brad garland

This was a little team building exercise I’ve done for a couple of different groups.  We did it again today for my company.  It’s a little creative writing project where you write a monologue that includes references to your life and start every sentence with ‘I am from…’. Include family, places, and values that make you you.  It’s a great exercise and something that I encouraged my team to really stretch themselves to do. It’s can be very emotional & I encouraged my team to share it with those they love.  Here’s mine as a example, enjoy:

I am from… a children’s hospital in Richardson, TX.

I am from… a west texas cowboy (dad) & an Air Force kid (mom).

I am from… Germany & the Cherokee people.

I am from… a simple little neighborhood in Garland where as a boy I had a many late summer night with neighborhood kids with our parents wondering where we were.

I am from… a generation of selfish, arrogant, entitled minds.

I am from… an athletic family where you receive no charity points no matter your size.

I am from… a move to the country that was a former dirt bike track.

I am from… a father that worked more than he played when I was a kid.

I am from… a mother that took care of us, gave up her dreams for us, and never held it over us.

I am from… all types of music, sports, and people.

I am from… a few really close relationships where authentic feelings, fears, and problems are revealed.

I am from… being emphatic to people & will use my humor as a way to downplay feelings.

I am from… a wild yet successful attempt at college.

I am from… a wife that cuts through my crap, supports my failures, and is the immovable force in our family.

I am from… 3 daughters who have already taught me how to love all over again, taught me how to pray, and understand that my actions truly have ramifications.

I am from… a “I can do this” mindset when realized I’m as smart than those twice my age or with twice my years of experience.

I am from… technology, security, and banking.

I am from… making the ugly beautiful, or the complex simple.

I am from… spiritually abusive upbringing but God didn’t lose sight of me & brought me back to Him years later.

This weekend I was watching some of the Techcrunch50 video coverage and came across some interesting discussion between Peter Thiel and Mike Arrington. They batted around some different topics but one I found particularly interesting was the discussion of a startup Theil is invested in that is tracking startups metrics for VCs (follow that?) and one measurement they’ve found thus far is depending upon a CEO’s pay can sometimes show the success of the company and I could see this being the case for small business as well potentially. Here’s that segment of video:



The first point is strictly investment driven and CEO aligning with the equity investors but it’s the second and third points that I see better translated into the small or startup business.

CEO’s salary puts a cap on the level everyone else gets paid

This is pretty easy yet interesting assessment but isn’t always apparent to the small business. If we fall into the traditional business mindset of the ‘CEO should make the most money’ than everyone else’s salary is directly proportional to that. I translate that this into thinking the CEO compensation as more of a sales role by which its looked at as ‘commission’ based or more realistically ‘stock’ based instead of hierarchically based. Examples of this are Google founders Sergei Brynn and Larry Page’s $1 dollar salaries. I can appreciate this model as the focus turns more on what is best for the company rather than the person at the top of the organization.

Building something people believe in

Like Thiel mentioned, this is the more important point. I am going through a recurring process for me of questioning the vision, the shared values of the team, and goals for our company. I do this about once a year (assuming no major shifts to strategy) to ensure we are heading in the right direction. I think it’s an important process to go through as I break it down at the company level, business level, and product levels. I want, as I think many small business owners, to ensure our people have an understand of where we’re going and that the entire organization is marching to the same drum. Does your company do this? Is there something that is missing?

The stars aligned, it was a ‘God thing’, or maybe I just got damn lucky but no matter what way you call it, I have rock stars as a development team. Mark, Dave, and Lisa each work their tails off for our company and each bring their own unique perspectives to make Banktastic and this platform great.

As we began building out Banktastic we began, unintentionally, building towards ideals or principles that we believe in. Those principles are still what guide us today and anytime their is a argument discussion about doing something we lean on them to make the final decision. If I’ve mentioned them to you before, please proceed past but if not here they are with some detail attached to each:

1) People are inherently good

As we build this platform, we assume people are going to use it with good intentions and not to hurt other people. Do we therefore think the world is always smelling rosy? Of course not, but we are willing to trust peoples good nature first and learn from our mistakes along the way. This has already paid off as people with the expertise to hurt have helped make our system more secure. People are inherently good if you are open and trust in them.

2) Openness wins

Nothing frustrates us more than services that require you to register to read the entire article or be behind the ‘walled garden’ to even see what’s going on. So Banktastic wasn’t going to be that way. You would be able to see all sections, without registration, only when you wanted to be apart of the conversation would you have to register. Why? We wanted to make sure your efforts were recorded and you got credited for that. You deserve to be recognized for your expertise!

3) Community is king

Maybe it’s the Gen Y in us but we don’t like to party alone. The more the merrier we say. People are smart and we want to show that off. So if it means friending up, ‘banking’ things, thumbs up, policing the system, etc. We want the community to be considered in every feature we create. The community is greater than the sum of its parts.

These are our principles as we continue to build this platform. They are probably not perfect but its what guides each new addition into our system. I would encourage every new start-up to have a set of principles that they believe in and to let those principles guide them as they build their product.

What are your principles as you build your products? I love to learn about yours. Have a great long Labor Day weekend everybody!

• I can go without email and be okay.
  
  Limited myself to 5 minutes a day and it worked beautifully. I was able to ‘catch up’ after the week in about an hour. I’m going to start having a set length of email time 2-3 times each day and see if it helps my productivity.



• I suck at really turning it off.
  
  As much as I want to disconnect from everything Internet, I have anxiety when I can’t do even the most mundane of tasks (reading feeds, checking what ppl are up to on Twitter). Suggestions?



• My team are rockstars.
  
  I have been blessed to have a team of people that have the skill set and desire to make my company better everyday. They don’t just cash out when the boss is on vacation. They are always looking to make what we’re trying to do mean something. I’m so lucky to have them.



• I need to keep focused on what makes me happy.
  
  I think a lot of us end up having jobs that we do just to collect the check and that’s fine for the short term but over the long haul it never truly satisfies. This ties into my #2 but I missed working this past week because I enjoy it and the people I work with so much.



• Push to be even more transparent
  
  This isn’t a realization I had just this week but a personal development goal I want to improve even more on. Many say that I’m too transparent and as a CEO you need to be careful on what you say. I disagree. I have gotten more respect and support for being open than if I kept it to myself. I just want to try and be even more transparent even if that means exposing vulnerabilities.

Alrighty, it’s time to turn off the ‘vacation responder’ and get back to work!

I know this title is a bit of a ‘no brainer’ but it’s not as easy to know when to implement it.

Last week we had a 4-day retreat in Angelfire, NM. We planned half of it play and half work. We structured it in a way that it was a little bit of both each day and I think it went very well and based on the post-retreat surveys, so did everyone else. The one thing that gave me a little headache was the idea I came up with on doing a feedback form where you go through a survey and fill out one constructive criticism and one affirmation for each person in the team. Everyone was also required to give a company criticism and praise as well.

The exercise seemed pretty straight forward but I did get a few people come up to me and say they didn’t feel comfortable doing the survey. I assured them that it would be fine and to just remember to be constructive and not directly rude. So after each person completed the feedback form my next strategic decision was when to give it to them. I didn’t want it to be a major part of the retreat and I didn’t want to give it to them at the end of the retreat because it might end up as a bad taste in their mouths for the entire thing.

So how did I handle it?

Well, I did it in between a couple of ‘fun’ parts. Using that sandwich concept of feedback (Positive/Criticism/Positive). We put together a fun twenty question survey to learn more about the team. We went through that, had some laughs, and then just afterwards, I presented the feedback form to the team. Before handing them out, I prefaced everything with I thought everyone did a wonderful job on the criticism parts and that I was the only one that reviewed them all but only briefly to ensure no one went off on someone (which no one did). Another positive, IMO, was the form was completely anonymous. So I passed forms out, that only included that individuals praises and critics and what everyone put for the company feedback, too. I told everyone that this was just for them and I didn’t have any plans to go through this in any details unless they just wanted to and that’s how we ended our day. The rest of the night was theirs to do what they wanted (chill, play games, read, whatever).

So after we wrapped up I went downstairs to unpack some and was surprised when a couple of the team came up to me and say how they really appreciated doing the form and it’ll help them tremendously. YAY! I was thrilled to hear that.

As long as you keep that sort of exercise positive and not having it turn into a opportunity to go off on someone, it can work. I think everyone needs some kind of ‘reality check’ every so often, I KNOW I DO, because sometimes we get so caught up in our daily grind that they don’t realize how they are affecting others around us. So I couldn’t be happier with how the exercise turned out and hope to not be afraid to do it more often.