hFSQ&feature=player_embedded.
SMI-TV Interviews Doug Kirkpatrick, author of Beyond
Empowerment: The Age of the Self-Managed Organization, about his
new book.
My wife and I went to Costco the other day to buy diapers for our
8-month-old daughter. I’m constantly astounded at the variety of baby
products available; it’s a little overwhelming. And diapers are no
exception.
There are “Little Snugglers”, “Little Movers” and “Snug &
Dry” (I always wonder—if I don’t buy the “Snug & Dry” is there no
guarantee that she will remain snug and/or dry?). There’s the leak lock
system, or the snug fit system. There are overnites, little swimmers,
pull-ups, jean diapers (replete with a denim print) and even a new “green”
option—made with hypoallergenic, organic cotton and with a liner made of renewable
materials!
And that’s just a single brand!
My wife is far more decisive than I, and she quickly made her
decision (we didn’t choose the “green” option), and moved to deciding which size
was appropriate for our daughter.
“The size 2,” my wife said, “is for 12-18 pounds; that’s what she
has now, though, and they seem a little tight.”
“So let’s go with the size 3, then,” I said. “They’re good
from 16-28 pounds. She’s 17 pounds now, and if we buy the 2’s, we might
not get through the whole box before she outgrows
them.”
“But there are a lot more diapers in the size 2 box,” she says,
“than the size 3 box—and for the same amount of money.” That’s the
difficult thing about Costco: the size 2 box had approximately 3,100 diapers
in it whereas the size 3 box only had approximately 2,700 (I might be a
little off on those numbers, but you get my point).
We ultimately settled on the box of size 3 diapers, but as we
debated, I scanned the area to see what the size range is for diapers.
It appears that you can buy diapers up to a size 6 (which is suitable for
children “over 35 lbs” according to the box).
Something occurred to me and later that night I asked my eight
year-old son if it would bother him if I made him wear diapers. He gave
me a very strange look. “I’m not going to force you to wear them,” I
told him, “I’m just curious. What would you
think?”
“That would be weird, Dad,” he said, “and embarrassing at
school. I don’t need diapers!” He was a little embarrassed, so I
let the topic go, but it seemed that there was an analogy there. You
don’t have to be a parent to recognize that there’s a general expectation
that, at some point, diapers aren’t going to be a necessity any longer.
Forget the diapers, though; from a general developmental standpoint, we (as
parents) recognize that our job is to ensure that our children develop the
skills, talents, knowledge and expertise required to ensure that next year
they aren’t facing the same limitations that they are this
year.
What I mean by that is, as a parent, your life is one long chain
of constantly changing developmental goals for your children. First,
your goal is to get them to smile or coo when you speak unintelligible baby
talk to them. And when they finally do, you begin to teach them to say
“DaDa” or “MaMa”. And then it’s to wave bye-bye or blow kisses, and to
crawl, then to walk. Then it’s to count to ten, recognize their
colors, or to recognize and say “nose” when you point to your
nose.
Soon you’ve moved on to reading and writing, tying their shoes and
riding a two-wheeled bicycle. Then it’s on to addition and subtraction,
multiplication and division, playing the piano (or violin or the flute—or
even golf).
And one measure of our success as parents is the degree to which
we aren’t still working on those early things—the degree to which our children
have mastered something, and moved on to the next logical area of
mastery. We recognize, more than anything, the job of a parent is not a
static job; it changes based upon the development of our children, and
perception of our success is a direct reflection of the degree to which our
children no longer need us to help them in those early areas of
development.
Contrast that with the general role of a manager in a traditional
organization. I don’t bring this up to disparage managers, and I
certainly am not making any generalizations about managers. But there
is something to be said here for the underlying system.
Think about this: great managers aside, the system in which
managers work doesn’t say much for the manager’s subordinates. The
system puts in place pretty rigid methods of oversight—methods that don’t,
systematically, allow much room for the development of those being
overseen. As an example, it’s generally recognized that one role of a
manager is to approve purchases. There’s a rational reason for this;
leaders in companies want to make sure their resources are being used
appropriately (that is, that money isn’t being wasted) and, perhaps more
importantly, that the purchase fits into the strategy or mission of the
enterprise. And, on my first day working in a factory (or hardware
store or appliance store), that system makes a lot of sense. It’s
unlikely I have enough perspective or expertise to be very effective at
making wise purchases that support my organization’s mission past basic
office supplies. And that’s probably true of me on day three, and on
day 10, and perhaps even on day 30. But sooner or later, that’s not
going to be the case any longer. I’m going to learn the organization
and our business; I’m going to implicitly understand our mission, and what’s
required to achieve our mission. Further, I’m going to develop ideas
and concepts that I believe would support us more effectively achieving that
mission.
In fact, for all intents and purposes, my level of knowledge,
insight and expertise is going to rival that of my manager. But the
system doesn’t account for that, does it? Sure, my manager (if she’s a
good manager) might recognize this, and might allow me more latitude (thereby
bending—or breaching—the policies, but to a positive end). But she
might not. The point is that the system itself isn’t designed to assume
that employees develop and grow—and that the managerial systems (like
purchasing oversight) necessary on day one aren’t likely to be necessary as
employees develop.
And what invariably ends up happening is employees end up
frustrated, disenchanted and disengaged—just like my 8-year-old son would
have been had I forced him to start wearing diapers. And, even if you
aren’t interested in engagement or disenchantment, think about this: if the
system itself is structured so that my manager is required to approve
purchases, even when it’s apparent that I have at least as much expertise as
she does, and am equally as committed to the mission as she, aren’t we
wasting human effort? And that’s one small example; when we consider
the compounded effect of a system that demands this type of relationship all
the way up and down the chain of command, the potential costs are
staggering.
I know that I’m presenting hypotheticals and concepts that are a
little theoretical here, and I can hear you, my Eternal Reader, telling me
that you were “a good manager”, and that most of the managers that you
encountered were also good managers—and that may, in fact, be true. But
my quest here isn’t against “bad managers”; it’s against a system that is
inherently flawed. Sure, we can make the flawed system better by hiring
good managers, but that doesn’t seem like a very noble quest—and it’s
certainly not the stuff revolutions are made of.
This is, as always, first and foremost a call to examine the very
philosophies that underlie our organizations. There are inherent flaws
in the system as we know it—flaws that can’t be addressed by simply hiring
better managers. Kids grow up, and our role as a parent changes.
And employees grow; we can’t grow as a company with a managerial system that
assumes they don’t.
Imagine a consequential company with no human bosses, no designated managers, no titles, no hierarchy, no visible structure, and no unilateral authority to fire anyone. Imagine such a company gaining ascendancy in its industry—organized solely around shared principles of freedom and self-management. Imagine a company held together by little more than its principles, mission, processes and a culture of learning and coaching. This is the story of such a company.
Going beyond empowerment means that people have all the power they need to perform effectively from the very moment they join an organization--regardless of the level of responsibility or complexity. They are immune from threats or coercion. They are free to seek any needed resources or relationships on their own initiative. They are free to develop themselves and advance organizational learning. Ultimately, they are responsible for results to themselves, their peers and the organization’s mission.
Beyond Empowerment: The Age of The Self-Managed Organization introduces a very different approach to competition in a global economy. Patents expire. Trade secrets leak. Competitors replicate superior business practices. Systems and talent are fungible. The only source of lofty and sustained competitive advantage is the ability to push beyond empowerment into the demanding yet rewarding frontier of true self-management.
Available in paperback and Kindle at https://amzn.to/2vgLWGP
The Self-Management Institute recently interviewed Mark Dowds, the founder and CEO of Brainpark, a Bay Area company producing cutting-edge collaboration software that brings people and resources together around pertinent, real-time information to dissolve organizational silos and achieve lofty performance.
SMI: So, we’re live with Mark Dowds at Brainpark, and so let me just start out and ask. Mark, tell us your story. How did you go from Ireland to the CEO of a tech company in the Bay Area?
Mark Dowds: Moving from Ireland was one of those – go back in the history of that. It’s a different story on its own, really. I was a young entrepreneur, worked family business when I was younger, and we got to experience some success when I was early 20s, and shortly after that I decided that I was going to retire from business and to focus on working on helping young people and developing their ideas.
So in working in doing that, I did that in Ireland for a while and then got the opportunity to go to speaking conferences around the world, and one of them was – invited to speak at was in Vancouver, and at that time I’d just got married, so I brought my new wife. We went to Vancouver, and there were – I think there was about 500 to 700 youth workers at this, so had a fantastic experience, and on the way home, my wife sort of suggested that we should move to Canada, so it was – I think my delicate response was, “Yeah, talk to me in 20 years,” ’cause I loved Ireland so much I never wanted to leave.
I think that when we left, our going-away party was Claire dancing, me crying in the corner, so I did not wanna leave, but when I got here or when I got to Canada, I really enjoyed it, so I ended up continuing to do that.
SMI: Excellent.
Mark Dowds: So when I got to Vancouver, ended up working at setting up a similar type of environment, where I could work with young people. Had a few friends there that I knew, and we worked together to really help nurture their ideas, and the idea was if you’ve got a biology student who wants to set up an ideas factory, our job was to really nurture them, work with them, help find out their path, see if we can provide their first computers or get them the basic essentials of what they needed, so it was a charity. It was not for profit. It was much more of a mission for life to really bring change and meaning, but what evolved eventually is that some of these ideas and some of these young people then had ideas that needed to be commercialized, so then we ended up building and getting those going.
So that’s really the history of how I transitioned to Canada and got into startups, really. So that’s what – I’ve been doing startups in the sense of either starting them or helping seed them or help others nurture to get them going for 12 years now, so I’ve been involved in that more than I can count at this stage. Ended up moving to Toronto, which is sort of where all the capital is and everything is in Canada, and went there.
Ended up then connecting with another chap called Bobby John. Bobby was at that time just getting awarded with Entrepreneur of the Year for Canada and top 40 under 40 guys and stuff, so he’d just – he’d created a company called Personus, previously known as Caught in the Web and got bought by CGI, so he was a guy; he’s 37 today, so he was mid-20 – he was just coming out of university and had already grown a company to 140 staff and getting bought, so it was quite a – but a very bright, poised decision-maker. So we decided when we met to put what we’d gotten together, basically, and take his enhanced engineering background and mine on the startup side of things, put that together and see what we could come up with.
So, we started a company called Creationstep together, so this goes back – I think now it’s – I wanna say eight or nine years, something like that, and with Creationstep, the idea was it’s a step towards creation in the sense of something would be redemptive to society and beneficial and a step towards creating your own idea or company, so it was a double pun. So with that, we came up – we met folks that had ideas and we would work with them, and then we would have our own and find people who wanted to lead them or work with us on them.
Some of them, when I look back, are – we mock each other. Some of them were the most harebrained, [laughter] stupid-ass things you could ever think of. I mean, they were innovative, but they made no business sense whatsoever, and I think part of that – there’s a naivety to it, I think, because coming – that we wanted to work with ideas with young people, startups, and I wasn’t really that financially driven, but, I mean, I’ve learned the benefits of a lot of those things the hard way, because all these things were funded by our own money, so Bobby and I basically, we would do some consulting and work on the side and spend it all on these crazy ideas. Thankfully, our wives didn’t kick us out but probably should have on a few occasions.
So Creationstep really went – when we got it going, we set up a center in Toronto, which was about a 3,000- or 3,500-square-foot loft right downtown, and we called it Indoor Playground, and we got – the subtitle was “The Center for Innovation,” ’cause the idea was we’ll have a center. We’ll have other startups. We’ll hold community events, where basically startups and geeks and the local community can hang out, can work during the day, and we would give back, nurture and help. So it was something that we just did on our own. It wasn’t backed by anybody else. It was just one of those thing we thought we’d do that’d be meaningful.
So we ended up drawing a lotta folks, got very connected into that community, and some of the startups that we’d done started to make some money, so any of the money then that came in, we took that and put it into new ideas, and then some of the folks that would hang out into our playground or local community we’d find in Toronto would be startups that we would find and invest and put money behind them sort of right there. So it really got really in the ground level into a lotta companies, but in the middle of doing all of that, I started to have an idea and it was spurred somewhat by Bobby.
So, what I was doing to sort of pay the bills and stuff, since I was doing some consulting – I’m trained in various forms of coaching and therapy. I think we talked about this before, so NLP and I’ve done bio-energetics, and then I was doing a master’s in industrial psychology at the time and specializing in system psychodynamics with how people and systems interact to change in organization. What I ended up having this unique rule for a bunch of companies, like News Corp subsidiaries, PricewaterhouseCoopers, RBC, a lot of the big brands, is that at an executive level if there was difficulty, like if there were two people that weren’t getting on or if there’s multiple folks in the team just not seeing eye to eye or changing a com structure that’s gonna really radically affect everybody, I would be asked to come and work with the team, take them on an overnight or take them away or come work through the issues.
So I ended up having a bit of a knack and a love for seeing people understand each other, so a lot of reframing, rethinking and getting that dynamic going, so when I was working with a bunch of these folks and coming from that unique history and coming from a guy who’s working with a lotta young people into this corporate setting working with sort of peace and reconciliation, for lack of a better term, was to realize that they were so disconnected with what was coming next. So I would listen to what they were doing and then planning for learning or planning to educate and bring up new folks and realizing they haven’t a clue what GenY even is. I mean, these guys that’re coming up are gonna completely disrupt and destroy these companies if they wanna participate in them.
So I started to ask questions around, “What’re you gonna do for to prepare for this?” and it would be either tumbleweeds – nobody would have an answer – or else it would be – one of them would be, “We’re working on an e-learning strategy, which is gonna take me five years to develop one of those videos and they’re gonna click through them,” and I’m thinking there’s not a chance any of these young people I know are gonna ever wanna do that. Plus, this whole new group were being branded as the heroes, this next generation, because of what was going on, so they’re the ones that’re actually working on making a difference.
They don’t wanna sit and click through screens. They wanna learn faster. They wanna move faster through the organization, and so I realized there’s a massive gap here. At the same time, a large organization had retained Bobby to look into the learning side of things they were considering in LMS, and Bobby was doing research in that, so we ended up then chatting about this, but what I was saying is that there were young people within these large organizations that were saying, “We don’t even know who to go to for what,” yet there’s all these massive gaps. So we ended up then Bobby and I just chatting and saying, “Well, there’s something – there’s a gap in here. There’s something that needs to – and a software that could help develop community that would enable people to earn from one another,” and so we actually started the company. It was called Community Learning.
So going back probably – this is about four years ago now. That was the first iteration of this. We began to play with the idea of Community Learning and to get it going, so Bobby and I again were doing this under Creationstep but at the time was one of our projects. It was something that the two of us had funded ourselves, and I had begun to pull back more and more from everything else I was involved with, ’cause I got infatuated with this one, and so everything – every piece of research I did just seemed to point that there’s a big gap, so once we got that going, it was – we then had bigger decisions to make, but that’s the basics of how I got into this role.
Then there’s a contending story, obviously, but from Ireland to that, that’s the construed, long, laborious part of the story, which was actually a lot of fun, and I was really – I think I was faced with a moment where I was actually getting quite comfortable financially again with some of the other things that were going on, yet I was at that point thinking that I really wanna do another big one myself. I wanna get my hands around a really big problem, challenge, to go for it, so I think those things all combined really – ’cause at that time I was 37. I’m thinking by the time I’m 40 I wanna feel like I’ve done some of the things I wanna do, which I realized that’s quite a normal crisis for people who’ve never actually realized it, so [laughter] –
SMI: That’s exactly right. Very good. So, great story, Mark, so take us from Community Learning, then, to Brainpark. How did you make that transition?
Mark Dowds: So one of – a local guy here in Alamo here in the East Bay – his name is Scott Walchek – he’s one of our advisers. Scott’s been very successful throughout his career as an entrepreneur, and sitting down with him, I was filling him in on here’s what we’re doing; here’s what we’re thinking. He understood it quite clearly, had some very tough stuff to say to me, as usual, in a very nice, delicate way, but basically said, “Listen to the name,” and realizing that what we wanted to do was work within enterprise sales, selling to enterprise and transforming them, and he said, “Well,” he said, “for an enterprise, Community Learning – it sounds like a nonprofit, sounds colloquial,” and I realized you’re absolutely bang on, so the next thing was, “What else’ve you gotten? Have you got another name? I get the vision; I get that as descriptive, but what else you got?”
So, I had this – the consulting that I used to do on the side was I’d use Brainpark, and so I thought, “Well, I’ve got this thing called Brainpark,” so he said, “That’s it. It sounds stronger, better and matches it,” so he quickly – I think we were just in the process of we had just incorporated Community Learning but basically just spun it all around and spent a little bit more money at the beginning, thinking we’ll bite it off now, and so that’s how it became Brainpark.
At that same time, then I went – I said to Bobby that I wanted to really put all my efforts in this and go full time with this alone, which meant then finding leaders for some of the other things that we were involved with. There was a few of them we just shut down, because he realized that he had a choice to make: Either I tank it with multiple things, or I put 100 percent into one. So I went 100 percent into one, and then Bobby helped with the transition of the other stuff, and then Bobby came on at that time as well, both of us as cofounders, and he was the CTO, so that was the beginning.
SMI: Very good. So talk about your product. What does Brainpark software do?
Mark Dowds: What it has evolved to do today is really that it helps to connect people within an enterprise, so one of the things is Charlie Watts from Rolling Stones once said, “I never really learned how to play the guitar; I just watched people,” so it’s one of those things where if we – what our system does, it helps connect people around the business issues that they would have interest or concern around, and they’re able to learn and watch from each other’s behavior, so someone new that comes in our organization can post a question and quickly learn from those who would have that expertise, which is – that natural connection is really essential, so the stronger the connection becomes, the greater the conversation and the faster a company can act.
So, in a sense, we put Brainpark in the middle and we help you become more innovative and create hopefully in the middle of it a stronger and happier culture, because there’s so many companies today that are all siloed, and part of the reality of the world is they’re disparate. They’re at different places, so trying to have a software and a system approach that’s gonna connect that company together effectively is really – well, that’s our mission, what we’re about, so that’s the basics.
So, if you have, as I said, a question that you want, you can simply post it, and our software helps – basically it evolves and learns what somebody’s good at it, what they will know, and then we basically write that question and try to get that information from the people in the organization who would know the answer to it best. Or, if you wanna poll a company, for instance, if you’ve been working on a new product and you’ve got a new design and you wanna have feedback, you can post that within Brainpark, and what we will – you can add in whoever you specifically want, but in addition to that, we’ll make sure that is socialized more effectively.
Today, most people do it on a group e-mail, and it’s a group e-mail nightmare that comes back, so companies that utilize Brainpark radically reduce their e-mail inbox, which nobody complains about. My e-mail inbox is predominantly external, clients and stuff that I’ve gotta deal with. Internally, most of our stuff lies all handled within the product.
SMI: Very good. I know you’re a believer in a free and democratic workplace, so how does your software products support that?
Mark Dowds: It’s one of those – it’s been a great debate over the last while, because there’s been a desire for us to really get in and transform companies, because a software like this really enhances transparency, because all of a sudden you’re aware of what everybody else is doing. There is aspects of privacy. We have to have that for any corporation, and the general thing, the default, is open, so all of a sudden what was private and behind e-mail alone is now open and other people can participate.
And so, for instance, if you have an idea or an idea that you’ve got, so you’re posting an idea and you’re asking everybody to come back and either vote on it or comment on it. Then you could be the janitor who’s got this idea that never had a voice in the company before, and then you gain influence throughout the company, so it basically really reworks the organizational structure naturally and if you allow it.
The problem is that scares the life outta some people, so there’s organizations that we have been in and then they’re seeing what we – what the system will do, and then we’re just shut out. So the mission for us is to help transform a culture, but what we’re finding is it’s more those companies that are already going in that direction that want a software – so we’re more like a support infrastructure for leaders and companies that wanna move in that direction. If you’re a company that wants to keep things closed, keep hierarchy strong, we are just the wrong group to work with. We’ve tried, and as much as we may smile and be nice about it, that’s just – it’s a very, very disruptive technology.
SMI: Well, you blogged recently about the hoarding-versus-sharing mindset. Do you think that the sharing mindset is going to just take over organizations inevitably, or are we always gonna have this dichotomy between sharing and hoarding going on?
Mark Dowds: It’s a great question, Doug. I mean, I think we’re always gonna have that dichotomy, but I think the default has been to hoard over the last season, and I think the default’s gonna change to be more open and sharing and socializing. Well, I think one of the things, again, is that generationally we think of what’s happening. I know that this is being stretched. It’s not just a generational thing, but we’re certainly being influenced by the last generation or the ones that are coming up. So, those that are under 30s right now behave totally different than everybody else, so they’re showing up into the workplace after university, and they’re looking – everybody’s still doing e-mail.
Their communication’s on Twitter, on Facebook, on all these other – they’re used to having things open and transparent, and through that you’re naturally aware, so I always like listening to Benioff’s speech last year at Dreamforce. With that he said, “How come I’m more aware of what my friends are doing than what my sales force is doing?” And it’s because social media really did change the game, so I think inevitably, yes, you’ve got a whole new generation that’re gonna post that and will behave differently and folks will have to change.
But it’s not as black and white, I think, as open or closed as I think we’re gonna have a lot more – we’re gonna have to really change how we view people, because if things are gonna become more and more open, we’ve gotta become more and more trusting, which means then we gotta rethink our hiring procedures. Who are the people you’re hiring and why are you hiring them and do they like their job, or what are the real drivers? So I think all of this is gonna force everyone to really rethink what’s culture. What’s the sort of culture you’re creating, because if you’re just hiring people as a piece of meat, that company’s gonna go down very quickly over the next 10 years.
I think there are a few institutions – I think if you think of cell providers, so cell, cable, all of the things that we spend a lotta money on: insurance, all these sorta things. I mean, traditionally we get airlines, for the majority some of the worst service that you’re getting, but they’ve sort of got us by the short and curlies, but as soon as a solution – as soon as there’s some new law passed that you can bypass these things, it’s all gonna change, ’cause everybody’s looking out. There’s nobody likes that model anymore, and you can even tell by looking in the eyes of people that it’s just horrible.
Actually, a good – what really got me into having a passion for changing the workplace was there was a moment where Claire and I had to go – we were living in Toronto and I had to go to Detroit to get our – we were doing our interviews for Canadian passports, and when we were – we had to be there early in the morning, and the hotel we were staying at was part of – it was in the GM Building, so we happened to be on this sort of over a walkway bridge, basically above where everybody files in to go to work, and I remember it being – and it was 9:00 a.m. or something, but basically everybody just starts – the whistle blows and everybody starts filing in. And I’m just watching this inanimate group of people. It’s like they looked the same. Nobody’s talking, thousands of them. They looked bored before they even showed up.
It’s almost like – I used to say the same thing about people with church is you have all this life outside, and as soon as they get to the doors, everybody gets domesticated, so it’s just whatever’s happened just sucked the life out of them and it was like watching the living dead, and it was one of those moments that I said, “There’s not one person that I can look here – I can’t see a smile. I can’t see any joy,” and I’m thinking, “Well, what sort of a world are we creating? We’re saying we live in a democratic world, but for the majority of your life, folks are working for a dictator. We’ll bomb the world to protect democracy, but we’ll become subservient for those 8 or 10 hours of a day.”
So, it was one of those things I thought I wanna make a difference in that. The consulting was beneficial and helpful, but I realized from a scale perspective I can’t meet with every executive around the world, and in fact even with executives you need to have something a little bit more systemic.
SMI: Brilliant. Now, you use the metaphor of a journey on your website to describe ideas that need collaboration, so how far along the journey toward freedom is your company? Are you right where you want to be right now, or do you have farther to go, or how do you perceive things?
Mark Dowds: We have a long way to go. Well, one of the fortunate things is that we were reasonably self-aware when starting this company, so we got the luxury to start this company and saying one of the core things we are focusing on is culture, so there wasn’t a lot of transformation to do.
What we’ve been successful at is transparency, strong contribution, everyone having a clear voice so that no matter whether if it’s myself or the founders or whoever’s saying, “Here’s what we think is next,” it would be very rare to be in a room where I don’t have at least a few people asking at least for clarity or challenging it, so it’s – which is, again, really, really hard to find, ’cause there’s so many folks look up to the boss in a way that’s – well, they’re looking at them as they know everything, where at the very beginning I said it’s my job in this company as a facilitator. My job is to create a culture is to make sure communication’s clearer and everybody’s talking, because I’m not smart enough to know what the customers are thinking or what to build, so I think what we gotta do is just being open, stay connected with our community, a wider community, and go from there.
One of the things that we do is quarterly – now, we used to do it every two – twice a year, but quarterly we all get together as a group. We just did it last week, actually, and we run it – I facilitate that, where I give them a theme of, “Here’s the general theme of the three or four days,” and then if you’re familiar with open-space facilitation methodology, that’s what we do, so basically that’s what runs our company so that everybody – the staff will show up with their own ideas, concerns, interests, passions, and they post it down and then everybody votes on it, and depending in the end what moves the room is then – that’s what ends up setting our quarterly goals.
Everybody’s aware of what’s happening with clients. Everybody’s aware of what’s happening in finance. Everybody’s aware of those things, so I don’t have to show up to those saying, “Here’s where we’re gonna go,” or, “Here’s what we’re gonna do next.” I actually spend more time listening to that, surfacing what they have got and then serving it. So our job as leaders really is to become the guys that get behind the troops here. They’re the ones that’re doing the toughest part of the work, so our job is to make sure they’ve got everything to do it well.
So, that part of the thing that we lack at the moment is – which came up at the retreat – is that as we’re growing, we’ve got the systems and processes documented, and we have it set out in a way that to make sure that we don’t lose it. There is a fear is that – ’cause part of what we did on our retreat was imagining ourselves five years from today, so we’re several hundred people. How are we doing this? What was our experience like within the company and who does what? Which was interesting, because it drew out people’s interests, desires, plus future thoughts, products and all of that, but at the same time it really did expose that we have something fantastic today, but we need to be very, very careful on what we’re doing to make sure that we don’t lose it, that it doesn’t sort of bleed out the door.
One of the things that we’ve focused intently on is our hiring, so we’re very, very fussy on who we hire, so what we will typically – we’ll probably interview 20 to 30 people if we’re hiring one, so we’re pretty – it’s a very tight group. There are no real – there’s no politics. We do fight it out and we do have all that good stuff that goes on, or I think if we didn’t do that, we’d probably be dead, but the nice thing of what we got is we’ve got a lot of folks who do know how to dialogue, have a deep respect for one another and a commitment that’s deep enough to be able to say the tough stuff, so we don’t wanna lose that, so we don’t hire rock stars. We don’t do crazy incentives or unique incentives, so we really do work as a whole.
Everybody’s an owner, so that’s one of the things where, when we come together, there’s no hierarchy. We’re all owners here. What are we gonna do to take our company forward? Does that answer your question?
SMI: That helps a lot. So what do you look for in a person, in a new employee? What makes the ideal Brainpark employee?
Mark Dowds: Number one – we asked this recently through everybody when we all – because everybody agreed it was funny. It was like number one was humility, so it was humility and everybody said humility and humility and the comments was just that’s, I think, number one, and not false humility, not someone who’s coming in saying, “I’m not good at this,” but they really are and all these stuff. It’s more like someone who knows what they’re good at but knows and respects everybody else’s opinion and somebody that’s willing to learn, so if somebody thinks that they’re really, really smart or very, very clever or if they have those opinions of themselves, that’s not gonna fly very well.
We’re a pretty confident bunch, but we’ve learned to know the difference between confidence and arrogance and to know – so, yes, humility first, and servitude, so I mean, I spend as much time with people – we all do – in settings outside of work before hiring as much as we can, so John here who’s working here, I spent some time with him. He came, actually wanted to work with us, said, “I’ll come work for free,” and I said to him, “I’m interested, but, I mean, there’s still a commitment on my side that you probably want something, so what have I got to deliver? So it’s never free to me.”
It was great, but very rarely you find someone like that, but I took him downtown, went in socializing within a wider group and did notice that he’s the guy that sorta comes – if there’s a homeless guy on the street that needs $1.00, notices them, cares for folks, coming in here, noticing that there was a dodgy blind. Then he pulls out a toolkit from his car, does the things that other people don’t do, so that type of servitude and eyes to see and care for other people is very, very important.
Obviously a group, I do look for smart people, but those that really are – I think learning is the one biggie, is folks that are very, very hungry and keen to learn from one another. So it is humility, respect, learning – those are the things we look for first. I mean, a lot of the skill base – if someone is intelligent and hardworking, self-starting-type person, the skill can be – that’s the easy part. We don’t do – for the developers, I mean, folks come typically with working similar with good résumés and that sort of stuff, so we know that they’ve got the skill. We just think, “Will they fit in our culture?” and there are so many.
We have this thing that we’re starting in the company called the “wall of shame,” but we’re really into transparency so we thought this would be funny, ’cause there’s loads of things that we all do that we’re all totally embarrassed about, so I thought we’re gonna publicize them, and not just for us, for anybody in the world can see them, so that’ll be up soon. We would love to have done one for crazy hiring stories, which we can’t publicize, but it’s just some of the folks who’ve come in and things they’ve said or done, people who’ve blatantly lied to us in questions.
But, yeah, we’re pretty fussy about – anybody who’s joining us or wants to join us quite often will come to our retreat, and there’s a bunch of times where we’ve had multiple people come to retreat. They get to see if they like us, and there’s folks that’ve come to our retreat that wanted to work for us. By the end of it – mostly because I think they realize that they wouldn’t fit culturally, because we are very open, and that scares a lotta people.
SMI: Well, Mark, you mentioned NLP, and you run in ultra-marathons and you’re a minister. Have any of those disciplines contributed to Brainpark, and if so, how?
Mark Dowds: I think they all have. I think there’s definitely the fun – I mean, there definitely is a little bit of a DNA in a company that comes from the founders. I think that, I mean, I’ve seen that right across, so that’s – for me what I gained out of NLP was this aspect of bringing a voice and confidence, knowing who you are and what you can bring, so some aspect of meaning to the world. The other aspect of the skills that came from that is skill bases around dialogue, so I think, yes, those things have definitely led into it.
From coming from being a minister and being involved in youth work and that side? Absolutely, I think, because my view in the world is that my job is to make somebody else shine, so that’s really come across within the company, so all of us really are focused on making sure one another flourish to do the best job, so hopefully that servant who’s there – I think our customers see that as well. We’re very high-touch. We’re very concerned. We just don’t wanna sell software. We really are interested in – our mission is really connecting a company so that they can really sing. We wanna see big smiles on people’s faces. We wanna see people love their jobs, so I think that part comes from that piece of the background. What was the other part you said it was?
SMI: You run ultra-marathons.
Mark Dowds: Yeah, well, I think the ultra-marathons is probably my way of staying calm and collected through navigating chaos, ’cause my job’s very stressful. I mean, if you wanna have a democratic company, that means you’re gonna have a lot of dialogue. You’re gonna have a lot of folks asking questions that nobody else would wanna hear, so there’s a lot more time invested into listening and processing things that go out. So my role, I mean, outside of being responsible for finance and capital, really closing the bigger sales, leadership – I’ve got the legal; I’ve got all those things, so I’ve got quite a lot on my plate, so getting away into the hills most days for my run – I try to get an hour and a half to two hours every single day and longer on the weekends, but that allows me to really think through issues.
When I come back, if I go in the morning, I’m in work and I’m the most calm, collected guy you could ever meet. There’s nothing you could throw at me that would faze me. Or, if I go at the end of the day, I’ve processed it all and I show up for dinner with my family with a big smile on my face, so I’m very disciplined, so I come to the office very early, and I give myself – so I’ve got time most afternoons. The only problem is when I travel I don’t get the – I really don’t wanna do that, but I’ve done, I think, 14 ultra-marathons this year, so it’s –
SMI: Wow. That’s a lot.
Mark Dowds: Yeah. I’m getting into biking. That’s the next one. I’ve been mountain-biking a lot, but I’m getting a road bike. Did my first road-bike race last week, so I quite enjoyed it.
SMI: Very good.
Mark Dowds: It nearly killed me, but it was – ultra-marathon running destroys your feet. There’s only so much you can do after one big race. Quite often you need to have it with that. The biking allows me to do that in between.
SMI: Very good. Well, let’s talk about your customers. You mentioned your customers. Do you find that your larger customers are interested in freedom and democracy in the workplace, or are they just interested in better ways to collaborate?
Mark Dowds: There’s a little bit of both. We definitely have some customers, like a Great Harvest Bread, for instance, that are really wanting – who value workplace democracy. There are others who really do engage with us, first of all because they’re looking for a tool that they wanted their people to collaborate on, and that part of it is is that’s when we get to sort of listen to them and also – “educate” may be the right word, maybe too strong – but at least nudge things in the right way or help them to think about why they’re really wanting everybody to collaborate or what are the opportunities if you wanna implement a tool like that.
So what’s the real driver, because if the driver is trying to force people together, it’s not gonna work, and a lotta folks wanna put in a software tool and get the top-down and say everybody’s gonna use this. Meanwhile, everybody’s compliant, doing some of it but giving the middle finger inside. It’s like the whole line is a man chased against his will is still of the opinion still, so you can’t really force change and behavior. So we’re seeing more come to us. The inbound is growing and a lot of it has come through the participating or them realizing that this is the type of company that we are as well, so I think there’s a lotta folks wanna go this way, but there’s still – some are scared.
And I think also even some leaders who do never learned this stuff at school so they’ve been trained in finance, but now they’re the senior leader of a large organization but don’t have the emotional quotient to be able to lead in that way, so I’ve met a lotta folks like that that really wanna have the dialogue, wanna do it, but just don’t have the capacity to know how to. So, we are seeing change. We are seeing a lotta companies, more companies coming that way, but there’s just as many that’s around straight-on collaboration, ’cause it’s more and more folks are becoming aware that you gotta do something. You can’t just have e-mail and SharePoint and hope everything works.
SMI: Well, you wrote a whitepaper about aware organizations, so can you talk about what you mean by an “aware” organization, and what is context?
Mark Dowds: So, running an aware organization is that, I mean, especially with so many people working – a lotta folks working from home or working in different offices, and even if everybody’s in the same building, different floors and even cubicles, so there’s so much that’s happening in an organization that you have no clue about, so I was inspired years ago when I was doing some of my research and papers by Gore Associates and organizations like that. Anyway, one of the first ones – I think it was the – was it Malcolm Gladwell that sort of made it a little more popular, I think. Wasn’t Malcolm Gladwell –
SMI: Tom Peters?
Mark Dowds: Wasn’t Tom Peters when they talked a little bit more about the Dunbar Limit and the capacity of not all of us – we can remember – natural community happens somewhere around 100-odd people, and then after that you need to have systems to make it connect. So what we wanted to do, again, within Brainpark, we said, is that if you’ve got a system that’s enhancing that, where you’re more aware of what people are doing within the natural context of their work, then there’s this natural awareness that can I think potentially span beyond the Dunbar Limit.
So, I mean, I know within using, say, even Facebook or Twitter within thousands of people that you’re navigating with that. I mean, there’s a heck of a lot more, and I seem to know what they all do, and any time I meet up with them, some of the friends, they seem to know what I’m doing or ask me about my last race or doing with that, so if you’ve got all of those things going on within a company, if you can break that nut – can you imagine showing up to another office to people that you really have never even met face to face but you already know them? You get context and understanding about their life, so there’s rapport, and you can actually have – you don’t have to actually start by saying, “Here’s what I do. My name’s Mark, and here’s what I’m into,” ’cause across an organization you can break that down quite quickly.
’Cause within an organization that’s, say, 1,000 people, I mean, I have over 1,000 followers on Twitter. I’ve got over 1,000 friends on Facebook, and it all seems to work between us, so within an organization if you can have that, I mean, that’s dynamic, ’cause then it’s a totally different experience, I think, for work. So, understanding context of really information, a lotta things and has been socialized before, put in files or put in SharePoint, there’s no real context to where it originated or how it formed or what’s the intent of the person behind it or through your system, like Brainpark, that’s what we actually bring is we heighten the awareness, but you also get the context and you know why people are doing something, so that’s the basics of it.
SMI: Another aspect of your product is kind of what you alluded to just now: capturing of this collective intelligence around an idea or an innovation and preserving the benefit of the enterprise, even if somebody goes to a different organization, so can you talk about the value of that a little bit?
Mark Dowds: I think one of the things as we’re not – I mean, today more and more everybody says innovation’s vitally key, ’cause there’s been so much turmoil in the marketplace, so innovation really does begin with ideas, so if you study the formation or the growth of 3M, it came from the odd rogue or unknown person that really made that company what it is today. The company has very little to do with what it originally started to be. Unfortunately, in other companies there’s no clear process to field an idea internally, so what we do is we have the ability for somebody to post an idea. It can be completely open to everybody, and then folks can come in and read it so they have their own vote.
And it sits there forever, so the thing is then if somebody else in three years’ time decides to have a similar idea, one of the unique things of what Brainpark does is it has a recommendation engine, so it surfaces other related content. So, for instance, if you buy a book on Amazon, it comes back and said, “Hey, other people who bought this book also did this.” We have something similar built within Brainpark, so you start a new idea or you post a thought. If there are ideas related to that or are similar to that, our algorithm basically picks them up and surfaces them, so on your screen you can see, okay, I’m working on this and here’s my latest thought or idea. You can see six things that are directly related or other people have had similar things in the past.
They may even still be in the same company and you can immediately connect with them and say, “Hey, look, I’ve had this idea. I see you had it a few years ago. Is it more ready for market today?” So it helps them in ad hoc connections, so that’s one way where people can get ideas really flowing.
So people wanna have a voice to ideas. We used to have it where just post an idea and people would comment on it, but we realized that’s not enough. Folks wanna have – at the end of the day somebody who wants to view that at a later date or in the middle of it. They wanna say, “Well, what’s everybody really think about it?” So we have that voting capacity on the ideas, which people seem to like.
SMI: Brilliant. So software’s a very competitive industry, as you know, so how do you differentiate yourself from your competitors?
Mark Dowds: Culture. That’s really it. I mean, there’s a bunch of folks that I’m not gonna outsell. There’s some folks have tried to corner particular aspects of the market, and I’m not gonna take it. The one thing that we have is to say, “Look, we really can turn around a culture, and we’re physical, as well as virtual.” Every customer we have, we designate a concierge for them, so they will show up physically. They will be involved with them and the product naturally connecting people, so that service side of things is really strong for us, where a lotta companies are just selling software and hoping that it works, letting somebody else within the company worry about it. We’re realizing that what we wanna do is to help nurture companies, because we have a mission and we really wanna participate with them.
So that’s our uniqueness, but I think we’re really focusing on culture and saying, “Here, this what we wanna help you have a phenomenal culture of innovation,” is really the only unique part of it, because you’re right. Software and enterprise sales is abased, so we gotta shine and let people come to us in some ways in that, and then once folks get involved with us, they don’t regret it, but we’re trying to sell above many other corporations. When they’ve got – when they’re 10 times bigger with bigger budgets, it’s not easy.
SMI: Absolutely.
Mark Dowds: So we’re differentiated based on who we are. Our product is different. There’s nobody today that has a recommendation engine surfacing that type of content that’s as smart, but a lot of times features are not the thing that closes a deal. It’s who the people really are, so it’s marketing, marketing, marketing.
SMI: Very good. So are you having fun?
Mark Dowds: Yes, I am. There’ve been times when I haven’t. I mean, I’ve been known to be a guy who really does what he loves. I mean, I wanna be the one of those guys that has no regrets, so I do intentionally take myself out of my comfort zone to do something crazy in my personal life all the time, so within the company there’s been times when I’ve thought, “Why did I start this?” ’cause it’d been – there was specifically, to go back about 18 months, there was a time where I had a vision for an aspect of the product, and I was the only guy that really was running with it so that the team that I built no longer really believed that would be the best approach, so it was one of those times where I had to pull back.
And it was pre what we could sell, so I ended up feeling neutered for a while, going, “So, they don’t need me. The team don’t need me here. We’ve created a self-managing environment. I can’t yet sell this. I’ve brought in the capital,” so it was a really disillusioning time of really having to come back and think, “What do you do as a democratic leader when those parts work?” because I had choices to really push forward in other ways, but the toughest part of that season was to be quiet and to watch and to serve.
So, yeah, there’ve been times where it’s been really hard. There’s been times where I haven’t enjoyed it. There’s been times when I’ve doubted myself, but today, yeah, I mean, I love it because it’s hot and heavy: big challenges. I’ve got competitors. We’re taking business from competitors, and I love that, and I love to close. I mean, I love meeting with somebody and closing business, so as long as I’ve got a really good challenge and there’s lots of moving parts, I’m okay.
I did an analysis years ago when I was doing this at my psychology degree, and they did this analysis of my personality that said where would I flourish most? And it was really interesting, because the things they surfaced are typically things you never think of, ’cause we typically take jobs in industries because there’s a family or somebody you know; there’s a familiarity to it, where this one came back saying the two things that I would flourish in would be either managing a zoo or an airport.
And initially I reacted in a class going, “Who on Earth came up – why would I be a good zoo manager or an airport” – and I go, “And this is stupid. I’ve never thought of it,” and I was thinking from a passion perspective. I’ve never had a passion for that sort of stuff, and one of the guys had said, “Mark, have you considered the commonality between an airport manager and a zoo manager?” and they said, “You thrive in chaos.” So that’s really – as long as there’s moving parts and chaotic and big challenges and I feel like it’s war-room-type behavior, I’m happy.
SMI: Very good. Last question: What’s your vision for Mark Dowds after Brainpark?
Mark Dowds: Mark Dowds after Brainpark is – that’s a big question. I mean, I think it’s a tough one for me, because I’m still not thinking of moving past Brainpark at this point. If somebody decides to – I mean, eventually we’ll get to either a size where there’ll be somebody better to front the company. At that point, if they still want me involved, I would like to still focus on culture or building or nurturing that in the company.
If I don’t end up in that position, if somebody buys us or something else happens, I will – I think what I’ll probably focus on is in working with the guys in Haiti, so when part of my running has been to help Haiti Partners, and I would love to do a lot more in working and helping that and thinking about – that’s a big challenge in the sense if you think of managing chaos and being in that position. Big draw to that. That’s a big love of our family, so I’d love to be helping and doing that.
A lotta folks have said, “So, what’d be the next startup?” and for the first time in my life, I’ve thought, “I don’t know.” I don’t know if there is another one. But then other folks have said, “How do you feel when you’re in Mile 40 of a 50-mile race?” and I’ll go, “I’m never doing another one of these again.” “So what do you do the day after a 50-mile race?” I say, “Sign up for the next one,” so the moment I’m very narrow-minded or no vision on this, but I definitely – the bigger dream of my life is I’ve always had a great knack of being able to make money, and I’ve a great love of startups and ideas, so what I would like to be is free enough to be able to recognize and see those ideas and still support a few of them, but instead of doing loads of them, I would probably like to choose a few ideas every so often and get involved with them and help make them successful.
So, I think in that way I don’t necessarily wanna be the front guy in the next season but someone who can really have influence from behind, so not a traditional angel investor. I’ve done that. That’s not as much fun, but to be involved financially and operationally with a few. I think that’ll probably be where I’ll end up.
SMI: Very good. Mark, thank you.
Mark Dowds: Doug, thank you. Appreciate it. Thanks for coming down.
We invited Tory Gattis, Institute Community of Practice member, and recent winner of the prestigious M-Prize, to share with us the idea that won him the prize, "The Bossless Organization". Tory shares below the outline of this revolutionary concept.
Summary
Replace the fundamental control relationship in the organization from ‘boss-subordinate’ to ‘mentor investor-intrapreneur team’, where mentor investors are modeled on the angel investors of Silicon Valley and elsewhere: they sponsor, advise, and tap social networks to help teams succeed, but don’t directly control.
Problem
The problems of the traditional boss-subordinate relationship (and the overall command-and-control hierarchy) are well known and almost too many to list: controlling, abusive, toxic bosses (Kellerman’s 7 types: incompetent, rigid, intemperate, callous, corrupt, insular, evil), bureaucracy, Machiavellian politics, empire building, innovation-killing, low engagement, passive employees, disempowering, arrogance, self-serving, micromanagement, information, resource, and talent hoarding, etc. Some of the negative organizational symptomsresulting from these traditional boss-subordinate relationshipsare unengaged and passive employees, high turnover, a lack of innovation, and high inertia against change and adaptation.
Please don't be offended if you yourself are a boss. Obviously the majority of bosses do not exhibit most of these traits, but I think most would agree that this behavior is common in most large organizations. The point is the need for a new approach, as opposed to patches on the existing fundamentally flawed system - as summed up in this quote from the attached chart pack:
Imagine if the founding fathers had gone with monarchy, but with really great leadership training so we had 'better kings'?
Solution
Rebuild organizations around a new core relationship: mentor investors and intrapreneurial teams. Mentor investors are modeled on the angel investors of Silicon Valley and elsewhere: they sponsor, advise, and tap social networks to help teams succeed, but don’t directly control (think of the famous Silicon Valley angel investor Ron Conway).
· Invest in project teams
· Provide resource allocation control
· Are accountable for good judgment on investments (value-added, RoI, peer review)
· May mostly invest inside their domain/expertise within the organization, but may also occasionally invest outside of it.
· They may also promote key themes they’d like to invest in to attract intrapreneurs to key problems or opportunities.
· Syndicate with others to spread risk on larger projects
· Intrapreneurial teams can choose from many investors; not locked in to one boss, and a single ‘no’ up the hierarchy can’t kill an idea – but a single ‘yes’ from any mentor investor can get an idea off the ground
· ‘Funds’ can be spread wide to all employees (like Google’s 20% time), or more concentrated in trusted executives
· Bad ones are naturally filtered out over time:
o Won’t find teams willing to take their investments
o Don’t get access to the best investments or talent
o Investment performance will suffer
Intrapreneurial project teams pitch improvement ideas against the ‘open source operations model’ of the organization, including all processes, systems, assets, and operational roles transparently modeled inside a Wikipedia-like collaborative software system. This operations model provides an ongoing organizational core of stability and efficiency that ad hoc project teams can work on and around to provide innovation, adaptation/change, and engagement. Organizational resources not dedicated to operations – including money and employee time - are available for investment by mentor investors.
Employees may hold a dynamic portfolio of many different roles - including part-time mentor investor, project leader or contributor, and/or operational roles - and are accountable for their voluntary commitments and overall utilization via peer review. They can shift their role portfolio over time to stay in the engaged and productive Flow zone – not bored, burned-out, or overwhelmed.
Practical Impact
· Power shifts from abusive and controlling – based on position and fear - to balanced and mentoring - based on respect, trust, and expertise.
· Transplants Silicon Valley’s innovation ecosystem inside the organization. Innovation flourishes as intrapreneurs and self-organizing project teams can pitch multiple potential mentor investors for sponsorship. They only need a single ‘yes’, as opposed to ideas being killed by a single ‘no’ anywhere up the traditional hierarchy.
· People are more engaged and passionate on small intrapreneurial teams - like they are at startups.
· Proactive, bottom-up, self-organizing initiatives instead of reactive, top-down assignments.
· Internal markets for talent, ideas, and money instead of political power struggles.
· Open and transparent organizations instead of siloed and opaque.
· Nobody ‘owns’ employees anymore, reducing fiefdoms.
· No more communication limits like those typically found in hierarchies, especially when it comes to bypassing the boss.
· Benefits for employees: freedom/autonomy, engagement, dignity, fun, empowerment, more leadership opportunities, easier to demonstrate your value and be rewarded on merit instead of politics or biding your time until the next promotion opportunity
· Benefits for managers(who shift to being mentor investors and/or project team leaders): a lot more opportunities to be the 'good guy' instead of the 'bad guy', healthier relationships with colleagues, reduced politics, easier to demonstrate your value and be rewarded on merit instead of politics or biding your time until the next promotion opportunity
· Benefits for the organization: innovation, adaptation, continuous improvement, risk mitigation, less turnover, motivated and engaged employees, fuller talent utilization
Additional Information
Image diagram of the Bossless Organization
Designing the Bossless Organization Presentation
About Tory Gattis
Tory Gattis is the Founder, President, and Social Systems Architect at OpenTeams, a web software-as-a-service firm that increases employee engagement and entrepreneurialism in large organizations with an internal free market that incubates innovative ideas, builds teams around them, and gets them funded and implemented—rather than dying a slow death in the bureaucracy. He has a background in information technology, entrepreneurship, and strategy and organization consulting, particularly around talent management and engagement. In addition to working in a series of technology companies and roles, he is an alumnus of McKinsey & Co., where he practiced strategic consulting with one of the world’s premier management consulting firms. There he assisted many Fortune 500 firms on issues including technology strategy and mergers & acquisitions. Tory also writes the popular Houston Strategies blog on complex urban issues, and he is an adjunct faculty member in business strategy at HBU. He holds an MBA and a B.S. in Electrical Engineering from Rice University, both cum laude and with honors.
Being a parent is an educational experience, as I'm sure those of you who've raised children can attest to. But as a lifelong student of business, and more specifically, management, I wouldn't have thought that I would learn all the really important leadership lessons from my children.
I did, though. I met this week with a friend who hasn't had children, and as we discussed leadership, I realized that my view on the subject has really been influenced by my experiences as a parent. Further, I realized that there are a few key lessons that really relate to Self-Management. So I'm going to try to write about them in my next few posts here.
This isn't, for those of you who are feeling a little cynical, one of those shallow “I learned it in kindergarten” type articles. It’s a small set of leadership principles, the revelation of which I’ve only received as a result of my attempts to be an adequate parent.
So here goes.
Lesson #1: People Will Try to Live Up to Your Expectations
I guess it’s a little cliché, but hear me out before you deem this post shallow; I think you’ll be surprised.
I learned early on as a parent that setting an expectation for excellent things—grades, performance at the karate exhibition or piano recital, a singing part in the church Christmas event—caused my kids to strive to achieve that level of excellence. We talk a lot at our house about being excellent, and about what it takes to be excellent: discipline and hard work, focus, commitment, responsibility and a good attitude. And my children put a great deal of effort into meeting those expectations.
As I pondered their effort, I began to wonder what it would be like if, instead of talking about excellence we talked about mediocrity or “doing enough to scrape by”. Would their efforts and attitudes be different? They would, I think. Here’s why: an expectation is a somewhat overt message that says, in no uncertain terms, “here’s what I think you’re capable of”. That’s a pretty powerful thing to say to a kid: this is what I think you can do; it has an incredible effect on what they actually achieve.
And then there are the parents who constantly berate their children, pointing out their inadequacies, and using every failure on the part of the child as further proof that the child doesn’t have what it takes to be anything of any import. We’ve all seen those parents, and we’ve all met their children; often, the child perfectly achieves the parents’ expectation of him.
I don’t think this is a hard sell, is it? I’m not telling you anything you don’t agree with (at least most of you), to some degree. But if it’s good for a child, is it good for an adult too? Yet our businesses, by design, have this horrible tendency to set expectations depressingly low. There are locks on every thing we can possibly lock—implying we expect someone to steal. An employee has to get a requisition signed, in triplicate by four different managers, in order to purchase gloves and safety supplies—implying we think someone is wasting company resources. Employees have to go through an intricate and, frankly, oppressive systems of checks, and achieve myriad approvals before implementing any sort of meaningful change—implying that we think most of our people are dumb and can’t think through the change process.
I know that there are a few of you reading this—my “but I was a good manager”—friends who are already scrolling to the bottom to tell me why I’m wrong, and that’s OK; I’ll read the comment and likely respond. But before you do, ask yourself if I’m really all that wrong; don’t those things, even if they’re subtle, send some pretty powerful signals to employees about what we expect of them? And, if that’s the “here’s what we expect” message that we send, how likely is it that we’re going to have a strong population of employees in our enterprises who truly perform excellently?
I had a conversation recently with a colleague in one of our affiliate enterprises that really brought this idea into focus for me. This colleague was remarking on the general inadequacy of the colleagues they work with on a regular basis. The people they work with, this colleague said, were lazy, liars who have a tendency to steal. I was a little surprised by this, but listened as the colleague went on to outline the things they had worked to implement in an effort to catch the liars, thieves and sluggards. I wondered if those efforts had resulted in a more honest group of non-thieving colleagues with incredible work ethics? The answer was no. It made me wonder which was the cause and which was the effect.
So here's my point: Self-Management is built on a foundation that expects quite a lot out of people. There aren't a lot of locks, because there's an expectation that people will be brutally honest; there aren't a lot of hoops to jump through in order to cause change, because people are expected to be the experts who know what change is needed; and people don't have to get "approvals" to make purchases, because they're expected to know better than anyone what needs to be purchased in order to perform.
Of course that raises some, "but what happens when…" questions, which we'll endeavor to answer in subsequent posts!
Self-Management is the organizational philosophy represented by individuals freely and autonomously performing the traditional functions of management (planning, organizing, coordinating, staffing, directing, controlling) without mechanistic hierarchy or arbitrary, unilateral command authority over others.
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I read a news story the other day about a Florida high school football coach and one of his players, both of whom have been suspended. The story really illustrated how over-reliance on rules as a method of governing sometimes results in really stupid decisions.
Meet Coach Bill Buldini, a teacher at St. Cloud high school in Osceola County, Florida, and the coach of the high school's football team. Buldini, a while back, found out that one of his players was homeless and living on the street. So he invited the player to move in with him and his family. The school district found out about it, reported it to the Florida High School Athletic Association who promptly opened an investigation. The school, meanwhile has suspended both the coach and the player, and has witheld the portion of the coach's pay that comes from coaching football until the association completes their investigation.
Apparently, in high school sports, it's against the rules for a player to live with the coach or any other administrator or employee of the school. The athletic association has the rule, it seems, to ensure that coaches can't apply undue pressure to student athletes living in their homes. I'm not sure what kind of pressure they're worried about; perhaps the sort of pressure the NCAA alleged Sandra Bullock's character applied to the young man she took into her home in the movie, "The Blind Side". In the movie (which is based on a true story), the NCAA investigates Bullock's character and her husband after allegations arose that they pushed a teenaged football player living in their home to play football at their alma mater.
I guess that's a bad deal; teenagers should be allowed to make their own choices when it comes to if--and where--they play football. And it would truly be a horrible thing for a coach to take someone into their home, and then use that kindness as a way of unfairly influencing the student athlete in some way. So, if that's the reason the athletic association instituted the rule, then whomever dreampt it up probably had great intentions.
But in its current manifestation, it appears as though the athletic association would rather their student athletes be homeless than safe in a coaches' home! Absolutely absurd.
Here's the thing: rules like this really paint situations as black and white, when in reality, many things aren't very black and white at all. Is it a good thing for coaches to take student athletes into their homes? Perhaps, in some cases, it's not. In this case, though, it was a great thing: a homeless kid now has a place to live. How is that bad?
But there's a rule. And that rule prohibits this. So coach Buldini can either kick the kid out of his home, or lose his job and pay hefty fines. In this case, the rule is an unbelievably stupid rule.
One option, then, is to try to think of all the possible exceptions to the rule. This is the tact our government has taken. Create a rule that we acknowledge doesn't work perfectly in all situations, then try to identify and account for every possible exception.
If you think about it, that's kinda foolish too, isn't it? From a practical perspective, we end with millions of pages of rules and their corresponding exceptions, and there's no way any single person could ever hope to understand all of the rules and the exceptions, which brings with it its own set of inefficiencies.
The irony is that, most of these rules really come down to one of just a handful of basic principles. For example, the Florida atheletic association is probably really concerned with coaches taking advantage of players--something we all agree is a bad thing. So instead of trying to identify all of the ways a coach might try to take advantage of a player, and then create rules and contingencies for each, why can't we just say, "Don't take advantage of players--and if you do, you lose your job"? Of course, each individual case would then have to be judged on its merits, a prospect that is admittedly messy (instead of reading a rule a la "no players living with coaches" we have to study the situation, and determine whether or not, in fact, the coach was attempting to take advantage of the player).
Applying it to organizations, it gets a little easier. From a practical perspective, is it generally enough, in a company, to tell your employees to, "do the right thing" and to "treat customers well" and to "spend money wisely"? Don't most people have a decent idea of what that means?
Seems like a much more efficient way of running an organization to me...