Matt Britton explains how he built a high-energy, millennial-focused organization by hiring people with strong initiative and intangibles, putting them into high-responsibility roles, and allowing them to take risks. He argues that initiative is essential in a globalized labor market where routine tasks can be outsourced, and gives examples of hires who later led major organizations or spun out companies.
So, Matt, you built an amazing organization in mry. I remember just going in and feeling the energy. How did you do it? How did you build that true community of millennials?
You being on the older side of.
That particular group, how did you build that?
And the way I did it is risky, but I don't think you can ever break new ground without there being potential downside. And the way I did it was hiring people that I believed in that had the core traits, but never would have been able to be put in that position anywhere else and let them go out there and watch them flail and actually see how they work. And sometimes they sink and sometimes they swim. But getting that talent and putting them in big situations versus having them run and get the coffee for a couple of years really is how I did it. And now I see these people and, you know, my head strategist is now the head strategy at Uber. You know, I have people running major organizations, starting their own agencies, all who, when I hired, had very little experience, but they had the intangibles. So I think sometimes it's what are the intangibles? Initiative is number one. I think anybody who walks into work every day and expects to be told what to do, those jobs are going to be outsourced or offshored, right? Why would you tell somebody who's expensive in San Francisco what to do? If you can tell somebody in Costa Rica or India or somewhere where you can get cheaper labor what to do? It's just, we live in a globalized workforce. Initiative is everything you want. People who are going to come in and take initiative, and the first thing I ask is, show me initiative. You've taken in your life in some way. No one told you to do this, but you went and did it. Did you write a blog post? Did you create a side project? Did you create art something? Because if they're not going to do that in their own life, they're probably not going to walk into work and say, hey, I have a big idea. But the important part about initiative is then you also have to let people follow through on it. So I had somebody came up for an idea for a software company, and he proved it over and over, and we ended up spinning out. And now I end up working on myself right now because I let somebody actually take that initiative.
