Last Updated
February 20, 2020
In this Part 2 of our exploration into shared leadership models, we sit down with a team that lead the transition from a single founder/CEO model to a four-person, shared, non-hierarchical co-CEO leadership team.
Guests: Shawn Anderson & Pallavi Sharma
Co-Hosts: Tim Cynova & Lauren Ruffin
Guests
SHAWN ANDERSON currently serves as the Chief Technology Officer at Fractured Atlas where he oversees the organization's software development operations. In that role, he serves as one of the four members of the organization's non-hierarchical leadership team. Prior to joining Fractured Atlas Shawn was a founding partner at Gemini SBS, where he managed the development of web applications for a number of U.S. Department of Education funded projects including the Federal Resource Center, the Regional Resource Center Program, the Family Center on Technology and Disability, and the Technical Assistance Coordination Center. He Holds a B.A. in user interface design from Hampshire College.
PALLAVI SHARMA currently serves as the Chief Program Officer of Fractured Atlas where she oversees the team responsible for program strategy and growth, product development, customer service, and R&D. Prior to joining Fractured Atlas, Pallavi was a full-time consultant helping nonprofit organizations and women entrepreneurs develop strategies, streamline operations, improve team effectiveness, and market themselves successfully. Her previous roles were varied and global, including working at large organizations like 1800Flowers.com and Everyday Health Inc., to startups funded by Goldman Sachs, as well as an early stint in the luxury retail industry in India. After her 16+ years in the corporate sector, Pallavi is excited to transition her skills and experience to follow her passion for the nonprofit space. Pallavi is a voracious reader, an aspiring writer and a lover of all things in nature – plants, animals, even bugs. Pallavi completed her MBA from IIM, Bangalore India and holds a Bachelor’s degree with triple majors in Psychology, English Literature and Journalism.
LAUREN OLIVIA RUFFIN currently serves as Fractured Atlas’s Chief External Relations Officer where she is responsible for the organization’s marketing, communications, community engagement, and fundraising. Prior to joining the team at Fractured Atlas, Lauren served as Director of Development for DC-based organizations Martha’s Table and the National Center for Children and Families. She was also fortunate to serve in various roles at and various positions at the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, Children’s Defense Fund, New Leaders, and AAUW. Before entering the nonprofit sector, Lauren held the position of Assistant Director of Government Affairs for Gray Global Advisors, a bipartisan government relations firm. She graduated from Mount Holyoke College with a degree in Political Science and obtained a J.D. from the Howard University School of Law. Previously, she served on the Board of Directors of Black Girls Code. And in her spare time, she can be found mountain biking or gesturing wildly at the teevee in support of Duke University’s men’s basketball team.
TIM CYNOVA spends his time assisting teams and organizations with the things they need to create workplaces where people thrive. He is a certified Senior Professional in Human Resources (SPHR), a trained mediator, on faculty at Banff Centre for Arts & Creativity and New York's The New School teaching courses in People-Centric Organizational Design and Leadership & Team Building. He is a certified trainer of the Crucial Conversations and What Motivates Me frameworks, and is a firm believer that Work. Shouldn't. Suck. He currently serves as the Chief Operating Officer of Fractured Atlas where he oversees the FinPOps team (Finance, People, and Operations, as well as is a member of the organization’s four-person, non-hierarchical shared leadership team). Prior to that, Tim was the Executive Director of The Parsons Dance Company and of High 5 Tickets to the Arts, had a memorable stint with the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, was a one-time classical trombonist, musicologist, and for five years in his youth he delivered newspapers for the Evansville Courier-Press. Also, during a particularly slow summer, he bicycled across the United States.
Transcript
Tim Cynova:
Hi. I'm Tim Cynova and welcome to Work. Shouldn't. Suck. A podcast about well, that. On this episode we're joined by Fractured Atlas' four person shared non-hierarchical leadership team for part two of "CEO Not (Necessarily) Required." In part one, we spoke with Mike Courville, Kelly Kienzle, Holly Sidford and Russell Willis Taylor. We dove into what shared or distributed leadership is, explored some models, discussed the criteria that's useful for successful implementation and chatted about our thoughts for future exploration. Now we'll spend some time with a group that helped craft and lead the transition from a single founder led company to this current experiment. But first, let's welcome podcasting favorite co-host, Lauren Ruffin. Lauren, how's it going?
Lauren Ruffin:
Hey Tim, I'm good. Living the dream. It's New York Midtown. It's clean and sunny here in January. What a blessing. It's good.
Tim Cynova:
Today's a special day because we're joined by two of our colleagues who help us form a Voltron of sorts of the leadership team.
Lauren Ruffin:
I always think of us as Captain Planet.
Tim Cynova:
Captain Planet of sorts. Shawn Anderson and Pallavi Sharma who help us form the Fracture Atlas four person shared non-hierarchical leadership team. Pallavi and Shawn, welcome to the podcast.
Shawn Anderson:
Thanks Tim.
Pallavi Sharma:
Thank you for having us Tim.
Tim Cynova:
As if there was a choice.
Lauren Ruffin:
Captive audience.
Shawn Anderson:
That's right.
Tim Cynova:
So the four of us have been working together for about three and a half years at this point for that entire time we've served as members of the Fractured Atlas leadership team. However, our foray into shared leadership really began about two and a half years ago when Adam Huttler, Fractured Atlas founder and CEO at the time, began his sabbatical to explore to launching another company that ultimately became what he left the organization to run. Shawn, you mind giving us a once over of how our leadership team is structured? How do we coordinate? When do we meet? Things like that?
Shawn Anderson:
We do have a basic meeting cadence. Yeah, so every week we're meeting for our weekly tacticals. We have quarterly ad hoc scheduled, so meetings that are beyond the tactics. We used to do quarterly off-sites. Those have turned more into once or twice a year now though.
Lauren Ruffin:
That's new.
Shawn Anderson:
Yeah.
Lauren Ruffin:
Yeah. We were supposed to have one this fall but moving and then it was just holiday scheduling. But I could see us doing twice a year moving forward it seems like.
Pallavi Sharma:
Yeah.
Lauren Ruffin:
Yeah.
Tim Cynova:
Yeah. Because Shawn you live in Denver, Pallavi lives in India, Lauren you live in New Mexico and I'm in New York and we've actually been entirely distributed for quite some time and the organization now is entirely distributed. But it means we see each other mainly online and only two, maybe three times a year in 3D in person.
Pallavi Sharma:
I just want to jump in. I mean I think the one thing that's important is... Tim you mentioned this, that we had been working together for three and a half years and it was well over a year later that we actually formed the shared leadership team. So we'd already established kind of relationships and understanding of each other. And as far as how the team got structured, I mean it was just an organic thing. We were the four kind of leaders or whatever you want to call it off the functional/operational areas in the organization.
Pallavi Sharma:
And it made logical sense for us to kind of come together to form the shared leadership team. Even though we may not have formal or we may not stick to the formal schedule all the time, I mean I think we have such a great relationship with each other that we're able to communicate anytime we need to and all the time we need to address things. So the formal meetings I think are more time that we require when there's really something significant that we need to discuss and otherwise we have a strong enough relationship that we can discuss things on the fly.
Tim Cynova:
Yeah, we have our Slack channel and then impromptu zoom meetings in other exchanges.
Tim Cynova:
We've all been in other organizations, we've all been in leadership positions in other organizations. How does the shared leadership model that we're experimenting with differ from a leadership team model in a maybe traditionally hierarchical organization where there is one CEO?
Pallavi Sharma:
I mean, I'd say the first thing that always... I mean as cliche as it sounds, they always say it's lonely at the top. And that I think has always been my biggest concern in any leadership position I've been in. There never really is someone that you can be completely open, honest, candid with. Someone that you can trust to help you through some of the challenging times that the organization or your team might be going through. So I think the biggest advantage I feel in this shared leadership model is we have that. We have that support system, we have people that we can talk to and share even if we're not looking for specific input. Just being able to open up to someone who gets it and understands it and can contribute to solving it. That's a pretty amazing feeling.
Shawn Anderson:
Yeah, I would agree. I mean, in the tough moments, it's so much easier when you're not alone. Just having someone to say, "Hey, you're sharing in this pain, right?" They're like, "Yes." That's a big difference. I felt what it's like to be alone in the tough situations and there was really no place to turn. It's nice to have a team of people you can count on.
Lauren Ruffin:
Yeah. And I think that people will tell you you can find that support network outside of here. They'll say like, "Find a mentor or go have a drink with someone at another organization."
Shawn Anderson:
Not the same thing.
Lauren Ruffin:
No. I mean you need somebody to complain to in your organization about the unique situations that are happening in your organization.
Pallavi Sharma:
Yeah. I think the other thing is when you are in a traditional hierarchical model there's always someone who holds the ball. The buck stops with one person. Again, boy I am loving the cliches today. And the challenging part, I always feel like is you need to know enough about everything to be able to make the tough decisions and the opportunity for smart, talented, differently skilled and just different experiences that every one of us has had makes it a lot easier to come together to find the ideal solution as opposed to trying to figure it out ourselves or independently. And yeah, I think that also is a huge advantage.
Shawn Anderson:
We talked about non-hierarchical commiseration.
Tim Cynova:
Where in a traditional organization, right, it's just you. And so you have to go someplace else and people just won't understand it as much and sometimes there's times I just need to talk to someone right now about this who deeply understands all the complexities at play here.
Lauren Ruffin:
Tim, you were at Fractured Atlas when it had a CEO. And you were both you and Shawn, but what feels different now? I'm just thinking you're the only person who's been in your role still with the three of us now. That's a lot of change and also not very much change. So in so many ways you're like a baseline for what the experience is.
Tim Cynova:
There's been so much change that's just been going on sort of naturally through Fractured Atlas that it's tough to separate what might be because of the shared leadership team. Holly, Russell and I talked about this a bit where just after getting into this, then we started switching to an entirely virtual distributed organization. But there are also different changes in programs and people are always coming and going and it just feels like different challenges, new challenges. I think one of the interesting things though when I came into Fractured Atlas was I believe I was the first person on the Fracture Atlas team who had ever run another organization.
Lauren Ruffin:
Yeah. I mean that shows up at Fractured Atlas. The way we're structured sometimes and who we hire and how we hire. But, yes.
Tim Cynova:
And I think Adam appreciated that. Finally someone else, it wasn't the same level of the knowledge of the complexity and stuff. Adam literally built the company type of thing, but I understood what cashflow issues were and what it meant to fire someone and how to go through hiring and all of those things that just as CEOs and executive directors, it's tough to explain to someone what firing someone is like until you've done it. Or when you're going every two weeks to figure out how to make payroll. You can read about it, but when you actually do that thing, you understand the toll that that takes on you. I think that was appreciated.
Shawn Anderson:
So when I first came to Fractured Atlas officially, we experimented with the 10 person leadership model. I never really had the experience of just the pure CEO. We were there for the move towards where we are now because I see that as an intermediate step. First trying how do we distribute leadership in some way? How do we give more ownership and agency to people throughout the organization and not rely on a single person for every single decision? It's almost as if we're in a more refined version of where we started.
Lauren Ruffin:
Yeah, because 10 people is most certainly unrefined and maybe a little bit vulgar. That is horrible.
Shawn Anderson:
It was very challenging.
Pallavi Sharma:
Really.
Lauren Ruffin:
Yeah.
Shawn Anderson:
Yeah.
Lauren Ruffin:
That's got to be.
Tim Cynova:
Pallavi what were your leadership teams like at the organizations that you were with? You worked for Everyday Health, 1-800-Flowers. What were those structure like?
Pallavi Sharma:
It depended on the organization, but typically I'd say for most of the places I worked at, there was a CEO and then they were heads of business units which had independent P&Ls. And I was a head of P&L at many of my jobs. Again, depending on the organization, sometimes you had functional leaders who were responsible for say key support functions like IT or finance. We had legal teams sometimes. That group of business unit owners and the CEO tended to work together to make decisions.
Pallavi Sharma:
But again, as a business unit owner you again, within the context of your own work, you are the head of the organization and that makes a challenging. Or if it's not at that level, if it's one level down or a couple of levels down. There is some more opportunity I guess to share and seek help from your colleagues and your peers. But it isn't the same because the experiences are different for each of them based on what their roles and responsibilities are, their team sizes, things like that. So I'd say this is a very unique kind of structure we have, which is what makes it so exciting and fun to learn and grow from. Most places follow variations on hierarchy that pretty traditional.
Shawn Anderson:
So we started to talk about things we've enjoyed about the shared leadership team or the shared leadership team structure. For the record. I enjoy immensely getting to work with each one of the three of you individually and together. And always look forward to our weekly tactical meeting Wednesday at whatever time we have that meeting. Because it varies and depends on where you are in the world.
Lauren Ruffin:
I look forward to the 6:00 AM ones a little bit less than when we meet at other times.
Pallavi Sharma:
Oh, the 2:00 AM ones.
Lauren Ruffin:
Those are...
Tim Cynova:
Frankly the best.
Lauren Ruffin:
I think the earliest I've had is four. But when you were in Hawaii, you had-
Tim Cynova:
2:00 AM.
Lauren Ruffin:
Yeah.
Tim Cynova:
I was in Hawaii though. So it's-
Lauren Ruffin:
You're right.
Tim Cynova:
And I was getting to meet with you all.
Shawn Anderson:
Give some, get some.
Tim Cynova:
But it's the opportunity to... Already talked about people who understand exactly what's happening and to be able to bounce things off of each other and to be in a place where you can't just slide through. I mean Lauren, you and I've talked about this before, where there's an idea that's dumb. So someone in this group is going to say that and be like, "In the kindest of ways or with the kindness of intentions [inaudible 00:11:00]."
Pallavi Sharma:
Yeah. Let's clarify that.
Lauren Ruffin:
Tim looked right over in our direction.
Tim Cynova:
With the intention and hope that it's making that idea better. It slows down decision making a lot of times if you're just a CEO you do it and you'd move forward.
Pallavi Sharma:
Fall on your ass and figure it out later.
Shawn Anderson:
Disagree and commit.
Pallavi Sharma:
Disagree and commit.
Tim Cynova:
Several of our listeners on Twitter posted question for us and there are a couple that relate to decision making. So Carl Swanson from Springboard for the Arts asks what are your systems or guidelines for strategic decision making? Do you use a consensus or compromise model?
Tim Cynova:
Neither.
Pallavi Sharma:
Neither.
Lauren Ruffin:
Neither. I've been thinking about how to try to describe how we... It's almost a committee report out with recommendations model. If you were to think about how a board works and I won't go that far. But often because we are responsible for our own operational areas, what we do is how do we operationalize this idea or this goal we have, go back to our teams, work independently and then we present. And it's fuzzy sometimes it's conversation but we usually have a recommendation to make. I think we should do this thing.
Pallavi Sharma:
Yeah. I think the other thing is, again, I think because of the fact that each of us has an area that we're focused on or are responsible for, we trust that we have the expertise on decision making in that area. So when we come in with a recommendation and we have to bring the information on the detail, the kind of logic to share about why we're choosing to make that decision. We trust each other enough to support a decision unless it's way off track or it has a significant impact on the rest of the organization or some information is unclear or needs clarification or something like that. Where it's a joint decision where it affects the whole organization, I don't think it's a consensus model, but nor is it a compromise model. I think as Lauren said, it's more of a disagree and commit. We spend a lot of time arguing and our conversations I'd say on not like calm, peaceful. There are no systems and guidelines.
Lauren Ruffin:
They're pretty wild.
Pallavi Sharma:
They're pretty wild and there are no systems and guidelines. I want to be sure and clear about that. I don't think we have anything specific documented, but we very vigorously and energetically discuss anything that we have to make a decision about. And then either we're won over and we're all on the same side, or some of us disagree but agree to commit to the decision anyway.
Lauren Ruffin:
Yeah. And also just because someone's quiet is not necessarily they agree. So given the different personality profiles on the team, we have to be conscious. I think we have actually gotten the point where we're all really conscious of everybody's energy levels.
Pallavi Sharma:
Right.
Lauren Ruffin:
And trying to bring folks into the conversation.
Pallavi Sharma:
To model that, Shawn, what do you think?
Shawn Anderson:
I think there are downsides to having four people trying to make large decisions. There are things that we've decided to do that were discussed again months or years in the past. And I feel as if, if we were just a single CEO, if that was our model, these are things that would have been in place earlier. But instead because there's so many perspectives, even something you're confident in, you could back away from because there's voices that you respect.
Lauren Ruffin:
Is that a byproduct of how decisions are made or byproducts because the way that our unique organization is set up. We have really imperfect data.
Shawn Anderson:
I think that's a good question.
Lauren Ruffin:
Yeah. I think the second guessing ourselves is something that this particular leadership team has fallen prey to in the past and talking about that, how we got out of that. But I think we struggle not uniquely. The four of us are pretty data-driven. We're handed to a certain extent, a product, an organization that just-
Shawn Anderson:
Didn't have data.
Lauren Ruffin:
Didn't have clear data. We have lots-
Shawn Anderson:
We have lots of data.
Lauren Ruffin:
We have lots of data but it's mumbly jumbly so it's really hard to see. It's hard to use data to back up your decisions and I don't know if even one person would have followed their gut to the point that they would have been able to make the decisions that we've had to make.
Pallavi Sharma:
Right.
Lauren Ruffin:
It would have taken a special kind of leader to be able to in the midst of so much change, be able to make some of the decisions we've made without given the status of what we knew to be true 100%.
Shawn Anderson:
I think we're all cognizant of the fact that we were part of the change.
Lauren Ruffin:
Yeah. Right.
Shawn Anderson:
So that brings in some amount of caution I'd imagine and wanting to, can you overdo it?
Lauren Ruffin:
Yeah.
Pallavi Sharma:
The other thing I would say is just because of, as you mentioned Lauren, the number of changes and the pace of changes, sometimes it becomes tricky to kind of sift apart and say, "Wait, this thing is still a priority because so much has shifted since we last talked about it." And I think that's another thing that maybe trips us up a little bit. It's like, "Oh crap, here's a new list of priorities that we have to look at." And the list we were looking at a few weeks ago may not be relevant anymore. And I think that's something that we constantly face where we're rethinking earlier decisions or maybe going back on earlier decisions just because something new has come up that seems more important.
Shawn Anderson:
Yeah, and having four leaders operating on parallel tracks, there's so much more room for things to change.
Pallavi Sharma:
Right.
Lauren Ruffin:
Our decisions are better.
Pallavi Sharma:
Yeah.
Lauren Ruffin:
Thinking back to the single CEO thing, we do make better decisions and often way more quickly. I do think that.
Pallavi Sharma:
Yeah. I also want to say, I mean going back to the original question, we've had this question so many times. I think if someone else said, "Hey, what about the gray fuzzy area where it's not clear which way to go?" I honestly cannot think of a single example where we haven't gotten to a decision. I mean, this question has come up repeatedly, but I don't think we've ever left without a decision. I mean, again, it might not be a 100% consensus or it might be kind of some folks saying this is not critical enough for me and my team to have a clearer perspective. But literally, I can't think of anything that we've spent an inordinate amount of time discussing and trying to... You're right Lauren. I think we get to decisions well and we get to them quickly.
Lauren Ruffin:
We make the right decision for that moment. There have been decisions we've had to revisit because the environment's changed, climate's changed. But in hindsight I feel like they are better decisions because we fuss with each other over-
Shawn Anderson:
Well, they're going to be vetted.
Lauren Ruffin:
Yeah.
Shawn Anderson:
Which in general is going to be the better decision and that's the weakness of the CEO model. They can just snap all of a sudden switch direction and not have put enough thought into it.
Tim Cynova:
Similar to hiring, you can put the time at upfront or you can put it in when the hire isn't working. And so the decisions might be slower for a four person team to make. But if you look at the full arc of whatever you're making and what's happening, and if it's a single person who makes a decision, then you have to iterate and change and stuff. Over time, those might be shorter in the aggregate than they are in the moment. It might take us a month to make that decision because someone in one tactical says, "I think we need this piece of data to get more clarity on that thing. So we need to go look at that and come back or just let it sit for a bit." But then when we do make that decision, it's been vetted, it's solid. We have that thinking behind it that we're much more certain that that will be the right decision for that thing.
Pallavi Sharma:
Yeah, there's not a lot we've had to roll back either I think on decision making. I mean we've revisited and tweaked but yeah, there hasn't again been I think something that we could say, "Well that was a bad decision."
Tim Cynova:
Well, an early on, six months, maybe a year into our operating as a four person team, we realized that we needed help. We realized that we were spinning in our meetings and weren't moving forward. And we were coming back and revisiting things that some or all of us thought had been resolved. I guess probably not all of us, some were. The majority of us thought were resolved and we fortunately were able to turn to our board member, Lisa Yancey, who could come in as just she is a consultant. And she was able to come in and parked her board member hat and just be a consultant with us to listen to what we're being challenged with and could say, "Here [inaudible 00:18:54] pull apart the pieces and here's what you should do." Am I describing that correctly?
Lauren Ruffin:
No, you are. I'm remembering that feeling. Yeah.
Pallavi Sharma:
Yeah. We got really stuck. I don't know what happened, but we kind of went into the spiral that we were unable to-
Lauren Ruffin:
That was the first time we realized how bad our data was and we couldn't make a choice. Yeah, you're right.
Pallavi Sharma:
Actually you're absolutely right.
Lauren Ruffin:
That we realized how our data was so poor that it was paralyzing us.
Pallavi Sharma:
You're absolutely right. That was all around decisions, around products and services and the lack of data made it really hard for us to prioritize.
Shawn Anderson:
I also feel like I failed to communicate how absolutely sure I was about the correct direction at the time.
Pallavi Sharma:
Yeah.
Shawn Anderson:
I knew what we needed to do. I thought I had conveyed it, but in retrospect it makes me feel like I probably soft pedaled it. I probably did not clarify the urgency of what we were trying to make decisions on.
Tim Cynova:
There are some things that we talk about that we've realized, "Oh, we're not talking about the same thing." Or we don't understand this the same way, but we think we do and some of that came out early on because we were trying to figure out how to work together. Some of that I think comes from most of the time that we see each other is in a zoom box or we're talking online and gotten really good at saying, I can look at Lauren and know she has something to say.
Lauren Ruffin:
I'm a fairly transparent person. I mean if you can't look at me...
Tim Cynova:
All right, well, bad example. Pallavi, we can look at Pallavi.
Lauren Ruffin:
Who also makes [crosstalk 00:20:22].
Pallavi Sharma:
I mean we all do it. All four of us. There's no poker face.
Lauren Ruffin:
Yeah.
Tim Cynova:
We can look at Shawn and see that. But I think that that becomes part of our shorthand for communicating.
Pallavi Sharma:
It's our version of body language.
Tim Cynova:
Yeah. I read a couple of books on body language by body language experts and they often talk about if someone moves their leg like that, it doesn't mean they're lying. It might mean they are, but it's more data that you're putting into the mix that you might want to explore. And so I think those are those data points for our team. They were like, it might mean that they have something to say or they're just hungry.
Shawn Anderson:
So we had Kelly Kienzle work with the board and our team about a year ago because we were trying to figure out, we had been in this model for a year, year and a half. And one of the board's roles is to evaluate the CEO. And we as a team with a board, we're trying to figure out how would you assess a four person shared non-hierarchical leadership team without it being simply assessing the four people and adding it together. And one of the things that came out of that, Kelly talked with us, talked with the board, talked with staff. Trust that we all know is a trait that high performing teams often demonstrate came up as something that people saw in this group.
Shawn Anderson:
And the question that they had though was, "Do the four of us just have a propensity to trust people or did we go through something together that built the trust or where did the trust come from?" In a way of if not these four people, how might you build that trust? Or does this model just work here right now because of the four of us and what happens when one or more of us start to leave and then someone else comes in? How do you reconstitute that team? How do you build that trust? And I would add as a close related trait the psychological safety that I think we all feel that we have in this group.
Pallavi Sharma:
The first thing I would say, I mean I can only speak for myself is, I've always feel like if you can't trust the people that you're coming into work with when you first come in, whoever they might be, then you're setting yourself up for a lot of work and a lot of headache and a lot of overhead. So if you come in with a distrust upfront, then you've already set yourself up for a lot of emotional heartache and pain and challenge. So I would hope that we're coming in trusting each other.
Pallavi Sharma:
But I think working together, we all are extremely candid or honest in different ways. And going back to what Lauren said earlier, I think some of us take a little longer to kind of process and communicate what they really feel like, but we tend to be very direct and honest with each other. And I think that can only build trust. If we were soft pedaling the issues or we were not sharing all the facts or holding something back, I think that would eventually come out. And that would cause us to lose trust in each other. But we haven't had that situation. So I think coming in with a little bit, for me at least, I came in with, "Okay, this is the group of people and I have to trust you otherwise I'm never going to get my work done." And then that trust just kept building. I think if it had broken along the way, then we'd be in a very different place along the way than we are now.
Lauren Ruffin:
There's an ego thing.
Pallavi Sharma:
Yeah
Lauren Ruffin:
So many people that I know who run organizations, their personal identity and ego is so tied to that organization and the fact that they have a CEO or executive title in front of behind their name. And the way our team formed and I had just started at Fractured Atlas. I think Adam and I worked together for maybe two months, one month of which was spent at the Hermitage. But when it became clear that Adam was transitioning out, my assumption was that Tim was going to step up and do the thing because, I mean why not?
Shawn Anderson:
He's Tim.
Lauren Ruffin:
He's Tim. Why not?
Pallavi Sharma:
Logical.
Lauren Ruffin:
Yeah.
Tim Cynova:
Joke's on you.
Lauren Ruffin:
I was like, yes. I came in to work for Adam. I was at the point where I was like, "I'm probably never going to work for anyone ever again. But let's do this thing with Adam. The guy seems interesting." And then I was like, "We have to work with Tim. Is Tim interesting?" And I was like, "Yeah, Tim is interesting. A little uptight but interesting."
Tim Cynova:
But not uptight enough that I wouldn't start a podcast.
Lauren Ruffin:
Yeah, exactly. A little uptight. You've loosened up. That's my influence. I take credit.
Shawn Anderson:
Why not?
Lauren Ruffin:
Speaking of ego, I take credit for lots of things but I think there was a moment with the four of us. We've talked about this I think where it could have gone sideways because someone actually wanted to be CEO. And I had spent three years in. It's so interesting that truly none of us want to run this organization by ourselves and at this point, I don't want to run any organization ever by myself. But I think that's the undercurrent with regard to trust and candor and everything else. It's because, I mean you have to have the lack of ego to be able to step aside and listen to the people and build that relationship without an ulterior motive. If Tim or Pallavi or if any of us secretly wanted to be CEO, this would not work.
Shawn Anderson:
Yeah. That would set up competition amongst team members which-
Lauren Ruffin:
Which exists?
Shawn Anderson:
But there's no room for that here. If you're going to have a trust [crosstalk 00:25:27].
Lauren Ruffin:
But that exists in so many organizations that when you have different people managing P&Ls and different business lines and competing at the end of the year for a budget.
Pallavi Sharma:
Right.
Lauren Ruffin:
So many organizations are set up for that adversarial relationship between colleagues and just by virtue of Tim not wanting this job, we were all cool. So we can work together and actually work together.
Shawn Anderson:
I mean candidly the 10-person leadership team, there was a lot more of that lack of trust, more competing for air time for influence over the direction of the organization. And that's not something that we've seen with this particular group.
Tim Cynova:
There's also more overlap in that group. And one of the things we found in the research while we're looking at this model was what are the criteria for success? What are ways to set this up to be successful? And the research found that the less overlap each one of us has over the area, the more likely is to be successful. So in a traditional arts organization with an artistic and an executive director, there's very little overlap. You sort of have those two things. Here, we each have our four departments and there's overlap in different ways, but that Venn Diagram is not a solid circle on circle. And in that 10 person team, there is far more overlap and I think that's why you saw that it was because you had multiple programs in that room, multiple different activities and programs and services and departments that you almost could stack circles on top of circles. The Venn diagram was-
Shawn Anderson:
Yeah, that makes sense. I mean I was in every one of the Venn Diagrams, not by choice.
Lauren Ruffin:
You just get trusted a lot though.
Pallavi Sharma:
Yeah. The other thing I think that I'm thinking about as we talk through this is maybe because we didn't found all of these products and services and the team, yet we were close enough to see the details of it. We agreed on a lot of the business decisions and choices. We agreed in a lot of the direction. I think if we had diverged a lot or even some on kind of which way we need to go, that may also have led to some pretty challenging conversations. But I think we were pretty much in agreement from the beginning about what was most important and what needed to happen. And we saw things the same way because we saw it from a similar high enough but not so high that you missed the details to feel that way. Yeah.
Tim Cynova:
So our colleague Courtney Harge submitted a question. How do you use each other's strengths to support the team as a whole? How do you mitigate each other's weaknesses? Who wants to start with that one?
Pallavi Sharma:
I feel like we talked about that earlier. That's the whole benefit of having a four person leadership team that's making decisions together. Is we can leverage each other's strengths, fill in for each other's weaknesses and past experiences. I mean pretty much everything that we're going through, one of us has seen in a previous role or lifetime and therefore can bring that experience and bring that journey with them in the decision making process. So again, it's not one person trying to figure it out in their heads. It's four people who can verbalize and talk and hear things happening when decisions are being made.
Lauren Ruffin:
Yeah. It strikes me that this team with four people or have three people, the ability to maximize assets like your personal assets while absolutely minimizing your weaknesses. I try to be self-aware, but my impetuousness around let's just f'ing do it. Just like, "Why are we still talking about this? I hate this meeting, can it be done? Can we make a decision? Let's go." The ability to pull me back from the cliff, the three of you do it all the time. And I hopefully I pull you all a little closer to the cliff. And the four of us are a spectrum in terms of risk tolerance, processing speed, everything else I think. I mean that's the piece that folks miss and that's when we stop working. That's what I'm going to miss the most. I'm actually terrified to be by myself, with myself and all of my flaws. We might have to keep our weekly tactical [crosstalk 00:29:25].
Shawn Anderson:
It's a support group thing.
Pallavi Sharma:
Yeah it is.
Lauren Ruffin:
Right.
Pallavi Sharma:
One with geriatrics and fooling about.
Lauren Ruffin:
Yeah.
Tim Cynova:
Earlier this week, since we're all in New York city meeting, we went to speak at the new school. Wasn't that a question that someone asked about how you make decisions when one of us isn't there or something like that. If Pallavi is not there. [crosstalk 00:29:49]
Lauren Ruffin:
Right.
Pallavi Sharma:
Yeah. The time zone thing if someone's not available.
Tim Cynova:
Yeah. Someone was asking, I think specifically with the time zone difference between they asked it of you, Pallavi. In India, what happens if there's an emergency in the middle of the night?
Pallavi Sharma:
I think what you said Tim, that really resonated which is one, we've learned each other's styles and approaches to things well enough that we can get to a certain point. But then we've also made enough decisions together.
Tim Cynova:
Over the years, we've learned each other's shorthands and tendencies between at least the three of us. When you pull one of us out, the three of us could sort of play that role, play through that. To work through the issue far enough so that when that person comes back online, they can weigh in at a way that's not like, "Well we need to wait 24 hours before everyone's here for us to do this thing." We can move forward and then it's much faster to then implement whatever it might be the issue.
Pallavi Sharma:
I also feel like we do a good job saying like, "There probably isn't an emergency in what we do."
Lauren Ruffin:
Yeah.
Pallavi Sharma:
Like a real emergency. Shawn, you have some stuff that's on fire but even in the grand scheme of like life or death-
Shawn Anderson:
It's not life or death.
Pallavi Sharma:
Emergency.
Shawn Anderson:
It feels like life or death for the organization, for our customers. And I think that's where when I'm experiencing an emergency, that's where my sense of urgency comes from.
Lauren Ruffin:
But I mean for the most part I thought that wasn't such a sweet question from your students because I was like, "There're really aren't any emergencies in the arts." This is not super high pressure.
Pallavi Sharma:
Not just arts. I mean most organizations unless-
Lauren Ruffin:
I mean most organizations, right?
Pallavi Sharma:
Unless they are working on life and death.
Lauren Ruffin:
Unless you're working with kids or the elderly and infirm in a hospital.
Pallavi Sharma:
Right.
Lauren Ruffin:
Fire, rescue. I worked with someone for a while who was always having emergencies. I worked for a boss who would be like, "Tell so and so it's emergency." And I'm like, "What you're doing is actually not an emergency. That's not an emergency. That's just you have a competing priority."
Shawn Anderson:
You're just going to burn out your employees that way.
Lauren Ruffin:
It's not an emergency. You have something else that's due and that's all it is.
Shawn Anderson:
There's times I think something's an emergency, I just don't tell them.
Lauren Ruffin:
Yeah.
Tim Cynova:
Another question that came in from Twitter is from Daron Hall. How is responsibility and salary quantified?
Pallavi Sharma:
Can you quantify responsibility?
Lauren Ruffin:
I guess that's what we do with salary.
Pallavi Sharma:
Yeah. Well Fractured Atlas we have a-
Shawn Anderson:
Fixed tier compensation system.
Pallavi Sharma:
Thank you. Fixed year compensation system. So the same fixed year compensation system that applies across the organization applies to the shared leadership team. And while our individual roles and responsibilities within our teams might be different, we carry an equal weight when it comes to the running of the organization. I mean all of these places that we talked about earlier about jumping in when someone's out, handling emergencies. And I'm saying this with air quotes that nobody can say are all reasons why fixed year compensation makes the most sense? Again, like Shawn was saying earlier, it takes away the competition, right? We're not fighting to get to that next level because we're already at that same level.
Shawn Anderson:
I think not having strict fixed year comp would make a shared leadership model so much more challenging.
Pallavi Sharma:
Totally.
Shawn Anderson:
I'm not sure exactly how you'd approach it too because all of these issues that we're talking about would be exacerbated when we all know we're not making it the same and when a 990 lists what everyone's making, and that was one of the biggest challenges that we had in setting up this model. Was that we wanted to set it up where there was no first among equals. There wasn't someone who, "Oh yeah, they can sign for the CEO." Type of thing because then it wouldn't be truly non-hierarchical.
Shawn Anderson:
And that created issues with Chase Bank and a lot of different state bureaus where they're like, "What do you mean you don't have a CEO?" So we had to create board resolutions that said, "This group and the people in this group can function as the CEO of their department or of the organization so they can sign for the CEO." Some of the models that I studied in advance, particularly in corporate, where you need someone to be able to sign contracts and filings and whatnot. They did have a first among equals even if it was as part of a shared team. I think that would make it exponentially more challenging to come together in the same way where there's... You could simply be in the room as equals.
Lauren Ruffin:
I think it can happen. It's just a lot more fragile. I was just thinking if the person who managed the largest business unit, our team sizes vary. I have the smallest team managing the smallest budget and if Pallavi or Shawn went out of their way to say, "Well, I mean I'll manage. This is clearly my team is more important." And that could happen again to a certain extent it does come down to who's on the team and what's their worldview and what's their ego like? But I mean even in a situation where salary isn't the thing, it could just be same salaries and that person wants to throw my program area or my department is more important because we do X amount of business or we oversee X functions. I mean if that's what you bring into work everyday, that you believe that your work is more important, that's going to come out in how you interact with your colleagues.
Pallavi Sharma:
I think again going back to the fact that all of us have worked different places doing other things. I think we've also held different kinds of responsibilities so we understand the importance. We've been on the side where we were told we were not the most important or we've been on the side where we believe we were the most important and realizing that everyone's important. And every department and every area is equally important and has a role to play. So that makes it less likely that we're going to have that challenge.
Tim Cynova:
There's also something I think related to the shared identity versus shared purpose focus because sometimes we might get into this is not necessarily anyone says, this is mine. One of us can redirect to say, "How does this help serve our members? How does this help further the mission of the organization?" And that's usually enough to say, "Right. This is what we're trying to pull together to do. This is what we need to do." And that's enough to sort of break from a shared identity, internal focus to an external focus. So when Kelly helped us with our assessment, she gave us a 30 page document or so that had about 17 themes in them. The model represents and encourages diversity, one.
Tim Cynova:
Two, the model reflects our values and mission. Three, the model is effective and efficient. Four, the model enables us to be bold. Five, the model generates collaboration. Six, responsibility is shared and that's good. Whatever number is next, responsibility to share it and that's difficult. That was actually, there's nothing in that to have a board section and a staff section. Seeking an answer from four people is frustrating and slow, but maybe the quality of the answers is better. This model creates more transparency in decision making, makes it easier to approach the leaders. This model is exhausting for the leaders. Every time that it's come up I've reiterated what was said at the time, no (beep).
Tim Cynova:
Every time I say it, I know I have to edit that word out. This model is better than a single CEO model. This model is potentially better if we address vulnerabilities. This model means we might mean we need to reimagine how leadership and board work together. Establish how the board will evaluate the leadership. So I think that's putting a pin in the board likely needs to do more work around what the evaluation process looks like in the future and need to understand why/how these individuals are so successful together. Anything on that list that I just read resonate more than others?
Lauren Ruffin:
I mean the bit about how your model needs to reflect your values. It's pretty early up, so I might be getting it wrong. But I spend a lot of time thinking about business models. And it strikes me that some of the conversations we've had this week even we're realizing we're being very candid about the fact that the model that we currently have, which is a nonprofit model that relies heavily on philanthropic subsidies to survive, is probably not the most innovative cutting edge model for the organization to be sustainable long-term and to really make change and meet our mission long-term. So I mean, and when I'm talking to people in classes I teach or folks come up like, "How do you do this thing?" I think we tend to follow the default assumption around what type of organizations like what organizations look like. So everything from the having one CEO to you go ahead and get your (c)(3) status.
Lauren Ruffin:
We just kind of follow this sleepwalk through this path of starting something and it feels like as a team we've been liberated because of the four of us and over time some of the freedom the board has given us to really dream a little bit about what could this container be? What could the organization do? What kind of model could we set up to make sure that we last for as long as we're supposed to last, which is likely not in perpetuity. And I wish that we'd done that sooner. I wish we'd been able to pull ourselves off the page enough. I mean, there's been so much change and so much work that we had to do to get this point, but I'm appreciative of this particular opportunity to do it now.
Shawn Anderson:
Along those lines, I feel like it's enabled us to be bold. I'm seeing that now and like you're saying Lauren, it feels like that has evolved. A lot of the list feels like it was reaching into the future. A bit of the what could be the aspirations for this model and I think some of that is starting to crystallize more now.
Pallavi Sharma:
Yeah. For all the positives I think, I mean the one thing, maybe it's because you emphasized them. But I'm thinking about a difficult aspect of it and for all the positives of sharing, the decision making and having someone to talk to, there's also an added burden now. In a traditional model, you would only be deeply burdened by the decisions around your own team and then you would take it up to a CEO who would either help make the decision or guide you to the decision.
Pallavi Sharma:
But now I think we take up a little bit of the burden of every one of our teams when we have... So not just our own, but a little bit, a little bit, a little bit of everyone else's burden. And that on the one hand that means that everyone's burden is a little lighter. But it also means everyone's burden is a little heavier. And speaking to the exhaustion factor, it definitely doesn't multiply by four but feels like it in terms of just we are now involved in everything. Whether actively or inactively or just mentally. We're aware of everything that's going on, we're involved in everything that's going on at a conversational level, at a decision level. I mean different levels of involvement, but that's a lot for four people to be carrying as opposed to one person to be carrying.
Shawn Anderson:
That's true.
Pallavi Sharma:
And even that one person, I'm not sure in a traditional CEO model they would be carrying all of those things because they I think that sense of helping share the burden doesn't come into play. I think that's a valid statement or word or whatever that they used is that it's difficult and it's tiring and it's exhausting and all of that fun stuff.
Shawn Anderson:
I wonder to what extent the exhaustion is about the model or is it about the organization and the things that we need to do. So if we were to let's say pick up this exact team and put us in charge of something that had a very clear straightforward business model, would there be the same amount of exhaustion?
Pallavi Sharma:
Actually, it's interesting. I think it would simply because of what you said. You said the things we have to do, it's we.
Shawn Anderson:
Yeah.
Pallavi Sharma:
Even if there's something on your team, Shawn, I'm a part of it.
Shawn Anderson:
Yes. Yeah.
Pallavi Sharma:
Even if it's just a little bit, it's in the list of things that I'm waking up at 2:30 thinking about. I mean we're all waking up and thinking about not just our stuff but everything because it's all in there in some way or the other. And I think that's the little bit of difference I see. So there is the support, there is the comfort of having someone, but there's also the added weight of knowing and being responsible for all of these things.
Tim Cynova:
As we close our conversation on shared leadership and reflect on the model, our team, what are your closing thoughts?
Pallavi Sharma:
I really am curious about how it would work if it were a different group of people in a different place. I mean one of the things we know from all of the research, Tim, you were trying to do is that there's not a lot of examples out there. And I really wish more people would try it. I mean you've mentioned this enough times, it's an experiment. Sure, We'll try it and sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. That's what anything is about in an organization.
Pallavi Sharma:
You try products, you try services. Sometimes they work, sometimes they don't. So I'd be really curious to see if this is a model that can work in other places because there's just so many advantages to it and I think it really shakes things up, brings the organization to a different place and you can always go back to the traditional model. It's tried, tested, it exists anywhere. It's an easy thing to slip back into. But to go out there and try something that's different I think would be an incredible experience for any organization. I'm just curious. I'm going to be watching to see now if there are others doing it and what their experience is like. All those questions about, "Is it because it's the four of us or it's the individuals?" And, "Is it because we came together a certain way." Or, "Did it happen because we're in a shared leadership model?" I don't know the answers to the question because there's no other benchmark to go by.
Lauren Ruffin:
Yeah. Along the same lines, I mean we've talked to organizations who are thinking about it and then decide not to. The shared leadership question, I feel like once you ask yourself that, how can you not say yes? It's the sort of question that would keep me up at night forever. As a board, as a CEO, whatever role. Once you start asking yourself, "Can this be a little bit more egalitarian? Can I distribute responsibility in leadership and power?" We didn't talk about power at all.
Pallavi Sharma:
We didn't talk about power, yeah.
Lauren Ruffin:
But can I share power from a Can I? Like that I, me, am I strong enough to share power with someone else and trust someone else and build this thing with someone else? I don't know how you start asking yourself that question and say no. That to me is the... Tim, you and I have talked to organizations who are curious or to listeners who are curious about it. That's a little shade at you all, you should do it.
Shawn Anderson:
That's a pretty challenging, no.
Lauren Ruffin:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Tim Cynova:
There's a lot behind that that you're saying no to and exploring it and thinking you're going to just turn that down on, keep the status quo. Especially in this day and age when so much of what we're certainly focused on as organization with the field is focused on inclusion, equity, racism and oppression and to say, "No, we're going to still stick with that one person at the top and the hierarchical organization and it's not important enough for us to start looking at how we structure organizations differently." We don't have it in us to do that.
Shawn Anderson:
I agree with that wholeheartedly. I mean, this notion right now of executive power seems to be blaring in your face. I don't know of a better way to start transforming organizations and corporations then trying to embrace some form of shared leadership.
Lauren Ruffin:
Yeah. Gosh, that executive power and then abuse of power. It's a really hard to get to the point where you're abusing your power if it's shared.
Tim Cynova:
Yeah. I think on that note, getting to work with each one of you together and individually is a huge privilege and incredibly meaningful. We won't work together forever unless we do.
Lauren Ruffin:
It's the podcast, Tim.
Tim Cynova:
It's the podcast.
Lauren Ruffin:
This is how we're going to work together forever.
Tim Cynova:
Yeah, at least [inaudible 00:44:46]. It's an incredibly meaningful part of my professional career, getting to work with each one of you in this. And Pallavi and Shawn, thank you for joining us on the podcast. Lauren as always, always a pleasure to spend time with you and each one of you. Thanks.
Pallavi Sharma:
Same. Thank you.
Shawn Anderson:
Thanks Tim.
Tim Cynova:
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