How to build AI-enabled solutions - Quarterly Publication - Ed. 01 - Flipbook - Page 19
How to build AI-enabled solutions
CULTURE
management as a critical discipline to scale.
SCALING CULTURE AS
COMPANIES SCALE
BY JORDAN BANKS (PRESIDENT, ROGERS MEDIA)
WHAT MAKES AN ENTREPRENEUR
The majority of people that I get
to know and I talk to about their
entrepreneurial journeys, they
identify an entrepreneur as a
vocation - that’s what they do.
But, to me, being an entrepreneur is much more about the
ethos, the essence of who you
are. I like to build. I like to create.
I like to have impact. I work hard.
I’m judicious. I’m scrappy.
That’s the essence to
me of an entrepreneur. And
whether you
employ that
ethos and
those abilities and
characteristics by starting your own business, or
whether you decide, you know what, I’m much more
comfortable being inside of another company employing those characteristics. One’s an entrepreneur.
One’s an intrapreneur.
HOW TO INCUBATE AN ENTREPRENEURIAL
MINDSET
The number one thing that I think all great entrepreneurial mindsets share is this idea of being insatiably curious. The best people that I work with, the
ones I admire the most, are on a path or on a mission
to satiate a big curiosity. And so I’m always asking
people in job interviews, what are you most curious
about and what have you done proactively to satiate
that curiosity? If you have curiosity in spades, I think
you can be exceptional. Nobody’s born inherently curious, right? The world around you allows you to ask
some pretty interesting questions and figure out industrious ways to go get answers to those questions.
And if you’re not that person today, I would
highly encourage you to become that person. It’s not that hard, right? Walk down the
street, look around you and see a crane and
ask yourself how in the world did that crane
elevate 30 stories to build this building?
That’s the type of mindset that you need.
WHEN AND HOW TO THINK ABOUT
PEOPLE AND CULTURE WHEN STARTING
A BUSINESS
Spoiler: It’s never too early. I’ve observed two
common themes or mistakes in startups: 1) They’re
way behind the curve when it comes to thinking about
talent and mapping talent to the
opportunity at hand; and 2) They
are too late in identifying people
When you do an exit interview and then you ask them why
they’re leaving, generally, in their
most honest moment, they say,
I’m leaving because I didn’t really
have a people manager that had
my back, inspired me and was able
to lead me to where I wanted to
go. At the end of the day, no matter what business you’re in today,
you live in a knowledge economy.
You could be in a manufacturing
business, but you’re only as good
as the type and quality of people
you hire.
HOW TO HIRE THE BEST PEOPLE TO HELP SCALE YOUR
BUSINESS
I’m such a firm believer that you
need to start with people who understand what it is you’re trying to
do, what needs to be true in order
to get there and are a strong cultural fit. It’s somebody that sees
the world in a similar way that you
do, but that doesn’t mean that everybody needs to be like you. In
fact, the exact opposite. Diversity
of thought, skill set, gender and
ethnicity are hugely important.
When you talk about the mission
of the company and ways to align
people towards that mission, everybody has to be on the same
page. It doesn’t matter if you’re 4
people or 400 people.
HOW DO YOU SCALE CULTURE
AS YOU SCALE YOUR COMPANY
I think everybody definitely
thinks about culture in a different
way, but I define culture as two
things: One - how things get done
in an organization, and two - how
people behave when their manager isn’t looking. So ideally what
happens is those two very, very
profound things don’t change as
you get bigger, but ideally you
allow for subcultures to be
created. That can happen
by team or it could happen by geography and
you need to embrace it
because you don’t want
a bunch of homogenous
automatons who are all
reading from the same
song sheet. You want to
ensure that their values
are aligned and that you all believe in the mission and that they
know their part in getting there.
The companies that don’t allow
subcultures don’t scale, because
you get a bunch of people saying
I have no power, I have no say, I
have no voice. I’m out of here. So
the trick is, how do you keep the
meta culture while also allowing
subcultures to develop?
BIG QUESTIONS TO CREATE BIG
IMPACT, GLOBAL COMPANIES
How do you create challenges
that have nothing to do with being
the best “fill in the blank” in Canada, but solving something big
globally? And how do we create
economic incentives so that you
say the quality of life, plus what I’m
making or potentially could make,
far outweigh anything I could get
anywhere else?
Jordan Banks, President at Rogers Media, is a veteran Consumer
Tech and Media executive. On November 28, 2019, he sat down
with NEXT Canada CEO Joe Canavan to talk about talent and
scaling culture.
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