TribalScale 2.0: Restructuring & Resilience
By Sheetal Jaitly, CEO, TribalScale
In The Beginning: The Risks and Rewards
I first started TS because I saw there was a big gap in the market. Organizations struggle to deliver digital products and meet the product roadmap requirements. They struggle to work in an Agile environment. I knew there was a need in the market to help organizations deliver 5-star digital products by leveraging strategy, design, product and development in Agile practice.
Larger organizations really struggle because of the lack of skills, processes, and tools. I set out to help these organizations transform from within, we had a recipe to help up-skill the people within the doors of our clients’ offices. First, we run Pair Programming with them to level them up on a particular technology. We run boot camps to teach them the fundamentals of lean methodologies and Agile principles. We help them fix the waterfall processes and we teach them to work like us in a lightweight Agile environment. We also show them the tools — the tech of the future that will help solve their challenges. We want to show them how to do it on a live project, and to become stronger than Netflix or Amazon when it comes to building digital products.
In these organizations, I saw capital being wasted and no productivity. There is so much money being wasted in the name of innovation. Innovation is not sitting in a beautiful glass office with a ping pong table. Innovation happens when you take bite-sized approaches to solve quick problems and I knew we could help clients do that. I also knew transitioning these large corporations into startups would help them move the dial towards capital efficiency and higher productivity.
TribalScale Takeover: Height of TS 1.0
One of the biggest highs of TribalScale’s five years of existence has been our TakeOver conferences. I got sick of attending conferences in Toronto that end up becoming very cookie cutter. It was always the same people on stage and it wasn’t out of the box. I loved travelling to see other speakers at conferences like SXSW and it dawned on me that I could do the same thing.
We set out to make three things happen with our conference:
1) have a real conversation around innovation; not a sales pitch, but a real transparent conversation
2) I have always said my network is my net worth and I wanted to bring my global network together to collaborate
3) I wanted the world to come and see the innovation and tech scene in Toronto
We did our first TakeOver in 2017 with over 800 attendees. I loved that we were the first major conference to have over 50% women speakers and our audience was 35% from out of town. We hosted three different rooms: one on human innovation, one on financial innovation, and another hosted workshops with takeaway skills.
TakeOver gave us a chance to showcase our thought leadership to the community and our clients. We flew in our global client network and hosted Executive Roundtables around our event.
In 2018 we did TakeOver again. This time we sold out and had 1,700 people attend. We had an even greater global audience and I pinched myself when we had Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau open the conference for us.
The most emotional part of TakeOver for me was the opportunity to give back to our community. We raised money for SickKids and innovative healthcare devices like eSight glasses for those experiencing visual impairment. The amount of support we got from the tech community to sponsor and attend was so overwhelming and hosting another TakeOver is a certain goal for TribalScale’s future.
From Bouncing Back to Being Back: TribalScale 2.0
“The test of success is not what you do when you are on top. Success is how high you bounce when you hit the bottom.” — George S. Patton Jr.
“When faced with adversity in life, how do you cope or adapt? Do you face tragic events head on and then bounce back feeling it really easy to move on or do you get stuck and see nothing other than this huge black hole unable to move forward.” (Maxwell, 2016)
In 2019, right before the world basically closed up shop, we sat down and took a hard look at ourselves. Where do we start re-inventing ourselves? We had a large client restructure their company and exit our engagement and we struggled to maintain our large staff capacity. Flash forward, we entered into a strategic restructuring program to clean up our balance sheet. This involved us having to work under CCAA creditor protection in the midst of the pandemic with our trusted advisors at Weisz Fell Kour LLP. We were brought into CCAA because of our disagreement with our landlord but we kept rolling with the punches being thrown at us.
Emerging from Creditor Protection
Our next step was to define our Core Values. It’s our foundation, it’s what we base our company culture, goals, and work on.
“The term resilience refers to a person’s ability to adapt to and cope with major changes in their life.” (Maxwell, 2016)
Resilience. It seems most obvious in a dumpster fire year like 2020. I can confidently say that our team has embraced resilience like no other. Our key symbol of resilience was in our response to shutting our beloved office doors on March 16th, 2020, just days before Toronto’s COVID-19 lockdown gripped the city and shattered the much needed routines of everyday Agile working life. No dinners, no in-person pair programming, no office demos. Adjustment is an understatement. We built our innovative office at 200 Wellington Street from the ground up, and letting it go in June broke our hearts. But we found new ways to connect, adapt, and proceed. Zoom fatigue? Never heard of it. First awkward online trivia? We laughed it off. We learned to support cross-department initiatives. We learned to convince our clients we’d support them outright — regardless of the bleakness of the evening news. We learned to continue in the face of the unknown. And that’s what resilience means to us.
In his article, John Maxwell talks about the tangible benefits of resilience. They’re not as obvious as they may seem when you first hear that word. “There is no setback so severe that you cannot recover in some way, but it takes a certain mindset.” Looking at the world shutting down could have sent us into a spiral, but having a positive perspective and knowing we’re not alone in this makes all the difference. Maxwell suggests “Failing Forward” — sort of like our motto “Fail Fast”. Basically, don’t let your setback set you back. Try again and even if you fail, you can move forward as long as you keep bouncing back. As long as you keep getting back up.
Anyone can increase their resilience. All you have to do is learn from setbacks and make the decision to move forward. Clawing our way out of creditor protection was the greatest and most difficult feat our company has ever faced. But on January 27th, 2021 we made that our reality. We’ve seen tremendous growth in our company since last summer - all in the hopes we can embrace resilience while continuing to practice our other core values: Empowerment and Challenge & Collaborate. Framed by the countless court dates, the late night project hustle, and our longstanding belief that we can push on, we have created the better and more sustainable TribalScale 2.0 to share with you.
Already, our virtual doors are open to serve you with best-in-class digital innovation. We can’t wait for this new chapter and the exciting projects we’ve already started.
Sheetal is a passionate advocate for Digital Transformation and Global Innovation. He’s led multiple digital transformation initiatives with companies spanning all different industries, including entire re-designs and creations of digital user platforms. Besides being an avid investor and supporter of digital technology companies, Sheetal is a board member of Feed Ontario, a member of Tech4SickKids Council, DMZ, and TechStars Mentor.
TribalScale is a global innovation firm that helps enterprises adapt and thrive in the digital era. We transform teams and processes, build best-in-class digital products, and create disruptive startups. Learn more about us on our website. Connect with us on Twitter, LinkedIn & Facebook!
