Ignite Culture

Take Cali Stonebridge’s successful Atlanta architecture business, which hit $25 million in revenue last year. The firm should have been pushing through the expected challenges of the teen/young-adult lifecycle phase, but instead it was toddling through a labyrinth of problems that smaller, younger companies often navigate. Cali and her team had been so busy growing and doing the work that they had overlooked many of the foundational steps necessary to grow a strong team and culture. Even at this stage in the company’s lifecycle, Cali was still the head architect, CEO, head of sales, and main point of contact for all premier clients. She was playing Atlas, and the burden was no longer sustainable.

When we were invited in to assess her team and company culture, we immediately saw the problem. All eight members of her executive team were motivated by one thing: design. Their work was stellar, steady, and conscientious but lacked processes and structure. Managing stress, which is a natural part of growth, was also a big challenge for all of them. Infrastructure was lacking, and no one was in charge of building it. In fact, no one was even interested in building infrastructure because they were so focused on the creative aspect of their work. Everything that had brought them to the current level of success—all their good design work—couldn’t help them break through to the next phase of growth. The company was a teenager behaving like a toddler, which is never good. Too much time was being spent managing frustrated clients who loved the firm’s design work but not the missed deadlines and cost overruns. Internally, every couple of years, a few architects would leave because they found the job too stressful. They walked out the door complaining about a lack of support and training. Cali was a talented architect who had hired other talented architects. She had not hired any process-oriented people to help run and grow her business. The company’s executive team was homogenous. It lacked balance. Everyone was motivated by the same thing. As a result, her company was stuck—and possibly beginning to regress. Until we showed her the problem, she didn’t even realize that operational management was critical to scaling her firm. She had a blind spot that was unhinging her company.

Cali isn’t alone. In fact, 75 percent of the businesses I consult lack what I call “organizational awareness” and have at least one critical blind spot. When we go into a company, not only do we uncover missing competencies around important business functions, but we frequently discover that no one has even identified or noticed that these competencies are missing. No matter how many times my team and I experience this, we’re still surprised. Everyone is walking around saying, “Everything is fine,” when the organization is actually stuck or in trouble—sometimes big trouble. At Cali’s firm, everyone was so busy doing what they had always done—being creative—that no one had stepped back to take an honest look at what might be causing their inability to break through to the next level of growth. As we worked with Cali, the first ah-ha moment was recognition of her blind spot around the imbalanced makeup of her executive team. Not only did she need to hire more process-oriented people, but she had to get a talented bunch of creatives to respect the importance of process and infrastructure. She and her team needed some serious professional development in this area. Otherwise, the firm would keep toddling along, putting out fires, and staying stuck as a teen behaving as a toddler. The human system Cali was leading needed to be awakened to become more self-aware and align itself around important company goals, a clear vision, and new priorities. Luckily, she and her team were willing to do the necessary work and were able to turn things around fairly quickly.

Halfway through our thirty-six-month engagement with Cali and her firm, she asked me, “How could I have been so blind to such a huge problem? I still can’t quite come to terms with it.” I was able to comfort her with the knowledge that blind spots and operational dysfunction were problems my team saw every day in our line of work. “Why is that?” she asked. “Dismantling dysfunctions requires awareness of those dysfunctions,” I replied. “But many leaders are too busy and stressed out to see what’s happening right in front of them. They don’t make the time to step back and assess, and their brains try to protect them from jarring realities that will stress them out even further. It’s a vicious cycle but is actually the norm, not the exception. Leaders would rather defend mediocrity than face problems and make necessary changes. When my team comes in and points out a problem, our intention is simply to see the current state clearly, figure out where the leader wants and needs to go, and help them fix anything in the way. It’s pretty straightforward. But people get defensive. They take things personally. For some leaders, their whole identity is tied up in their business. In such cases, emotions often cloud reality. This is why CEOs need to work on themselves before they start working with their teams. They’ve got to break their own dangerous patterns before they can help others. You were willing to do the work as an individual and with your team, Cali, and that has made all the difference. Kudos to you.”