On Servant Leadership

adapted from weekly Notes from the Attic emails I send staff as often as I can get over writer's block.

On Transitions and Servant Leadership:

This week, I found myself talking about my philosophy on employment, servant leadership, and the unfortunate (but inevitable) event of people leaving the company, and thought I’d take a moment to share my thoughts… but for context, I am going to start with a story about my old company. 

As I have told people, my experience with people at my previous company was rough. Especially after we raised venture capital, and our new investors told us they had no confidence on many of the team that got us to that point. We were forced to say good-bye to many friends and colleagues. Too many. As I am a “heart leader” who had built authentic and loving relationships with people I led, this was a traumatic experience for me. 

A Change of Outlook

I knew that holding the guilt of letting people go would negatively impact my ability to get close to the next group of people; and this would negatively impact my ability to lead in the open-hearted way I wanted to… So I had to change my outlook on what It means to be an employee at a company that I lead. But I don’t always talk about it, so thought I would here: 

My Philosophy on working together at ButcherBox

If we are building for 100 years, the only thing that is inevitable is that everyone will leave ButcherBox… including me. So what do we do with that? By using the following as our frame, we are able to keep perspective if someone needs/wants to leave the company:

My goal for everyone who steps foot into our organization is: 

1. That we help meaningfully impact your career trajectory, that you look back at ButcherBox as a defining moment in your career that you can take with you forever. 
2. That we help meaningfully impact your life, whether that is helping you figure yourself out, helping you financially, or with healthy habits. 

How this philosophy drives our approach: 

This philosophy radically changes the way that I approach managing people. I do not look at you working here as “I’m going to get the most out of this person as fast as possible (chew them up and spit them out)”, nor do I look at it like “they aren’t working hard enough” or “I need to convince them to do x,y,z for the sake of the company”.  What I do care about is figuring out how your time at ButcherBox can satisfy goals 1 and 2. Your time here might be 2 months (I hope not!), 2 years (still hope not!), or 20 years… but my goals for you, and our time together, won’t change. This kind of approach, where the focus is on serving you, is sometimes called “Servant Leadership” 

On Servant Leadership

My job as CEO is to help and serve you. 

Our managers’/leaders’ job is to help and serve those below them. 

Non-managers’ jobs is to help and serve others and our Customers. 

If we are all serious about these roles, we can together build a really amazing environment for growth and learning that is obsessive about our member/customers. (see chart below from Motley Fool)

How do we serve. 

I am constantly reminded that people have had very different experiences with employment than what we are offering, so its good to give some guidance on what I’ve seen work. Here are but a few things that I try to focus on to serve others, I list these as things our manager/leaders should also be working on: 

1. Try to help people move into the responsibilities that align with where they want their life/career to go rather than only focusing on just what the organization needs. 
2. When the organization does need something not aligned, be open about it and talk about openly. 
3. Try to meet people wherever they are, and use the organization to meet them 
4. Take care of and support our people however we can 
5. When people seem to be in a “rut” try to help refocus efforts back to the goals above
6. Constantly try to improve what we are doing in service of you, and ultimately our member customers. 
7. I try to make time to have these bigger life strategy conversations, rather than just talking about tactical work stuff. 

How do you serve others? Any tips or tricks? I’d love to hear them!