“Fantastic work culture” with Fred Weaver Founder of Tank Design

As a part of my series about about how leaders can create a “fantastic work culture”, I had the pleasure of interviewing Fred Weaver, Partner at Tank Design. As Design Director, Fred brings over 20 years of experience to branding and design — applying his expertise to a broad range of disciplines including corporate identity, print, packaging and retail design and a variety of interactive applications, websites and user interface efforts. Prior to founding Tank, Fred worked for design consultancies in the USA and abroad including Herman and Lees Associates (Cambridge) and Fitch, where he worked on client projects in Boston, Ohio, London, Japan, Brazil, Peru and Chile. Since founding Tank in 1994, Fred has forged numerous client relationships, applying his design and branding expertise to some of today’s most recognized brands including FedEx, IBM, IAC, Ally Bank, Puma, Starwood Hotels and Cindy Crawford. He has won design awards and been recognized by organizations including AIGA, Print Magazine, Communication Arts, Graphis, the Webby Awards, and The Art Directors Club of New York.

Thank you so much for doing this with us! Can you tell us a story about what brought you to this specific career path?

Gosh. Probably undiagnosed Dyslexia.

My early school-based attempts at “art” were about the only things I did that earned any praise that rose slightly above “good enough.” Through the wisdom of Chicago suburban guidance counseling, I was encouraged along the path of “commercial art” which led me to the University of Illinois’ Graphic Design Program within the School of Fine Arts. All cynicism aside now, I met some truly inspirational teachers and friends there. I believe my roots finally grew around the stubborn soil of dyslexia and I began to find some traction on this thing called Design, a place where visual and verbal ideas can combine to make surprising connections, convey powerful Ideas and communicate viscerally. That kind of growth and development continued into my early career and became most prolific when I met and began working with David Warren. Together, he and I founded Tank.

Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you began leading your company?

The whole thing is miracle. David and I just had the good fortune, in 1994, to have 10K each to put into a bank account. We paid ourselves a modest monthly salary and said we would work until the money ran out, at which point we would go re-find proper jobs. We haven’t run out yet, but it still feels early.

So many stories of growth and change, so many experiences, good, bad, beautiful and ugly — thousands of lives touched. I feel incredibly blessed by it all, and incredibly grateful that I can feel that.

Are you working on any exciting projects now? How do you think that will help people?

Yes. It’s all exciting!

Truly, it all is, but because I can’t give honorable mention and thanks to every client here, I’m inclined to talk about some of our work with organizations that are seeking to directly innovate industries aimed at improving the human condition and the generational problems (opportunities) the world faces. In that category…

Our 18-year journey with FedEx has been amazing, and promises to get ever more interesting as they continue to bring their original spirit of innovation to the task of finding more efficient ways to move more things from here to there.

We’re excited to be working with athenahealth, a company dedicated to the much-ballyhooed need for simplification and improvement of our healthcare management systems.

We are inspired to be working with start-up innovators like Indigo Technologies, a company that will be making a major impact on emerging shifts in the automotive transportation industry and the related electric energy and battery technology fields.

And Life Biosciences is another start-up client in Cambridge that plans to inoculate the globe against all age-related illness. Exciting!

Ok, lets jump to the main part of our interview. According to this study cited in Forbes, more than half of the US workforce is unhappy. Why do you think that number is so high?

That is a startling read, indeed.

(Going forward, you’ll see that I often put “workforce” in quotes. I think the word illuminates some of the points I’ll try to make about some of the dehumanizing characteristics of the shifting paradigms regarding concepts of humanity and work.)

I think the answer(s) to this question are really complex and will differ across industries, type of work, demographics of different “workforces” et cetera.

That said, the word “complex” is key and permeates the whole. We’ve known, since the early days of the industrial revolution, that the pace of innovation and change will be exponential and that the general angst associated with that will grow right along with it. We continue to play with the dials of supply side vs. socialism as if we don’t have the ability to write the algorithms that lead to the best results. The question there is: the best results for who? By what measures? And in here, we twist in the possibilities of differing ideologies, AKA the things we wish were true!

So, the captains of finance and industry — and all of us who “lead” the businesses that fall out into myriads of categories — wrestle with that landscape and try to create workplace environments that lead to high-quality outputs, while also trying to balance all the margins. Margins of growth. Margins of profit. Margins of happiness. And you say nearly half the “workforce” isn’t complaining? That’s AMAZING!

All of that leads to ever more abstraction, which often translates as dehumanizing. We get compartmentalized in the name of efficiency, and we get further and further away from a direct connection with how our own contributions lead to meaningful results. Look, we can’t all be astronauts, but everyone wants to feel their own mission as one that is meaningful to the whole. We have to foster those connections, in a very authentic way, wherever we can. Instead, we often make the tempting mistake of trading the truthful story that we are all connected with the illusion that we are all separate. For the record, I’m certainly not the author of those ideas, but they are the rough translation of every sage piece of wisdom regarding the Venn diagrams of mind, body, and spirit, and how those things apply to the collective WE.

Based on your experience or research, how do you think an unhappy workforce will impact a) company productivity b) company profitability c) and employee health and wellbeing?

Negatively.

The question describes a very low quality of life which cannot sustain a high quality of work. And then what would be the point, anyway?

Can you share 5 things that managers and executives should be doing to improve their company work culture? Can you give a personal story or example for each?

This was the basis of the initial round of questioning, so I am repeating the gist of my response here.

Everyone can sense that “culture” is tremendously important. That it is an intangible thing that seems to compel and propel some organizations more than others. While tempting, it is misplaced energy to try and craft a culture. Try, instead, to think of it as something that is already there. It just needs to revealed. The sculpture is already in the stone waiting to be freed. Songs are already written, waiting to be sung. Nobody needs to take credit. Let it be.

Here are a few examples of the way Tank views internal culture:

• You can’t draft the culture. You have to be the culture. Be the Buddha.
• Know where you’re going but enjoy where you are. Value the ride more than the destination.
• Let everything be about helping people be their best selves. Just that. Detach from results. See what happens.
• Let your culture be reflected in visceral ways. Let it be felt. Don’t try to describe it, preach it, or sell it.
• Encourage people to work with each other — nobody works for anyone. That doesn’t need to come at the expense of leadership and accountability.
• People are the culture. Respect everyone equally; nobody deserves “more” respect than anyone else. That doesn’t need to come at the expense of recognition and appreciation for exceptional efforts and results.

It’s very nice to suggest ideas, but it seems like we have to “change the culture regarding work culture”. What can we do as a society to make a broader change in the US workforce’s work culture?

Perhaps the more apparent and vocal dissatisfaction from the “workforce” is a good thing. It’s less of a reflection of a worsening workplace and more of a reflection of people wanting a more fulfilling work/life experience. We’re speaking up more. Open to more possibility. Feeling empowered. All good!

As technology advancements in things like automation, machine learning and AI further encroach on what we’ve traditionally defined as labor, humans will have the need and the opportunity to more succinctly define what our uniquely human capabilities and contributions can be. What will we do with all this newfound freedom? Perhaps the best word to describe these uniquely human capabilities is creativity. When less labor is needed from the human “workforce”, how might humans benefit from a surplus of creativity?

Those are some seriously big questions better left to the Captains of Wisdom… but you can sense that the “workforce” is responding to our movements along the arc of justice and seeking work/life experiences that are bending in these ways. How that applies to any given industry, business, or “workforce” is probably a good question for all business “leaders” to ponder. It all sounds to me like the clay of culture.

How would you describe your leadership or management style? Can you give us a few examples?

As you can glean from the previous quotes around words like “workforce” and “leaders” — I think these are some of the habits of language that need to change. I don’t think most people, at least not those seeking lives in creative industries, are looking to be led. I think they are looking to grow. I think people that have the gumption — or the luck of timing — to establish their own businesses, or establish themselves as “leaders” within existing organizations, are in a position to cultivate. They may have experience to share and/or exceptional capabilities of their own, but one of their primary responsibilities and opportunities is to use all those things to help bring out the best in everyone they are working with as they reach towards objectives. We don’t have to worry that chaos will ensue. We can trust in the formation of more natural orders.

None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person who you are grateful towards who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story about that?

So many!

I guess, through all the filters of that question, I would have to talk about David Warren. Before starting Tank together, David and I met and worked together for several years at a multidisciplinary design agency called Fitch. Prior to working with him, project assignments always came with plenty of fear for me. Will any of my ideas or work be good enough, or any good at all? With David, our work together felt more like fearless collaborations. Creative and playful. The question shifted to: how good can this be?

How have you used your success to bring goodness to the world?

Oh goodness. Not nearly enough.

I suppose the most direct answer to that would be to talk about some of our philanthropic work. We have done plenty of that working with many organizations: The Greater Boston Food Bank, RFK Children’s Action Corp., The Girl Scouts of America, Planned Parenthood, The Community Music Center of Boston, and The Dalai Lama Foundation, among others.

Perhaps more importantly though, with all of our work, we look to find the ways that our clients are meeting a need, not just a demand. That’s when brands can become culturally iconic within their spheres of awareness — through an authentic relevancy and authentic connection. That’s goodness.

Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?

“… and the wisdom to know the difference.”

The serenity prayer has been associated with religions and institutions — and knitted, crocheted, and printed into near oblivion. It’s worth a careful re-read. If it’s possible to end suffering, this is one of the formulas! It would be a great thing to spend some time with prior to endeavoring to describe a workplace culture.

Which conjures another favorite quote:

“Trying to define yourself is like trying to bite your own teeth.” ~ Alan Watts

So: maybe don’t describe it. Be it.

“To have faith is to trust yourself to the water. When you swim, you don’t grab hold of the water, because if you do you will sink and drown. Instead you relax. Float.” ~ Alan Watts

You are a person of great influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. :-)

These are BIG questions.

Something worth reflecting on when considering a workplace culture is the idea that what’s happening on the outside reflects what’s happening inside. In a rapidly changing Western culture, we seem to be placing ever more attention on all the noise that happens outside, to the detriment, perhaps, of our inner lives. Might there be lessons here that could help us, individually and collectively?

I once co-wrote a mission statement with Susan Logsdon, who was looking to start an organization called “The Inner Awareness Institute.”

It feels somewhat relevant here:

Through inner awareness, we witness the limitations of thought and mind and we learn to trust that our true self & full potential are already present within us.

From this awareness, we can begin to dismantle the story that we are separate and experience the truth of our connectedness to each other and all living things.

Consciously discovering this inner awareness is a required evolutionary step if we are to survive & thrive on a collectively cared for planet.

Thank you for these fantastic insights. We wish you continued success!