Nestled in the Winelands outside of Cape Town at the southern tip of Africa is an extraordinary company, a data and applied AI solutions start-up called Spatialedge. When I was first introduced to Spatialedge, they were a company of 85 people. Just over a year later they now have plus-130 people, who they call “data enthusiasts”.

They have attracted investor funding, are scaling exponentially and expanding internationally. They would argue, and I agree, that their success in the AI space, while partly due to the qualifications and exceptional skills of their people, is also due to their unique culture which was developed and fostered by the founders since the inception of the company.
So why should they need Legitimate Leadership? As with any of our clients, we clarify upfront what it is they are seeking to achieve in embracing the Legitimate Leadership principles and practices.

At the outset, the leadership of Spatialedge was crystal clear about their “why”:

In the past 25 years I have not seen a “why” not only articulated in such specific terms but also so demanding of excellence in the identified 26 leaders who were chosen to participate in the Leadership Excellence process.

But Spatialedge is different from most corporations I have worked with not only with respect to the clarity of their “why”. I quickly learned that there are several things that they don’t have which the majority of companies do.

• They don’t have human resources. In fact, those words are banned. Employees are people and the person who heads up the people function carries the title of People Operations Engineer.
• They don’t have KPIs but rather a single metric relating to the savings realised by their clients from the data and applied AI solutions they provide for them. Their only measure, in other words, is “what does what we do, do for our customers?” Compare that with most company scoreboards – a plethora of lead and lag indicators of the results they want to achieve for themselves as opposed to the contribution they seek to make to those that they are there to serve.
• Despite being a professional services firm, they don’t have timesheets. Instead, they trust that each person will give of their best on a consistent basis. They also don’t do employee engagement surveys. As the People Operations Engineer said to me somewhat quizzically, “Why would we? We know whether our people are happy or not by looking at their faces.”
• They don’t put people into boxes based on performance and potential and they don’t use the nine-box matrix favoured by many organisations.
• They don’t have a performance management system
• They don’t have managers and reporting lines. What they do have for each person in the company is a specification of the various roles that they fill. For example, one individual fulfils the role of team leader of a client facing team as well as an internal training team, is a member of the panel that interviews candidates, and leads a centre of excellence. They also have one-on-one sessions on a regular basis – but not between a manager and direct reports (there are none) but between colleagues. The purpose of these sessions varies but they are person, not work, focused.

Given the above realities, I started the agreed Leadership Excellence process with some trepidation. This is because Legitimate Leadership assumes that organisations are not democracies where everyone is equal. Even if the hierarchy is flat there is still a hierarchy, with those in authority exercising their authority every time they ask those, they exercise authority over to do something. The right to demand delivery however comes at a price. That price is care (a sincere and genuine concern for those in one’s charge) and growth (enabling people to realise the best in themselves).

Well, my fears were totally unfounded. The reason: the fundamental shift from “taking” to “giving” applies not only in vertical/traditional reporting relationships, but in all relationships – between colleagues in a project team, colleagues more broadly in the business, and in client and supplier relationships. The crux of the issue in every interaction (and any relationship is simply the sum total of the interactions which take place over time) is intent – being here to “give” or to “take”. Moreover the “give” needs to be appropriate. There are two forms of giving: generosity and courage.

I found that the 26 leaders on the programme were easily able to grasp the intent issue and apply it to their contexts. As a leader there are only seven gives: Care, Means, Ability, Censure, Discipline, Praise and Reward. Only two of the seven require line authority (Discipline and Reward). The Legitimate Leadership tools (a leadership diary, “watching the game”, using the task to enable the player, the requirements for raising standards) were all relatable in their context.

This is a company where generous giving was already the norm. People genuinely cared about their colleagues. They were generous with their time and were unconditional in sharing or giving away their knowledge to anyone who could benefit from it.

Where I believe the Spatialedge leaders grew over the duration of the Leadership Excellence process was in terms of courageous giving. Specifically, they grew in terms of reflecting on, enabling and owning their contribution. They also developed their willingness to disclose and give/receive feedback. They developed and implemented coaching plans which were about developing leadership competencies in addition to technical knowledge. They stepped up to the plate in terms of setting boundaries with clients and respectfully challenging their cultural influence over them.

At the end of the process, we took stock of the degree to which they had delivered on their “why”.

What was achieved:
► Shared language and understanding of leadership √
► Formalised values and principles √
► Clear expectations from leadership √
► Good leadership practice √
► Employee excellence √
► Performance measuring √
► Employee accountability √
► Mitigation of the client’s cultural influences √
► Expedited maturation of employees X

Going forward, the company is now committed to a Leadership Excellence process for the next batch of leaders as well as an Employee Excellence process for expediting the maturation of individual contributors in terms of their intent.

So, can you have Legitimate Leaders without managers?

The answer is “absolutely”, but with one important proviso: that everyone in the business is aligned to the care and growth criteria. Each individual needs to know and expect care and growth by someone else in the business. Everyone who has a care and growth responsibility needs to know who for, and to deliver on (and be held accountable for) that responsibility.

I suspect that as the company grows there will in time be a need to develop a more formal organisational structure, but it is imperative that this does not erode the unique culture that they have so carefully nurtured over time. It is working for them and needs to be fiercely upheld and developed further over time. It needs to be a key accountability for not only the founders and the executive team, but for every person in the company.