Sam Gerace

I am ready.

Sam Gerace

When I was a new business person and starting out in business, I had a biochemistry degree, and I knew very little about business, but I knew a lot about science. I was much focused on data and thinking about numbers and business strategies.

Sam Gerace

What I quickly discovered is you can know all of the techniques in the world, you can have an incredible process. If you can’t depend on people, you can’t get anything done in business. Depending on people is all about relationships. That’s why it’s so important.

You can know all of the techniques in the world but if you can’t depend on people, you can’t get anything done in business.

Sam Gerace

Absolutely.

Sam Gerace

I think the first thing that everybody has to realize who wants to foster relationships that are strong is that people aren’t cogs. We are not little cookie cutter organisms.

The more we want people to do for us or with us, especially, creative generative work, the more we have to realize we’re all contributors.

Anybody, whether it’s a caring leader or a business partner, has to see people as individuals and help them amplify their own abilities for them to be able to contribute.

One of the things that I realized early on is we could have a group of people. If they’re all pulling in different directions, there’s no net force, right? There’s no net movement.

In an old game as kids where you all go on different sides of the parachute, and you had a ball in the center. If everybody pulls one way, the parachute goes that way. If everybody pulls in their own individual direction, nothing moves.

Sam Gerace

The best tool that I have for getting people to align and all pull in the same direction is culture.

I think if you have a culture in an organization or a personal culture that you know and that you’re going to articulate, it can become the guiding force or the essence of every relationship and that makes relationships strong over time.

A culture in an organization can become the guiding force or the essence of every relationship that makes relationships strong over time.

Sam Gerace

That’s an important point.

A lot of people talk about culture and sometimes, they talk about it and they use the word in the same way they use fine art. They can’t really define it but they know it when they see it.

When we talk about the culture around here in Convey, we talk about something very specific.

First, it’s not sort of intangible or fluffy. It’s not a vibe or it’s not the office decor. It’s not sayings that we put on the wall.

Culture very specifically is a set of values that we share, a set of behaviors that support those values and then the environment that lets us use those behaviors.

Sam Gerace

For us, it’s very intentionally crafted. It’s doesn’t just happen.

Sam Gerace

So when I say values, and that’s the essence of culture, shared values, we have five. They’re pretty simple and direct.

What’s right is more important than who’s right and that’s our biggest value.

Sam Gerace

Everybody here has integrity, we want to do the right thing and we do it without ego.  We’re not taking credit but we’re giving credit to others in order to elevate their efforts.

The second value is we work with purpose, meaning we care about our impact on each other and the world, and we want to do meaningful things.

Our third value is do something. That’s our bias toward action. People here should be courageous. They don’t need to wait for permission. They can be empowered to act.

The fourth value is we are always innovating and we don’t just mean in the product. We mean new ways of doing business, and new ways of collaborating to create value.

Our last value is we are always learning. We recognize that we not only do know everything. We don’t know a lot of things and so we’re curious learners who seek to expand our knowledge and competencies continuously.

Sam Gerace

So if you know about me, those five values, what’s right is more important than who’s right, we work with purpose, we do something, we’re always innovating, and we’re always learning. You know those are core values. You can depend on that and then you’ll know how the relationship is going to go.

Over time, you’ll see that I adhere to those values. That’s the essence of a very strong relationship whether it’s with another person here on the Convey team, whether it’s with a business partner or a customer.

So that’s what I mean by culture.

Sam Gerace

Absolutely.

Sam Gerace

If we want to apply the “what’s right is more important than who’s right,” that means that when you’re making a decision, data has a seat at the table, not opinions. Opinions tend to carry the weight of the person or “the who” whereas data, information, actual fact, is really the “the what.”

One of the ways we do that here as a way to implement it is we don’t give any value to titles inside the organization. We all have titles. They’re important for people outside the organization to know what our authority is, and maybe what our experience level is.

Sam Gerace

Inside the company here, titles have no importance and so, I can give a very specific example. At my last company, Veritix, we were a ticketing system for sports and live entertainment. So in any given day, 9M people use the flash seat app to get into venues for events like the Cleveland Cavaliers or the LA Kings at LA Staple Center or Garth Brooks at Denver Pepsi Center.

We were preparing for one of our largest events ever and one of our youngest employees, just a year with the organization, said “I have been to several venues and I’ve been observing a slight delay in the entry person when…,” say “Kamala and Luis come up to the gate, and I’m concerned because nobody can explain it.”

Now if we were a “who’s right organization,” we had around the table, the head of product development, the head of customer support, and the head of technology operations, and they were all very confident in the ability of our system.

If we were a “who’s right organization,” they would have said, “Okay, but we’ve been operating really well. We just standard 21M people into events last year and on any given day, 9M people who are buying tickets said they were fine.” But we’re a “what’s right organization. “

Sam Gerace

What happened is people started to ask questions “Can you give us a little more information about where you’re seeing this?” Even though this was one of our newest and youngest employees, and “Can you tell us a little bit more?” and “Thank goodness that they asked because we did as a result of that uncover of very rare situation,” in which our system could have started to reject the people at the door. You would never want to reject any fan at the door, much fewer fans at a large event.

We have to think about each value carefully like “What’s right is more important than who’s right,” and we have to think hard about breaking down even traditional meta force like titles and make sure that we put the value above the title.

Sam Gerace

Absolutely.

Sam Gerace

I think in the 21st century, we’re seeing a shift to a relationship-based economy. The 20th century was about a consumer economy where firms and people were trying to reach you with messages. All of the technology, whether it was catalogs, then mass mail, then mass email, and now targeted ads that follow you around the internet. That was all about the consumer economy. We’re all tired of that and we all learned that that was ineffective. And so, our platform is to create thousands and thousands of weak connections like LinkedIn.

Sam Gerace

I’m sure you’ve had the experience where you have a first-degree connection on LinkedIn that you don’t know and that’s of no particular value.

I’m sure you’ve had it.

Sam Gerace

I called my brother last week and I said to him “I see that you’re a first-degree connection with the founder of WeWork. Would you introduce me because I’ve got a common topic,” and he said, “I don’t know the founder of WeWork.” I said “You’re a first-degree connection on LinkedIn,” and we had a good laugh about how many first degree connections we have.

Sam Gerace

But people who wanted to succeed, especially entrepreneurs in the 21st century, cannot continue consumer economy practices. They have to break the paradigm. They have to focus on a set of small, trusted relationships, people they can depend on in order to collaborate and create value in the world. That’s the biggest tip I can offer for succeeding in the 21st century.