Mike Arauz, August

Creating a capable team for every meaningful mission

“Cities have the capability of providing something for everybody, only because, and only when, they are created by everybody.”
― Jane Jacobs, The Death and Life of Great American Cities

Every brand that you love, every company that you have interacted with, is made up of people. Thus, the people inside of the best and most relevant brands and companies do things differently. They operate in a way that sets them apart.

I was fortunate to have the pleasure to speak with Mike Arauz of August, a company that aims to helps organizations optimize for uncertainty by emphasizing agility and experimentation.

For the whole interview, you can listen to it here.

Here’s what I learned:

Organizations tend to get in their own way and create unnecessary resistance: There are patterns that can be learned from and strategies that can be implemented, to make working together more effective and more impactful.

The purpose of purpose: The word purpose gets thrown around a lot but — what does it mean? how does it come to life? Its a magnet that helps pull people together, helps you point your compass in the right direction. It is the balance between specificity (helps people know what to say no to), and adaptivity (inspire people experiment and explore).

Organized to learn vs Organized to execute: Industrial age = organized to execute, competitive advantage was built through executing better. Now, execution is easier, thus you have to allow for other ways to create and capture value — this is through invention and innovation, wholly new approaches to things which requires a new mindset and approach or learning.

Speed & Quality: Is about getting over the anxiety of making lots of low quality things out in the wild, in order to learn so that we can create long term high quality — building to think.

External Transparency vs Internal Transparency: Like people on the individual level, orgs feel fulfillment from the inside out. Thus, transparency on the inside is just as valuable, if not more valuable than transparency on the outside of an org. This made me think a lot about Ray Dalio and his idea meritocracy.

Brands as identity currency: Brands play a key role in expressing who we are.

Giving everyone a voice: Great organizations, just like great cities are built by giving everyone a voice- no matter their background, color or creed. This is just the start and the future must be a place of inclusion and meritocracy.

The answers are never right in a changing world …we must create tools to adapt vs tools to execute.

For the whole interview, you can listen to it here, where we discuss all of the above and much more in depth.