Knocking Down the Walls

Minneapolis is a sprawling midwestern behemoth.  Located on the banks of the iconic Mississippi River, the city is filled with history and tradition as well as some of the country’s best-known corporations: organizations such as General Mills, 3M, Target, and Best Buy.  I arrived at the Minneapolis-Saint Paul International Airport on a rainy Monday afternoon, after a three-hour flight from my offices in Richmond, Virginia. As I flagged a cab and headed for the downtown area, I was filled with excitement but also uncertainty.

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     One week earlier, I’d received a call from Bill Carter, a former colleague who now worked as Chief Product Officer for DataView.  Would I be open to meeting with Aaron Webber his CEO, to discuss a possible transformation project?  At the time I was looking for a new challenge, so I immediately said yes.

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     DataView was located in Minneapolis’ warehouse district. The company had been founded in 1968 by Ray Costner and his wife while they were living in an apartment in the area.  According to Bill Carter, the organization was in the midst of an identity crisis and needed to change. 

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     DataView was a traditional, family-owned, brick-and-mortar operation. The company was primarily known for its financial printing services, which included the printing, formatting, and distribution of financial documents such as annual reports, prospectuses, proxy statements, and other SEC filings. DataView also provided document management services to help clients organize, store, and share information. This included solutions for document capture, indexing, storage, retrieval, and distribution. Other services included virtual data rooms which allowed clients to securely share confidential documents and information with authorized users.

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     Due diligence is important before meeting a new client.  But no matter how much you actually know, or at least think you know, online research and financial reports can only give you the surface details. Companies are more than just abstract business entities. To get a real handle on what an organization is about, you need to meet the people, not just the CEO and senior executives but the salespeople and programmers and everyone else responsible for the company’s day-to-day operations.  Culture is one of the linchpins in a corporate transformation.

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     As my taxi pulled up to DataView headquarters, I got my first insight into the company’s culture.  Before its revitalization, the Minneapolis warehouse district was a run-down area that had fallen into disrepair. Originally, it had been a commercial and industrial hub, with large, brick-and-timber warehouses that had been built in the late 19th and early 20th centuries to serve the city's booming milling and lumber industries. Over time, as the economy shifted away from manufacturing, many of these buildings were left vacant and abandoned.  The warehouses themselves featured crumbling brickwork, broken windows, and damaged roofs. Some had even been contaminated with hazardous materials from their former industrial use.

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     Inside, I was met by my friend Bill Carter who informed me that we would be meeting with DataView CEO Aaron Webber.  As we walked towards Aaron’s office, I got my second insight into DataView:  its offices.  Imagine complete silence as you walked past one room after another, each without a ray of sunlight, every one of them filled with ten-foot-high cubicles, all of those cubicles an impenetrable wall totally averse to any form of collaboration or shared vision. 

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     Walking along the corridors, I was reminded of a short story I’d read in college, Herman Melville’s Bartleby the Scrivener.  In the story, the main character Bartleby feels totally isolated and unappreciated, in large part because of the physical environment in which he’s forced to work. environment. Melville describes the offices where Bartleby plies his trade as, "a large, gloomy apartment, with a dusty and darkened ceiling, and narrow, high-backed, oaken chairs, ranged along the walls.”  

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     Were DataView’s offices that bad?  Not really, but the feeling you got from being there was pretty much the same.  From the expression on my face, Bill could see what I was thinking.  “Steve, this is the culture we’re up against,” he explained with some embarrassment. “Poor communications, no collaboration, and minimal creativity. To make our transformation work, we have to break down those walls and bring in the light.”

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     I immediately understood what he meant.  What I didn’t understand was what I was doing there. Was this where I wanted to spend the next few years of my life?  My initial answer was a resounding, “No Way!”  Then I met Aaron Webber and my feelings of gloom and doom immediately changed.

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     Aaron Webber was an accomplished executive with over 25 years of experience in the technology sector.  He held a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science from Texas A&M University, as well as an MBA from the University of Texas at Austin. Prior to joining DataView, he’d served as CEO of SoftPoint, a business process management software company that was acquired by OpenText in 2011. He had also held key executive roles at Trilogy, a software company, and at Sabre, a leading travel technology company.

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     After the usual introductions, Aaron got right to the point and began telling me about DataView and its need to change.  As I sat there listening, I thought to myself, “This guy’s a dreamer. He has good ideas but no conception of how hard it will be to turn those ideas into reality.”  But as he continued to talk my sense of him changed. He wasn’t just a CEO who did everything by the numbers. He was a visionary.  You believed what he was telling you because he was authentic, which in today’s world is a rare commodity.

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     “So what about you Steve?” he asked after he’d finished his summation of the company. “You’re a professional so I’m sure you’ve done your homework. What is it you think needs to change?”

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     There it was, the question that every CEO I’ve ever worked with has at one time or another asked me, the question that either makes or breaks you.  Naturally, I had an answer.  It just wasn’t the answer he’d been expecting.”

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     “Aaron,” I said with all the confidence I could muster.  “That’s a great question but to be perfectly honest, I don’t really know because I don’t really know your business.  I’m sure you’ve had other consultants come in and I’m sure they’ve covered your desk with competitive reports and financial analyses all of which are spot on. So for me to simply regurgitate what they’ve already told you gets us nowhere.  From my perspective, the only way to truly know a company is to get down in the trenches and learn about its people.  Learn about their strengths and their weakness, about what excites them, what makes them tick. Once I know that, then I can tell you what needs to be done.”

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     Aaron thought for a moment then smiled. “And how do we do that?”

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     “Let me come in and experience your day-to-day operations firsthand.  I want to meet the salespeople, the technology people, the people in marketing, accounting and finance.  I want to ask them questions, not simply about what they think is wrong with DataView but everything they think you do right. It will take a little time, but once I’m done I promise that we’ll be ready to start the company’s transformation from a position of strength.”

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     Aaron considered my proposition then turned to Bill Carter and said, “Okay, let’s do it. Steve, for now, you’ll report directly to Bill.  But if there’s anything you need and Bill isn’t available, let me know and I’ll take care of it personally.”

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     I smiled, stood up, and shook Aaron’s hand.

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    “I’m excited,” I said, realizing that despite my initial concerns this was exactly where I wanted to be.

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     As Bill and I were walking out the door, Aaron called after me with a final piece of encouragement. “And Steve, you’re going to meet resistance.  It’s impossible not to. But when you do, always remember I’ve got you back.”