Maverick: Building a Better Business Culture
And it works, I’ve done it.
About 18 years ago I co-founded a software company. It was the classical two people in a basement with a one-page idea. We succeeded, partly because we weren’t smart enough to know it was an impossibly long shot.
For going on 10 years we have grown revenues and profits every year. We have paid-off assets and no debt. The cash flow model is about as good as it can get (paid in advance, almost no cost of sales, annuity income).
There’s much to be said in the details about our secret sauce and our company culture, how they evolved, and the stories behind the journey to where we are today.
Secret Sauce
As the great entrepreneur, Big Weld, once said, “See a Need Fill a Need”.
- Get the best people: rigorous hiring policies and procedures
- Build the best product: motivate those people to deliver on their talents
- Provide the best service: everything we do focuses on the user
We put the user of our products first in everything we do. Our job is to make their job easier and more effective and efficient. That, in turn, increases revenue, reduces costs, and maximises profit. And we want our clients to be sustainable and profitable, and to contribute to that in every way we can.
The cost of anything, but particularly business services, is only important relative to the value added. We make sure we add more value than we cost and that our clients would be worse off without us.
Company Culture
In order to maximise our secret sauce, we have created a rare company culture that sets us apart for nearly everyone else.
- Pay a percentage of profit to all employees every quarter
- Provide a working environment conducive to productivity (ResPlex!)
- Treat everyone the same (paternity and maternity leave are identical)
- Measure output, not input (work from home, the coffee shop, wherever)
- Trust everyone (assume innocence unless proven guilty)
- Everyone is Family (private medical aid/insurance for all employees)
Cultivating Ownership
Much of what we do, including profit sharing and our output-based policy, is geared around making everyone feel ownership. We want everyone to share in the rewards of their effort, and not just in the salary they are paid.
A profit share, shared equally, says that we value the time and effort of every employee and that they deserve to get a share of the profits generated from that effort. Your skills and experience influence your salary, but your effort influences the profit and everyone can and should produce the same effort.
Paying Well
Unlike the conventional practice in our capitalist economies, we don’t pay as little as we can get away with. In contrast, we try and pay everyone what they are worth.
That means actively reviewing the value each employee adds, and making sure they are rewarded fairly for that value. While we have a conventional policy of salaries remaining confidential (we are working towards salary transparency), the directors are tasked to constantly ensure that if the salary list was accidentally made public, that every salary can be justified as fair and equitable.
Understanding and Supporting Challenges
Not just professional, but personal too.
A classic example us our policy of equal maternity and paternity leave. Most couples are dual income these days, and from experience, we know how disruptive that new bundle of joy is going to be.
Back in the day, mothers often stayed home and raised the children while fathers went to work. That changed decades ago for most developed countries and yet we still act as if this were the case today. It’s no longer obvious who brings home the (most) bacon, or who will do the (most) child rearing. And even if in most families mom still does most of the child raising, research has shown that the benefits of being a present father are lifelong.
And the trauma and disruption of adding children to a marriage cannot be overstated. A matching paternity policy allows new fathers to stay at home and be hands-on. That helps to minimise the impact on the family and therefore the employee and ensures our company feels as little impact and productivity loss as possible.
Thank you Ricardo Semler
Much of our culture can be attributed to the influence of Mr Semler, and his seminal book, Maverick. That book started our journey to where we are today and continues to provide a vision for the future we still want to build.
Whether you’re starting out, have a going and growing concern, or a mature and established company, I highly recommend the philosophies espoused in Maverick. I believe you will be stronger, more profitable, and more resilient, and you will definitely have a whole lot more fun in the process!
