Episode Transcript
Speaker 0 00:00:00 Hello, and welcome to the Managing Uncertainty Podcast. This is Brian Strauser, principal and chief executive here at Brey Path In episode 187, I want to share a reading essentially of a document that we use internally here at Brey Path that is entitled Simply How We Work. First, a bit of context before we get into this. This document came about because several years into our existence, as we were growing beyond, uh, a three person organization and started to hire people that had no connection to our history, our previous companies, people we had never worked with before, we really sat down and laid out some statements, some aspirational, but realistic statements about how we work, how we thought about the company, and the environment that we were in, and how we wanted to move forward as an organization. And that it, it was the best attempt, I think, at defining our culture of how we work here at Breit Path.
Speaker 0 00:01:02 It is something that we have candidates read as a part of their interview process before we make a decision, um, about whether or not we're gonna bring them on board or who we're gonna hire for a particular role. We have folks read this document and it, it connects directly to the core values that we hold as an organization. As I am recording this episode in, in Q1 of 2023, we are nine years into Bright Pass History. Uh, we're looking forward to our 10th anniversary and the celebrations that will go with that next year. Um, but it's such an interesting document, I think, and it's become such an important part of who we are as an organization and how we operate. I think it is worth sharing and talking a little bit about. So, uh, uh, without further ado, how we work at Bright Path. We have high standards and high expectations of our organization and our team.
Speaker 0 00:02:05 We acknowledge that having these standards, these high standards and expectations of our company and our team is a challenge, but it is a challenge that attracts and motivates members of our team to our organization, that we expect the quality of our team to be as high as can be expected. We are a mission focused organization and we're laser focused on achieving that mission, and we do not allow ourselves to be distracted by well-intentioned social activism or management fas at Bright Path. We believe in the team and that the team matters. We have no room for those that put their personal agenda or career ahead of the interests of our team or of our clients. We believe that the team is at their best when they're trusted to do creative work autonomously. We believe in flexibility, curiosity, and being direct.
Speaker 1 00:02:59 We create systems and processes to standardize and improve our work, but we don't, however, demean ourselves by creating busy work and bureaucracy. We believe in an environment of continuous learning, constantly seeking the expansion of our knowledge, working with our partners and with academics who are better than we are in order to deepen our expertise. We believe that growing as subject matter experts and leaders is a requirement at Brey Path, not just something that we're encouraged to do. We believe in directness in speaking candidly, from our expertise to give our clients the best possible advice for the challenges they face, but never forgetting that we must balance that directness with empathy when warranted. We believe in meritocracy. We know that internal politics and coffee statuses are just bullshit. Our clients care about the results that we're able to help them achieve by applying our expertise to their specific strategic challenge.
Speaker 1 00:04:03 At Breit Path, we are in the expertise business. We believe in being on the leading edge of edge of strategic thought in our chosen domains of practice, and we try to work in public sharing our thought leadership to improve our field, but also to attract and inspire our current and future clients. We believe that asynchronous communication beats email status reports or an ineffective bullshit meeting every single time. We think that traditional project management is nuts. We use technology and radically transparent communication to keep our work on track and our stakeholders up to date. We track our client engagements, our internal projects and tasks in notion. We document our processes and notes collaboratively in notion. We record and transcribe our meetings using a VMA, and we share all of this information transparently with our team, with our partners and our clients rather than send status reports.
Speaker 1 00:05:01 Will we believe that geography is immaterial, that great talent can work anywhere and fully participate with the rest of the team? We know that communicating as much possible, as much as possible is critical. It's the oxygen for a distributed company like ours. We don't employ leaders and we won't employ leaders who cannot lead employees that work remotely. We have no butts and seats requirement at Bright Path that's imposed by insecure leaders. We will not work with assholes. We believe in treating others with respect, our team, our vendors, our partners, and our clients, and we will fire clients, vendors and partners who mistreat our people, who demean our expertise or who are just not a good fit for us to work with. We believe that our work matters or we don't want to do it. We don't create dusty things and plans that sit on shelves.
Speaker 2 00:05:56 We believe in specific, defined and simple processes, not 300 page monsters that no one wants to use or ever read. And finally, we believe that resiliency is a multifaceted beast and it requires expertise and leadership for success. We believe that resiliency is not just physical security, information security, business continuity, crisis communications, or crisis management. It's a cross organizational capability that must be championed and governed to be successful within your organization. There are a number of articles and books and podcasts and videos that have influenced our thinking around how we work. Those include works from David Maister, from Ben Horowitz, from Blair Ins, David C. Baker, Gino Wickman, Mike Malowitz, Alan Weiss, Gavin De Becker, Roger Martin, Brian Zanda, Jason Fried, and Josh Burnoff. That's a little bit about how we work here at Breit Path. I hope you found it entertaining and interesting and I hope you learned something from it. That's it for this edition of The Managing Uncertainty Podcast. We'll be back next week with another new episode. Be well.
