It Takes a Tribe

It seems only fitting that I finished reading Will Dean’s It Takes a Tribe: Building the Tough Mudder Movement in the dark at 4:30 in the morning during a power outage while wearing the headlamp I used while I ran 2017’s World’s Toughest Mudder in Las Vegas. When I had to choose a book about leadership to bring to a book swap at my company’s leadership training offsite meeting, I wasn’t sure what to bring. After doing a quick search on Amazon, this one came up and it seemed so fitting. After reading it, I was surprised at how much Tough Mudder as a company is relatable to my own company, Ascend Learning, in terms of the core value-driven culture, and the focus on innovation.

Something in Ascend Learning that has always been of great importance are the company values. 50% of our performance rating each year is based on achieving our SMART goals, but the other 50% is about how we do our work, or how we display the company values. Skills can be taught and learned, but values are often harder to embody since they can be a bit subjective, and are often easier or harder to tap into based on one’s personality type and level of self-awareness. The Tough Mudder values in the early days of the company were: Have fun, Push boundaries, Take responsibility, Ask why?, Be honest, Embrace change, Accept only the best, Focus on the long term, Look out for each other, and Enjoy the journey. It became apparent very quickly for Tough Mudder when it was growing at such an alarming rate, that finding employees who could could get on board with these values was often more successful in the end than hiring talent out of corporate America with multiple degrees and years of experience. As a result, Will Dean had people who played may roles, easily switched between roles, and didn’t get distracted by everyone else around them doing the same. Everyone had a great deal of personal responsibility, and were taught the habits to be self-critical in order to find the best solutions.

One of the things I found most interesting in this book was about creativity and when we are at our most creative and have the ability to innovate and iterate to the best solutions quickly. The Marshmallow Challenge which asks teams to use dry spaghetti, one yard of tape and a marshmallow to build the tallest possible structure that can support the marshmallow in 18 minutes. Kindergarteners did better than business school students because they were more able to dive right into building and collaborating vs. analysis, discussing who should take on what role, and drawing out ideas. It made me think of some of the tasks teams at my company have been asked to complete, and I feel we could have done so much better if we had been more prone to getting right in to the building/prototyping vs. sitting around making lists of action items that just delayed the process. I love Tough Mudder’s approach to obstacle innovation with a quick-to-build mentality. They adjust as they go and aren’t as quick to completely abandon ideas. The process of choosing final concepts vs. abandoning makes complete sense and leads them to roll out obstacles that make their events very unique (Electroshock Therapy being their signature obstacle).

At our offsite leadership training, we had anonymous feedback from our teams that we had to think about in the context of many leadership concepts. What areas of our management style should we focus on to improve? What do our people need from us to feel empowered to do their jobs well and enjoy what they do? Tough Mudder’s emphasis on living its values in the workplace and giving people a lot of personal responsibility to get their work done has lead to a lot of success for a company expanding so quickly. These employees are fully invested in the experience they are working to create for their customers. They are all encouraged to participate in at least one event a year to experience the Mudder community for themselves. The result is 100% commitment and buy-in. If you’re just doing the bare minimum or it’s clear you’re not fully on board with the values, you’re not going to last long at TMHQ.

I wonder how Ascend Learning can better connect its employees from all departments with its customer experiences. We offer textbooks, learning solutions, certifications, and exam prep which are all very different from the often life-changing experiences that Tough Mudder offers, but I do feel that if we had a better sense of how some of our products were positively changing lives, we all might be a little more committed to what we do every day.