Getting the Right People on the Bus
Gavin Kelly reflects on ten years of leading and growing Artefact
In Good to Great, Jim Collins compares business leaders to bus drivers. While many people assume that key to their success is setting a new direction or by articulating a fresh corporate vision, Collins argues that “[L]eaders of companies that go from good to great start not with “where” but with “who.” They start by getting the right people on the bus, the wrong people off the bus, and the right people in the right seats. And they stick with that discipline — first the people, then the direction — no matter how dire the circumstances.”
After 10 years of leading Artefact, working with dozens of clients, on hundreds of projects, I cannot agree more. Getting the right people on the bus has been one of our guiding principles over the years as we have grown Artefact to over 60 people. And one of the most reliable indicators why some projects and products succeed, and why others fail.
In a recent FastCo article, IDEO’s Mollie West outlines the seven key archetypes needed to foster a culture of innovation. That inspired me to think about the types of functions people at Artefact have performed as we have gone to build an award-winning consultancy, develop and spin off a couple of successful products and work on countless client projects for anything from enterprise software to healthcare apps, education software to VR. These archetypes are valid not only for agencies but for any business, whose mission demands constant transformation and relentless pursuit of improvement. They overlap and you most likely don’t need all of them all of the time, but you will need most of them at least some of the time. And since I am a huge TV and movie nerd, I thought I’d use some famous characters as archetypes.
The Captain
It is surprising just how often it is unclear who is leading a team. Sometimes it can be because there are too many alpha personalities all jockeying for control, and other times it is because roles were not clearly defined at the outset. In a corporate environment, where there are multiple stakeholders involved, it can be a challenge to identify the true decision-makers, as the person you thought had the authority invariably needs to report up the chain of command.
While this situation may be OK for a while, it can’t be the default state for too long. Why? Because at some point there are going to be problems. Guaranteed.
Without a confident captain at the helm, small problems become big problems. Without a captain, tough decisions get kicked down the road as opposed to confronting the issue head on. Without a captain, a team can quickly lose confidence, morale plummets and the project is faced with a whole new set of problems.
At Artefact, the most critical role in the company is the project lead. The project lead performs a lot of functions, including creative direction, budget and project management, client liaison and decision-maker. Most of our projects either succeed or fail based on the performance of the team captain.
The Gambler
At Artefact, we have placed bets on new products and services that we would like to bring to market. I would like to believe that we are batting a pretty decent average, especially with the success of 10,000ft Plans and Insights. However, not every idea we have incubated has been successful, and we have had our fair share of duds. The important thing is not how many ideas succeed or fail, but rather how the organization responds. It is very easy, once the stakes get high, to develop an aversion to taking risks. And it’s not just about money, for taking on risk can also directly impact those around you, including your colleagues, your peers and your family. So does the organization scale back its investment in pursuing new ideas? Or does it analyze the process, formulate learnings, and push ahead and try again?
As a company grows, it is only natural to be somewhat protective of what you have built. And so it takes a good deal of courage to “bet the company” on anything that contains an element of risk. That is why, if you don’t want to miss opportunities to grow and succeed, you need the Gambler on your team. That person is going to push you out of your comfort zone and help you be more comfortable taking on the risk. The Gamblers that have propelled us forward are the ones that have had both a deep passion and deep knowledge that helps them see real opportunities.
At the same time, the Gambler’s influence also needs to be tempered to mitigate exposure to unacceptable levels of risk, and to ensure that the ratio of risk to reward is not out of whack. That’s where the Gardener comes in.
The Gardener
As my co-founder Rob Girling likes to point out, ideas are like fragile seedlings: they both need careful nurturing in order to survive in harsh environments. In our design process, we may generate hundreds of ideas, many of which are viable candidates for a feature, a product or a strategy. But too often we see good ideas get killed by the naysayers in the room, touting barriers like feasibility and schedule, or simply labeling an idea as dumb. It requires a certain culture and mindset to not only delay judgment (one of the fundamental rules of brainstorming), but to also shepherd an idea through the pipeline.
I recall an Artefact offsite where we were looking to create an internal process that would help improve the odds of success. To do so, we generated an entire wall of criteria that would need to be met at each stage before the concept could move forward to the next phase. While we had the good intention to reduce risk, what we had created was a RoundUp for innovation. When we stepped back we realized that there was no way any idea could survive this process.
What we needed was in fact the very opposite: we needed people and processes who could ensure the survival of these fragile ideas long enough that we can determine which one of them would bear fruit.
The Gardener is the person that prunes them and shapes them to survive the climate conditions, using the tools that best fit the environment. It was that offsite, that also inspired us to think about a tool that helps companies generate and grow good ideas.
The Politician
Unless you are a small startup, then you are likely working as part of a larger organization, and your product or service will need to fit logically into a larger offering. We have seen amazing product ideas crash and burn because the team does not have buy-in from key stakeholders or other divisions. Or they stall and go nowhere because there is not sufficient momentum to carry them over the inevitable hurdles. Without this buy-in, the team will face resistance and pressure, sometimes overt and sometimes invisible. Sometimes it because the initiative is in conflict with a broader strategy. Sometimes it is because there is a competition for resources or mindshare, and other times it is simply because of NIHS (Not Invented Here Syndrome).
This is where the Politician comes in. The Politician’s role is to help build relationships and support for the program. The Politician is ideally a part of the core team, engaging stakeholders in the project, and always communicating out current status and progress against the goal. Skilled at negotiations and the trading of favors, she will be able to garner the support for an idea and help move it forward across multiple fronts, simultaneously.
We live in times when this may not seem like a flattering role, but some of our most successful relationships over the years have been nurtured by successful politicians.
Furthermore, looking for and collaborating with the politician on the client side is the only way to ensure that your project does not get stuck in a gridlock of congressional proportions.
The Chemist
I have always believed that you can’t “design” a culture. Instead a culture emerges from a set of conditions that you put in place. However, you can control the conditions and the ingredients. Similarly, when building a product, a team or a company, you can control the environment through the design of a workplace. You can also select the ingredients by choosing the people to hire. When you make well considered choices, you can increase the chances of fostering a culture where creativity and innovation flourish. Unfortunately, like any science experiment, mixing certain ingredients can deliver wildly unpredictable results, and they are not always positive.
At Artefact, we have always been aware of just how delicate the culture is, and how easily it can be disrupted when the chemistry gets out of whack. In our early days, it didn’t take much — in fact one person had the capacity to shift our cultural balance.
As we have grown, our mix and our culture has become more stable, meaning our culture is less likely to be impacted by any one change or individual. But we continue to hire as much for design talent and business acumen as for cultural fit.
The Logician
One of the criticisms often leveled at design consultancies, or any external contributor, is that what they deliver can’t be built. Over the course of our history we have placed a greater emphasis on understanding constraints, be they capabilities, time, or budget. It means, for us, that we have to understand the true strengths and weaknesses of the company, and we have to challenge the ideas we are proposing based upon this knowledge. This is the role of the Logician: to force the feasibility conversation.
The Logician is not to be confused with a naysayer. Most of us have experienced that person or group of people who respond to every idea with a “no”, or at least with resistance. The naysayer, if allowed to much influence, will kill your innovation pipeline. That is why you also need the Gardener and the Gambler on the team as a counterbalance.
By contrast, the Logician will surface the constraints in a constructive manner as a way to effectively frame the problem you are trying to solve. They will start sentences with “how might we…” as opposed to “It’ll never work because…”.
The Oracle
If you are in doubt about how hard it is to predict the future, just take a look at some of the predictions that were popular around 10 years ago, when Artefact was founded:
2005: “There’s just not that many videos I want to watch.” — Steve Chen, CTO and co-founder of YouTube expressing concerns about his company’s long term viability.
2006: “Everyone’s always asking me when Apple will come out with a cell phone. My answer is, ‘Probably never.’” — David Pogue, The New York Times.
2007: “There’s no chance that the iPhone is going to get any significant market share.” — Steve Ballmer, Microsoft CEO.
In today’s dynamic market, different forces exert their influence to often unpredictable results. But while predictions are hard, a long term vision for the company or for a particular innovation is a must. The Oracle reads market signals and helps you anticipate a more predictable range of scenarios and thus increase your chances of success. He or she is most successful when a North Star, or a long term vision, creates a grounding rod between the now and the future.
The Maker
Ideas, they say, are cheap. Sure, every great product or company starts as an idea, but the idea is really the easy part. Too often we see projects stall at the idea stage because the team is not equipped to translate those ideas into something that works.
A key component of bridging the gap between idea and reality is the ability to build things. There is something incredibly powerful when an idea is brought to life, when a working model provides a glimpse of great potential. Making it real, making it tangible, helps to remove the ambiguity and uncertainty that may exist at the conceptual stage. A functional prototype or proof of concept allows others to experience the product, as opposed to simply imagining it. For physical products, our ability to realistically render products is so advanced that it is difficult to tell the difference between a computer model and a photograph. Create a physical model out of foam that your can hold in your hands is almost magical in its ability to bring an idea to life. Similarly, in the digital space, being able to interact with a piece of software, no matter how crude, is nearly always more compelling than a bunch of static screen comps.
The Maker brings that capability to the team. They are always thinking and tinkering, looking at fast and cheap ways to capture the very essence of an idea and then build it.
The Maker looks for ways to simulate technologies that might not even exist yet by hacking together workarounds using what is readily available — our BrakePack prototype is the perfect example of that precious talent.
The very best makers are in high demand, but you definitely want them on your team, because especially paired with a Gardener, they breath life into ideas the way no PowerPoint can.
The Closer
There are times when a team will do outstanding work, pitch it up the chain, and in the end it goes nowhere. Other times a project in development will need more resources or more time, and neither is forthcoming. Or a company will be unable to raise that next round of funding, or land that critical customer. Most often, this happens, because the Closer is missing.
Sales is often viewed as a discrete function in and organization, something that happens once we have developed the product or service. But that is not the case.
In the idea marketplace, you have to always be selling, always be closing. And that applies as much to an agency, where our success and existence is predicated upon closing the next project, as it does to an internal team.
In order to succeed, a team must have a capacity to present, pitch, sell and ultimately close. These skills may be distributed amongst the team, or there may be individuals who excel at all aspects of closing. In the end, the important thing for any team to remember is A-B-C: Always Be Closing.
The Joker
This is the wild card in a team, one that can create chaos but can also fill in an unknown need. It is versatile enough to take the place of any of the other main characters. And sometimes it can be the strongest player in the team. They may share the Gambler’s ability to take risk, the Gardener’s talent to nurture ideas, the Politician’s ability to compromise, or the Oracle’s clairvoyant vision. What they lack is the Chemist’s consistent ability to make things work smoothly. So, while the Joker is great for the unpredictability of the business, he/she is also a force to contain. If left unchecked, the Joker can sink the organization in a vortex of frantic randomness.
The Manifest
When building a team, we tend to think of titles and the responsibilities of an individual, as opposed to a holistic plan that considers the capacity of a team to populate roles that are essential to success at any given moment. As we set out to build any team, we need to look ahead and try to identify the roadblocks that will derail our efforts and build a team that will allow us to overcome those obstacles. Not all of the roles on a team fit neatly into a predefined title or a traditional description, and so we need to rethink how we recruit for our team in order to be successful. So rather than look to hire a Program Manager or a Designer, consider who will fill the role of Logician, Oracle or Closer.
So cast an eye around your bus. Do you have the right people in the right seats to get where you want to go?
For more 10th year anniversary reflections from Artefact, visit our A10 page.
