Fruitful Friction
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Audio Transcript:
My name is Alex Reneman. I've spent the last 20 years building a global technology company that continues to thrive today in no small part because we've rooted everything we do in the simple but powerful philosophy of flourishment.
Over time, I realized that flourishing isn't just a business principle. It's a life principle. It shaped how I behave as a founder, how I show up as a father and husband, and how I serve as a friend to my community.
In this podcast, I'll share the core tenets of how I see flourishing through stories and lessons from our journey so you can possibly find applicable value in your own life, work and relationships.
The goal, not just success, but lasting flourishment. Just a few minutes online, whether it's social media or whatnot, you can't avoid somebody talking about culture. I talk about it a lot.
I've certainly found it key to our company's success. But, you know, it's just the talk, right? It's about culture, it's how to protect it, how to build it, how to scale it.
Startups are obsessing over it. Fortune 500s write manifestos about it. And the common view is, build alignment, move fast, get everyone on the same page.
I mean, you even see that at the national level, the global level. It's this, create enough echo chambers so you get to hear this thing you need to hear to be able to take the action you want to take.
And that hides itself as effectiveness, as team, as speed. But here's the thing, sameness can be deadly. And I don't mean metaphorically, I mean literally.
Take the cheetah, for example. And if I knew this before, I'd maybe forgotten, but I just recently was reading a book where it talked a little bit about this as an example for monocultures.
Cheetah is the fastest land animal on the planet, as we know. Sleek, agile, apex, man. But it's also genetically brittle, nearly extinct.
They're a monoculture, basically, I guess, you know, descended from just a few survivors after an extinction event in the past, maybe 10,000 years, who knows how long ago it was. But they're basically all speed, no resilience.
They could be eliminated by some kind of virus or other environment-changing event because there just is no genetic resilience in the cheetah.
And that struck a chord with me because in business and in families and even in small towns, sameness can sneak in and look like strength until it breaks. And I was reminded of that a little bit this week.
We just parted ways with someone recently who just didn't fit our culture. And I think some folks might see that and think, well, you know, here we go. Do we just want everybody to think the same and be the same and all of that?
And it's not that. It couldn't be further from the truth. The real story is, you know, we have a lot of structures that basically engender creative abrasion and engagement in a festival of ideas, if you will.
We have a narrative structure. We have foundries where we pull everybody in the company together to basically decide what's important for our company and voices are heard across the organization.
So anyone at any level can question, challenge, and contribute. It's one of our clearest, strongest initiatives. Those often start with someone disagreeing.
And that's not a flaw. That's our engine. That's our power.
That's part of what makes us magic, honestly. And to encourage that is important, and to discourage that is deadly. And I guess, again, when folks don't fit, it doesn't mean that they're terrible people.
They can be amazing people. And this person was and is, but it's just not a fit. And the reality is there's a difference between conformity and sameness to company culture alignment and knowing, okay, this is your tribe.
This is where you need to be to flourish. And I think clarity is not conformity. We don't want people to blend in.
We want them to belong. And you can't belong if your differences aren't welcome, because we all have differences. And while the cheetah runs fast, it really can't handle change in that way.
And at our company, we would rather, Mount Leverage, we'd rather run smart and thrive when change hits. I mean, I see this in my family. My son and daughter are very different.
And if I tried to make them the same, that would be killer. And I know some parents, we get caught up in that because, boy, it'd just be easier if they did all the same things and they ate the same things and whatever else.
But man, some of that difference is that just, that's what brings the magic, right? I think, at least in my experience, it's been that way.
And so anyway, I think it's not my job as a dad to create many me's or for my wife's job to create many me's of her. It's not my job at Mount Leverage to create many me's and people are gonna agree with me.
In fact, yeah, agreement feels good and that's great, but let's have some spirited debate when needed as well.
And so when you hear culture, especially when you see what's going on in the news today, it's like if you don't feel exactly the way I do, then you're a problem and we're gonna boot you out and we're gonna destroy you, right?
It's that kind of thinking. And boy, I just think that's so risky as a leader in a company or in your family, certainly in your community. I mean, diversity, and I know there's a little DEI stuff, and I'm not getting political in that way.
It's just there's things to be overtaken, obviously, and made a big deal of.
But the notion of biodiversity and the notion of diversity of culture in an ecosystem or an organism, for that matter, when you talk genetically or in an organization, in this case, it's just really valuable.
And so I guess, you know, that posture, that whole posture of a mission-aligned diversity, it's made our company more resilient. And now in lots of ways, you can look at us all and say, well, you're a homogenized group of all the same people.
We're not. There's some tenets that we hold really closely together. But generally, we have lots of different kinds of thinking and actions and biases and all that kind of stuff.
And it's part of what makes it fun.
I mean, we're more adaptable, we're more human, and it's led to unexpected wins throughout the years and tighter bonds and people staying longer term, because they fit in, but only really, not because they're exactly the same, but because they
flourish here. And so, flourishing isn't about frictionless living. That's not it at all. It's about fruitful friction, if you will.
And we call it creative abrasion all the time, but I like, you know, instead of frictionless living, it's fruitful friction. You know, you say that 15 times fast, right?
But it's where challenge and care coexist, where kids, teammates, community members, whatever it is, don't have to fit a mold, but they have to stand for something, right?
There has to be some alignment in what we're trying to do, some purpose where we can align and, you know, not exactly of we're all going to be the same, but there's this notion of who we are and how we treat one another and those things.
That's where the alignment comes from. So what are we about?
And how are we, what's this environment we're looking for, this context, this culture, whether it is your organization or your family or your community, what's the culture that you want there?
And, candidly, if it's one of intolerance for any differences, that's going to be hard. That's going to be hard for you to be resilient when challenges come. And right now, when you look across the economy, boy, the challenges are there.
Now, again, if you are right now just breathing political stuff and everything's political, you're going to miss the message I'm saying. I'm not talking about any single type of diversity.
I'm just talking about diverse thinking, diverse personalities, diverse backgrounds, all those things. When you put that together, it's a hard thing to beat. But again, there has to be alignment, right?
So it's this weird line of walking alignment versus diversity versus homogenization versus this notion of challenging one another and having that fruitful friction. It's just important. So I don't know, maybe your mileage may vary on this.
But for me, it's been a key point. I think what was the phrase that was used, maybe Lincoln used it or they used it about Lincoln, a team of rivals, I think it was even an autobiography written with that phrase, a team of rivals.
And it's not that you want somebody up in your grill constantly, but you need, you know, I've found you need people around that you aren't just going to be yes men or sycophants or whatever. It's important.
So I think maybe, maybe this week you ask yourself, you know, where are you creating speed at the cost of resilience? Where might you need more voices and maybe fewer echoes?
I think if more of us and certainly I look across the news today, if more of us would look at more voices and have this festival of ideas as opposed to trying to shrink the echo chamber down to only the things you want to hear, things could go very
differently in a really good way. Flourishment is not found in sameness. I really feel strongly about that. It's found in shared purpose and courageous differences for that matter.
And it's not about we're going to beat each other up with our differences or wave banners about how different we are. It's just the acceptance, the appreciation of a different perspective.
And that's how you avoid the fate of the cheetah even while running fast. I think that you begin to pick up speed because there is a shared alignment in terms of culture and it allows you to be different while also being aligned.
And so it's kind of crazy. But anyway, that's the message for today.
I hope for you, you are finding voices out there that help support you, balanced with voices that are challenging you, challenging you to be better, challenging you to think differently, challenging you in a way to flourish.
So, hey, I hope with what we've talked about today is interesting to you or valuable to you. I'd love it if you could go in and review it, throw some stars in, comments, whatever you found helpful to today's episode.
And just really appreciate it because again, we talked about it last episode. That's, hey, that's the way these podcasts grow. And I've loved so many of the comments we've gotten from folks.
And I'd love to for others to hear what we're doing here and engage and hear their voice and get their diverse level of thinking into what we're trying to accomplish here in Flourishing on this podcast.
So anyway, with that said, I hope wherever you may be, you are Flourishing.
Alex Reneman is the founder of Mountain Leverage and Unleash Tygart and host of Flourishing w/ Alex Reneman. For 20+ years he has worked as CEO of Mountain Leverage, honing the concept of flourishing and experimenting with it in the business. In July of 2024, he decided to begin to share this idea with others, which led to his podcast, social content, and the plans for other initiatives in the future.
