Ryan [00:00] How we endured an 18 month period of experimentation, to a large degree failure, but how that actually served as a catalyst for the growth since then. A lot of it was really trying to understand how we could serve the market at large, which was probably the first mistake in hindsight. But again, it was a valuable mistake in time that allowed us to recognize who we can best serve and who gets the best value and why. So happy to get into all of these details, but really in essence, the idea was building something of scale, but without sacrificing something of value. We very much run in like a quarterly cycle. Like if an experiment can't be validated in a quarter, I think there's a big argument towards what can be. So we wanna be an experimental based organization.

Francois [00:50] Innovation is actually culturally integrated. It's not a business unit. It's not a business function. It is a way of working.

Ryan [01:01] It's like a way of work. It's an operating system. And a lot of questions on how to get your team to adopt AI. And a lot of them will come with the same starting point. Like the leader's gotta be using it. You can't expect your team to use it if you're not using it.

Francois [01:20] Welcome everyone to the next installment of the Nexus of Next podcast. Today I've got the absolute pleasure of welcoming Ryan Osher, co-founder of the Civitas Community. Ryan, an absolute pleasure having you here with us today.

Ryan [01:38] Pleasure to be here. Thank you.

Francois [01:39] Awesome. Ryan Osher is a South African entrepreneur and community builder who's co-founded Civitas. One of the most influential CEO communities for high growth founders in scale-ups in South Africa. You're based in Johannesburg, just like I am. And one of the things that I always take away from our conversations, Ryan, is that you're someone that really has turned the practice of entrepreneurship and innovation into a topic of study. And you found resources all over that you can reference, point at and say, this is what they did well, and this is what they didn't do well. And then share personal experiences of how you've personally derived value from that piece of knowledge, which I think is inspiring. And not a lot of people have that skill. So I think from a listener's perspective, you guys are in for a treat because Ryan is one of those people that's just got a wealth of knowledge. And sometimes he drops nuggets of gold that he doesn't even realize is gold, which is fantastic. So yeah, I'm very, very excited. So Ryan, for today's episode, what are the things that we're gonna cover?

Ryan [02:56] Well, thank you again for the invite. It was a pleasure to catch up. So the thinking for today was perhaps to share a little bit into our journey and specifically how we endured an 18-month period of experimentation to a large degree failure, but how that actually served as a catalyst for the growth since then. So that's potentially one angle we can look at. And the other is that everyone knows that the big enterprises like to move slow. And we like to work with high growth founders, companies that like to move fast. So perhaps contrasting, what could enterprises learn and take out from scale-ups? And perhaps there's some interesting insights in there that would be of interest to the audience.

Francois [03:47] Yeah, very cool. Yeah, that 18-month period sounds crazy long, I must tell you, especially when you're in a scale-up. So I can definitely think that there's going to be loads of valuable nuggets there. And then, yeah, I think there's so much that scale-ups can learn from enterprise. And that's the common thought, that that's the direction of learning. But in reality, tables have been turning recently and we're seeing a lot of enterprises actually learning from smaller businesses and scale-ups more specifically on how you should be innovating and how you should be thinking about growth, about product market fit, about moving faster and how you can use that to your advantage. So very excited to jump in.

Ryan [04:34] Nice.

Francois [04:35] Yeah, so 18 months.

Ryan [04:38] 18 months, man. Yo. It was a grind.

Francois [04:40] What was the experience like?

Ryan [04:44] I mean, obviously you guys didn't set out the day going, you know what? What we need is 18 months of no growth, guys. So, yeah. There was, the growth was limited, but growth wasn't the focus, which I think is an important distinction is that there was like clear intention around what we needed to arrive at and what the outcome needed to be from the work that we were doing. So, you know, we had a super clear, you know, we took a page out of Elon Musk's book and set up a master plan, like very, as we started the business. And the entire objective was like, how do we transition through phases of the master plan? And there was a critical step of the master plan was ensuring that we're building a model that has, that can scale with higher retention rates and adds a lot of quantitative value. And, you know, I think when you're starting out, you're just really willing to work with anyone that's willing to work with you, especially in our, you know, the products of people in our type of business to a large degree. You know, and I think when you're coming off the bat as this newbie in the markets, you know, there's, you probably lack credibility indicators in terms of the value that you can offer, especially at the price point you can offer because you got to justify yourself.

Ryan [06:08] So what we realized was in time, you know, which we started asking ourselves a lot of questions, like which ICP is getting the best value from us? Which type of customer can we best serve? And we'll get into some of the nitty gritty details, but a large part of the experimentation was launching a product that served a different ICP, having a single product, but within that product, serving three different ICPs and trying to understand and also recognize that different stage founders have different problems. You can't just co-locate people together and expect them to add value to one another, depending based on who they're on, where they're going. So a lot of it was really trying to understand how we could serve the market at large, which was probably the first mistake in hindsight. But again, it was a valuable mistake in time that allowed us to recognize who we can best serve and who gets the best value and why. So, you know, happy to get into all of these details, but, you know, really in essence, the idea was, you know, building something of scale, but without sacrificing something of value.

Francois [07:20] Yeah, that's a challenging one, especially when you don't yet have a fundamental understanding of what the size of each of those markets look like. And there's this, especially when you're starting out, there's this intention of just trying whatever and seeing what works. It's almost like the wall method. We just throw stuff at the wall until you see what sticks.

Francois [07:44] And I think that that refinement of your market is definitely something that's absolutely necessary, but we see people making this mistake across the board, right? We're seeing large enterprises making that mistake. We're seeing the bright-eyed, bushy-tailed entrepreneur just getting excited about the world of entrepreneurship, also making that mistake. So how did you guys realize that this wasn't actually a thing? And what are the products that you tried and why did you know that they failed?

Ryan [08:18] Yeah, listen, the one thing I'll also confidently say is it took us another three, four years to really understand who we were serving. So it was very much like an iterative process throughout every one of these experiments. And so some of the products that we tried, and listen, South Africa is an interesting market. South Africa, I think there's quite a big drive on entrepreneurship, but the entrepreneurship ecosystem is very underserved. So there's a lot of entrepreneurs looking for support. And what we realized is there's, if you look at the size of the market, there's just a lot of small entrepreneurs needing help. But with smaller companies comes the challenge of money and time and priority, which can now start to impact the type of product that we're wanting to offer. So what we actually tried at one stage was launching something called Aspire, which is really almost a funnel into Civitas. And the idea is it would be serving a slightly different earlier stage founder, because as I mentioned earlier, it's really important that you're surrounded by people that you can contextually understand and relate to. If I'm speaking about an organizational restructure, because I'm at 30 people, but you're at two, it's too far apart. So the idea was actually to split the product entirely. Then we realized with that particular experiment that one, what you're doing is you're creating a second business. It's not just a second company within a business. So from a resource capacity perspective, a tech perspective with our platform, everything had to be duplicated. The management was twice. And we quite quickly realized that outside of the management overhead, we were just starting to serve a market that, not to say had less value in what we offered, but their needs were different to the needs that we felt that we could better serve. So we quickly realized within that, that, you know, do we need to put a pin in it? And we just culled it quite immediately, quite quickly. We tried something there afterwards, which we launched into what we called Civitas Start, Civitas Grow and Civitas Scale. And the idea there was a similar type of concept, but it was one product that could be skinned across three different segments of the market.

Ryan [10:51] And similar types of problems, but what you also realize there that the bands in which you were working in were too large. So, you know, if you're working with zero to 10 million businesses, 10 to 30 million, 30 up, you're still running into the same sort of challenge. So what's really been critical to our model is how do you stage match people to a degree in which that variance is as limited as possible. So the value that one can offer, but also get out is super close. So this took, I mean, it might sound like a quick three minute story wrapped up, but given, I guess, the time demands, which is also, I guess, in reflection and important, you know, I guess insights when you are wanting to innovate is what is that innovation, what is the innovation cycle?

Francois [11:45] Yeah.

Ryan [11:46] So that's, you couldn't get, you can ask people to meet with you every week. So all of a sudden if they're meeting with you every month, you can only innovate with that same segment of the customer 12 times a year.

Francois [11:55] Yeah.

Ryan [11:56] So, you know, by virtue of that, what happens is our innovation cycles were actually quite large and to some degree, part of the product still rests within a much longer innovation cycle, which is why we've tried to structure a little bit differently, you know, with our chapters now, which I'm also happy to share, but yeah, so it's quite an important consideration, I would say, you know, when looking to innovate to be super clear on the why and the what, but also consider how long you are prepared to invest in that innovation cycle for, because you could land up 18 months later and, you know, not having all the answers, but having a lot more answers. So, you know, perhaps, you know, what in hindsight it also could have been, you know, paying a lot more closer attention to some of the metrics and let the metrics dictate, you know, when it's a projected pass or fail. So you can actually make decisions a lot quicker and sooner.

Francois [12:53] Yeah, I think that's also part of the problem, right? When you're experimenting, especially when you're not super intentional about it at the beginning, because you're just trying things out, right? And what happens is you fall in love with these ideas. And we see this happening with medium-sized businesses. We see that happening with the entrepreneur around the corner, but we actually see this a lot more than you think in very large enterprises. And the thing that's quite interesting about that pattern is that that pushes you to invest more money in something that you shouldn't. The scale of the amount of money that you spend is just very different, right? Where a single entrepreneur may invest 10,000 Rand, a scale-up might invest 2 million Rand, and a large enterprise might invest 100 million Rand, or $100 million in some cases behind some of these initiatives. And so it's quite interesting to see that personal marriage to the idea or that pet type of mentality. And so I like your insight there about creating some distance between yourself by injecting metrics is quite an interesting thing because that takes away a bit of the emotion that you would normally have when it's my baby.

Ryan [14:17] This is where I think this is, to be honest, a big argument for some sort of externalized board where that's, I think directorship might be too complicated for certain size businesses, but at least advisors or an external consultant that's gonna hold you accountable to this.

Francois [14:35] As you say, you can run experiments for ages and I've seen it over and over and over and over again because you've fallen in love with the idea, you think it's gonna work, you're waiting for it to work, there's progress being made, but is that progress sufficient to continue warranting not only the cost, but the time, the cost of time? And I think, especially scale-ups, guys are growing super fast or like they're hiring quickly, they're often facing resource constraints. So I think one of which is money in terms of like the innovation investment, but what about time?

Ryan [15:11] Yeah, time is such a, and it's a double edged sword at the end of the day, right? Because if you think about it, it's not only the actual time that you're spending right now, it is the opportunity cost of not spending that time elsewhere. And so it's kind of a double edged sword where with money you can always make a little bit more money and then re-spend it somewhere else.

Francois [15:37] So you were talking about cycle time and that's a very interesting topic because when you're innovating, failure is just part and parcel of the game, right? I mean, with that 18 month of growth, there's been like many, many, many different failures and it's not about the failure really, it's about finding that one way to make a light bulb, right? And so it's about having more shots on target and then you might actually hit a few bullseyes. So how do you guys think about like that experimentation cycle today, differently to what it was when you had a little bit of a slower cycle?

Ryan [16:17] Look, I think one caveat here, we're running a subscription business. So if we had focused on revenue protection of existing revenue, whilst you weren't growing, you could still protect the revenue and afford you the opportunity to innovate, which I think is going gung ho with innovation without that focus, I think can be quite risky and dangerous. But how we think about it today is, so we wanna be an experimental based organisation. It's what we believe is gonna give us an incredible amount of learnings, insights and probable competitive advantage in time if we can control how we run experiments, but also increase the number of experiments we can run almost concurrently within a confined environment that is not, again, it doesn't relinquish control on what we're trying to achieve. So look, what we think about today is we very much run in like a quarterly cycle. Like if an experiment can't be validated in a quarter, I think there's a big argument towards what can be. So maybe it's less about it being the sole experiment versus what are the other then experiments. And we quite tight in prioritisation frameworks. So we decide what we wanna do. One of the key criteria that we measure against is time to value. And is it a one-off occurring, which I think is an equal consideration. If it's something that slightly longer time to value, but the value is gonna be recurring, it brings a different argument into it. So I think the decision is certainly a important factor around it, but how we typically structure it today is given the fact we're a chapter model, it means that every chapter is operating a local ecosystem with a local team on the same backbone. Yes, there might be some minor cultural differences within each and how they operate, which is also important, but there is a high level of standardisation. And what we try to, you know, sitting at more of like an HQ, like head office level at the moment is to give our chapters permission to experiment. Like if we're gonna be the sole experiment providers, we're gonna slow down everyone. And what we try to do now is we've got a super tight review process within our weekly meetings where we will update experiments. So we're not waiting till a finite date or due date to determine whether the experiment is a success or failure. Whilst it's quite qualitative in the beginning, because I also believe that you don't wanna be too quantitative when there's a lot of unknowns or assumptions that are far from validated. So keep it quite qualitative initially, but actually ensuring that every week there's something being done to try and forward that experiment. You know, and what we find happening is just an incredible amount of learnings. And sometimes experiments run within a week and it's rolled out to everyone. You know, sometimes it might be slightly longer. So, you know, I think the biggest focus for us has been as part of our weekly meetings. It's not like a run as a separate function, a separate department, a separate strategic, you know, alignment session that's required. Like this is, it's actually part of our operational meeting because there are operational action items and deliverables every single week coming out from every experiment. So it's really enabling us to learn a lot faster, which is not my like number one. Like, again, if you look at that, the whole success follows value. I just wanna know it's working and people are getting value from it. And then also not being afraid to just say, recognize it's not working, you know? And there's no shortage of experiments that we could be running. There's no shortage of envelopes to be pushing to understand what could we be doing that we're not.

Francois [20:09] Yeah, I think it's quite interesting, especially when you start having that federated model where you've got HQ with all of their respective chapters operating all over South Africa and abroad. It becomes quite important to prioritize first and foremost, but also on the other side, it's culling what doesn't work. And then this is something that I found enterprises struggle with a lot, is that there's not that permission to innovate where it's almost an expectation for you. It's expected of the chapter to innovate, to experiment, and then to report back on what's actually working and what's not, which is usually the diametric opposite of what you see in larger businesses, where there's like a research and development arm and they take care of the innovation far away from where the problem surface actually is. And then there's this segregation between the cogs in the machine versus the machine builders. And I think that's an interesting way of looking at it. So the question I've got for you is when we think about the experimentation within a given chapter, is prioritization or is there an attribute that you consider for prioritization around leverage across the entire group versus value just within a single chapter?

Ryan [21:44] That's gotta be strategic alignment on a head office on a group level. Because again, what happens is, or what our goal is, if the experiment is proven successful, we wanna roll it out. Like if you're just gonna run experiments on a micro, like the actual impact of that experiment is limited. And again, going back to our prioritization framework, one of the criteria there is level of impact. So it will actually be downranked through that prioritization framework if it is localized. And it's not to say local experiments can't happen, right? But in terms of the experiments that we wanna try influence, we wanna try manage, it's definitely done with strategic alignment in mind, the overall strategy of the group. And it's certainly done with a level of impact. And we would push back. Yes, there's permission to try, but if we strongly disagree that that specific experiment might only add a significant level of impact to a very small group, we'd probably question, well, there's no shortage of these. And the one important point I wanna add in here, which you see it a lot, it's often a mistake. Even scale-ups making when they're hiring more executive team members is hiring administrators, not builders. And I'm sure you see this a lot in enterprise, right? And we working with builders, like it's like a core criteria of the chapter lead, right? They're like builders, they've all been entrepreneurs themselves. So they also in the mindset of building and experimenting and innovating with less of like a closed view, more of a, and they know, I think the culture that we're trying to develop here is that my experiment benefits, you're gonna benefit, you're gonna benefit, you're gonna benefit. So this is like a mutually beneficial experiment to be running. It's not like an experiment for me solely.

Francois [23:39] Yeah, that's a very important thing as well. Because if you think about it,

Francois [23:47] that is also a function of your ability to communicate strategy, right? So if you want to insist on or create prioritization attributes or prioritization criterion that requires strategic alignment, people need to know what the strategy even is to begin with. And I think this comes from Alex Hormozi, ironically, where he says like the moment you get bored of the message and you feel like you're a broken record, it's then when people start realizing what you're saying and start remembering what you're saying. And I mean, this is a proper marketing and messaging problem is that you need to be very, very verbose and you need to be very specific in the words that you actually choose to describe a strategic objective or a problem. And then you need to communicate, communicate, communicate. How do you guys look at that strategic alignment problem but from a communication standpoint?

Ryan [24:55] Look, we monthly town halls, like work super well just to ensure that everyone's together. We bring our chapters lead together every month for like a mini meetup themselves. We have quarterly offsites with each of our chapters. We ensure that we have their offsites prior to ours, right? So they can influence strategy. So they know they can influence strategy and maybe not, the master plan is the master plan, right? So they must certainly differentiate between this is where we're going and this is the model, this is the checkbox we're gonna hit along the way versus there's certainly gonna be opportunities to unlock, but we're not dictating that entirely. Like you're informing us. And we realized that if we do, if we dictate strategy and we say this is what's happening and then they coming with, they're the ears on the ground. Like I've got a philosophy, like stay close to your customers. Your customers, if you have a good relationship with customers, they're gonna be part of your innovation team, actually. They're gonna be informing you of problems they see that you can solve. Our chapters are the customer face, they're on the ground, they are ears. So it would be completely like almost negligent of us to not recognize that fact and not allow them to influence what the HQ strategic objectives are because by virtue of them, one running a lot of these experiments, but they know, they know. We've obviously, our job is then how do you now, which is maybe another point is how do you not only, like it's almost synthesize the messages into a central communication strategy. And I think that's where for us, it creates strategic alignments. It creates strategic buy-in. Because there's ownership from the chapter level, and there's contribution. You know, it's like standard like customer feedback, you know, philosophies as well. That if your customer is giving you feedback and you're executing it, what are they gonna do? They're gonna give you more. And that's a great thing, right? Like the worst thing you can do is just not listen to what customers say because they'll never tell you again. Unfortunately, I've been in the back of a lot of banking products, you know? It's like this thing arrives and you just wonder how it ever got through even like a small scale user testing exercise. Yeah, nevermind. Let's roll it out to the entire country or entire continent.

Francois [27:21] Yeah, I think it's an interesting thing, but that sense of agency is so important because that sense of agency and ownership almost creates the prerequisites, tilled soil for innovation to be sowed into, right? And I think one of the interesting bits here that I'm gleaning from what you're saying is

Francois [27:46] innovation is actually culturally integrated. It's not a business unit. It's not a business function. It is a way of working and it's culturally integrated into every level of the organization. Was this something that intentionally happened or was this something that you saw being done well elsewhere and you're like, I'd have some of that or how did you come across this method of implementing this culture?

Ryan [28:18] Look, I'd say it's myself and Paul have definitely been like massive proponents of this from the beginning. I think the whole Paul Graham 7% a week, weekly growth was a major influence in us in the early days. And it was something we'd measure ourselves on is 7%, at least 7 to 10% weekly growth on our key metrics in the early days. And I think what that force, it's a force function to not only addressing the metric as one or last, but what are we doing next week to change it? And everything, every discussion we have in every team meeting, with every growth blocker, any red metric, the question is not, okay, it's red, it doesn't stop there. The question is, okay, what can we do next week to solve it? So it's ingrained. So I would say it was something that was ingrained from day one. It really was. It's how we've always operated, how we will always operate. And there's boundaries that you also have to operate within, because I think it's a really important point to also note that sometimes things are a no-go, and that's also fine. It doesn't mean someone must feel diminished to not bring ideas back the next time. But so there must be like maybe frameworks who manage that and the communication styles as to why are important so people don't withdraw. But it was a day-to-day thing. It's like a way of work. It's an operating system, operating style that's embedded into the organization.

Francois [29:55] Yeah, it's very interesting, but also so necessary.

Francois [29:58] I think that your distinction you made between builders and administrators is such an important distinction to be made, because I think the direction that the world is moving into is that the builders are going to be the people who create the future, and the administrators are the people that's going to sit on the brunt edge of the likes of automation and AI, right, and feel the teeth. And so it's almost an incentive for an entire organization to retool towards builders, right? And that comes from that culture of innovation, of thinking about how you experiment and enable experimentation on the grassroots level, and then have that surface. Which I quite like. I really like your method of having a pulse check every week, because that also increases your response time, right, when something starts working, it's like, okay, guys, this experiment here, this is gold, we need to roll it out. And so that then optimizes your time to value.

Francois [31:09] I'm certain knowing you well enough and knowing Paul well enough, it's definitely intentional.

Ryan [31:14] Definitely intentional. Listen, it's also a learning opportunity, when you need to roll it out. It's not like you're now going to get briefed on the entire experiment, like you following the progress.

Francois [31:24] Yeah, yeah.

Ryan [31:25] There's a hidden profit here, that's not only the time to value the experiment, the time to value across the rollout is significantly lower, because there's context, which is super important.

Francois [31:40] And I think it's also like in the world, as you're saying, you've been a massive influence on me and the exponential impact of builders these days, in your business. You've also driven me to think very differently of it. And I think within it, it's how do you get your team to also leverage their strengths in their own domains? Because that's another angle within itself, right, is if you can get each of your team strengths experimenting within their strength domains.

Ryan [32:17] Absolutely. I think it's just, as you said, where things are moving, not to say speed always wins, but speed to learning will always win, whether it's something you want to act on or not. And the permission to try and there's no failure, there's learning. These are sort of like old age sayings, but it's got to be done effectively and consistently and authentically.

Francois [32:48] Yeah. And I think the fact that you guys have regimented in such a way just makes it so much easier to do that consistently, because I think that's also part of the problem in a lot of cases, especially if you're in an environment where the failure probability is high, the input requirements are high, the signal, if you measure traditionally of when you know you're actually doing the right thing is slow and low. The signal is just, there's lots of noise and it's difficult to determine what that signal is. So I think there, it's very easy for people not to be consistent and to quickly change to something else. And I think that consistency is the thing that actually compounds at the end of the day and really accelerates you.

Francois [33:46] I'm curious. So from your own perspective, and this is more as a leader growing with the business, because if you're a solo startup founder or a scale up founder or senior leader or an

Francois [34:10] enterprise senior leader, every single day you're growing in the position, right? And we were talking just before we started about how there's no real value in referencing the past because that person's dead. That person doesn't exist anymore. And so I'm curious what lessons have you learned as you went through like the last few months of your journey? What are some of the key insights that you've gleaned either about yourself or the way that you lead that's been an unlock for you?

Ryan [35:40] I think it's honestly, I always find a lot of the values in the questions you're asking. Like the solutions is a million and one, you're asking the wrong questions, you're going to find the wrong solutions. So I actually feel it's the questions that I've been asking myself that have been most valuable. So my example here would be, I think it does require a certain level of like willing to call oneself out on their own BS totally, and being comfortable enough to recognize that you might be not yet at a point where you feel you should be. And that's the opportunity, right? This is probably like self-innovation, if you want to call it, which it is. And I've just recognized that as the business grows, as you mature, as your priorities change, your personal priorities might change. What is that? And it's very, very cliche saying again, what is that version of yourself that needs to change? What is the version of yourself that needs to change? And what skills do you need to embed down within yourself that you never had? What skills do you need to improve on that can help your team feel at ease and comfort to do the things you expect them to do?

Francois [36:03] 100%. Yeah. It's a tough one that it requires a little bit of maturity and introspection to be able to ask that question of yourself to begin with, right?

Ryan [36:13] Fully. Fully. It certainly, it fully does result, require that. And it's again, often not easy questions to ask, but if you're self-motivated, you're clear on where you want to get to, you're clear on the contribution you can make and why, you know, the why, you know, everyone speaks about the why, but it is important. And if it's, I think it's also what can separate, like, you know, you see often start-up founders don't last as being the CEOs in their business, they can't, they don't make the necessary leaps to endure that journey. So I think it's like part of it, you know, and I think like every, every successful founder that I've worked with will like tell you, there's been like absolute brutality for themselves that they've had to deal with, right? And it's required them to ask questions or seek out advice or seek whatever they might need to get there. So yeah, I hope that answers.

Francois [37:12] Yeah, definitely.

Francois [37:13] I think the one difference in the enterprise space, and I mean, I come from that space personally, it is very dangerous to show any form of weakness. And so you end up being very brutal and deliberately very blind to your own shortcomings. And so it's quite refreshing to see like how, especially in the entrepreneurship space and the community that you are building at Civitas, where there is that element of vulnerability where you can actually admit both to yourself and to other people that you're incompetent in certain areas. And the beauty is the moment you do that, there's like three other people who go like, I suck at this stuff you're good at, but I really have a mental model for this way of looking at things. And so it becomes really easy for you as a leader to grow. And I think when I consider where a lot of very, very senior leaders of large enterprises are, it's very lonely. And you almost always have to project this particular image without ever actually feeling like you're part of something, right? I mean, this comes from my own perspective. And so I think what you're doing at Civitas is particularly interesting, creating that environment where you can actually have metal, sharpen metal.

Ryan [38:38] What's interesting is it's the people that are joining that are like, you know, you can take founder one, founder two, they look on paper, they're the same. Founder one sees the value in surrounding themselves with founders because they are willing and aware and open to challenge themselves and others not. So I think what happens at least in Civitas is the people we're working with, they've almost made a decision and they're saying like a great qualifying question is, you know, you're the type of person that's prepared to come in, like learn from others. Like if you're not, if you're going to know it all, then like, you're not going to get the value. But, you know, I also love the whole multipliers framework and listen, I think leadership's changed, you know, I think leadership, I mean, I saw it in some of my, how was this first story? And when I was running, we had a couple of consumer good products that we were distributing with distribution, basically spoke to all the majors, the Woolworths, Shoprights, Food Lovers, the buyers and the heads of department, like love the product, but why couldn't it progress? Because the top leaders in the business were just not prepared to innovate because they were coming to the end of their career and they knew like, what was the cost of innovation? It was their reputation for the last how many years, so it was better just to do nothing, right? So I think you see it in a lot of the scale up, they just, they becoming multipliers of their team. Like that's what they are. They are there to unlock the value for their team. So I think the whole, and I think what that creates is like permission for accountability, permission for responsibility, permission to like, this is yours, like run it. And I think the minute you give that like agency to people, which ties back to a lot of that culture earlier, like real great things start happening. So, you know, scale up certainly adopted different mindsets around it, but they, and it's certainly like probably more of a focus area, given the agility that they can operate within. But there's certainly a lot to be said for the leadership style and the leaders themselves and what role they're playing in this momentum and push of the businesses.

Francois [40:48] Yeah, a hundred percent.

Francois [40:50] When I think about what you said about the senior leaders not being willing to innovate because their reputation is at stake. I think that's such an important challenge that most big businesses are always dealing with as well, because your average tenureship is five years, four years, depending on which function within the Exco you're fulfilling or which portfolio you own. And so it's rare that people make these long-term decisions where they're willing to accept the losses or the failures of innovation today to get the returns on investment in seven years time. And so I think when we talk about like iteration count and innovation cycle duration, in large enterprise it's a lot slower. So your cycle is so slow that if you don't walk in day one and start innovating, the chances are high that the payback period is only when your successor shows up. And so there's an incentive to ask yourself the question, well, how can I reduce the cycle time for innovation and decrease the time to value like the scale-ups are doing, but in a large enterprise so that you can actually reap the rewards from the risks that you're taking as a senior leader?

Ryan [42:29] The difference is in a scale-up, most of the people have been there for five years and they are planning to stay there for another three to five years, right? And so what you're seeing there is the tenureship is longer and so they actually reap a lot more benefits, which is an interesting pattern that's happening now.

Francois [42:49] So you talked a little bit about the why and Simon Sinek has left us with many different mental models. People don't buy what you do, they buy why you do it. But one of the interesting mental models that he's also left us with is that leaders go first. And so when it comes to experimentation, more importantly failure and being vulnerable in that failure, that is a difficult thing to get right as a leader. How do you think about leaders going first, especially when it's not necessarily the most attractive attributes that are valuable in the long run?

Ryan [43:34] Yeah, it's a good question. Look, I personally favor more collaborative environments. So what that means is it's not like I'm going first and you're going second, we're doing this together.

Francois [43:50] Together, yeah.

Ryan [43:50] We're doing it together. So I think it's a personal preference. And I know that a lot of people approach this quite differently. I think there's a why. I think there's a reason why. I think there's a welcoming of feedback. You know, Matt Mochary's got like great frameworks on how you take and receive feedback or give and receive feedback. And if you are going to push back on feedback that your team, if you welcome feedback from your team on what you're doing and you push back on it, you're basically telling them that, you know, you're setting the tone. You're setting the tone and, you know, you're going to discourage them from trying because they're going to expect the same.

Francois [44:36] Exactly.

Ryan [44:37] So I actually feel it's more about, it's more about, I think a lot of these can fall into the intention trap, but not the action trap, right? And they got to be joined, you know? So like the intentions are all good. And, you know, I've had the feedback myself before, you know, where a team member came to me and said, no, you said A, but like when we spoke about it afterwards, I felt B. And I recognized like I had probably miscommunicated something slightly, but that little basic oversight from my side, had we not have had that conversation, it probably would have changed their course of behavior there afterwards. So I think a lot of leaders approach this with the best intentions. You know, it's the same as delegation, you know, like they'll tell you, hey, it's yours, but then I'm like micromanaging you to do it, you know? So the action and intention are just completely misaligned. And I feel like when your team truly trusts you and trusts that you're speaking authentically, you're delegating confidently and like you really mean it, it's not just like a thing. And I think a lot of the time it can just be a, you know, it could be the thing to say, but you know, the actions just don't back it up. So I think for me, it's, yes, like put yourself on the front line for sure, welcome the feedback. You know, in my case, I feel doing it collaboratively to some degree helps, at least giving feedback collaboratively helps, how you react to the feedback helps. And then ensuring that the intention and action actually meet one another. Because, you know, one without the other, you know, if you're acting unintentionally and someone senses that, it's also gonna influence what they feel and what they might do from it. So I think for me, it's, and it's something I'm very just conscious of at the moment, is how do you marry the two? You know, that intention matters so much. And it really comes down to what's the intention for the person as well as part of this organization. Be that, you know, general manager of a specific division, a CEO of a region or a chapter head at the end of the day. It's also, are you interested in that person's,

Ryan [46:51] you know, best future? And does your intention actually show that? It reminds me of an Andreessen quote. It's people, product, and then profit. And I think that's so, so, so important where most organizations actually have it exactly the other way around. Where it's profit first, like what was your performance? Then it's like, okay, well, how did you do that? Or you shouldn't be doing that with that product because that's the reason why you're not having profit. And people are like kind of a secondary thing. You know, Ian Furze, like servant leadership philosophy just also like comes up so strongly here because he just drives home the point over and over and over again that, you know, he's got his little, you know, your customers at the end, you know, and every, you know, you're not at all facing the one way. And the idea is that like, you're there to serve your people who are gonna serve the people who are gonna serve the customer. And it's actually like, you know,

Ryan [47:53] like that philosophy, I think drives this behavior, right? Because if you're there to serve them, like you're showing your own vulnerability at the same point in time. You know, and I think also speaking about mistakes, being open to speak about mistakes is important. You know, if you've missed it, you know, we used to have back in the day, some businesses, there would be like a,

Francois [48:16] remember there was these things even like F up nights.

Ryan [48:19] Yeah, like a failure party. Yeah, failure parties. And like things like that welcome, not to say you don't want, I didn't feel you wanna normalize failure. No, I don't think that's, you know, maybe I'm not like a huge proponent of that, but I think being able to speak about and learn from it sets the tone of, you know, failure is just an opportunity to improve. So I think there's a bunch of ways that the leader could influence this. But, you know, for me personally, it's certainly about just being really authentic with the expectations, being authentic with the do's and the don'ts and giving real permission to try with one ask. And that's just, you know, let me know by when and what the outcome is.

Francois [49:07] Yeah, that's so true. I think it's a challenging thing to get right and it's easy to say, and it's true for most things of immense value is actually having that simplicity, but that difficulty to implement oneself. Two things that I want to touch on. So the first one is when it comes to the world of technological change, just as we headed in, we talked a little bit about you embracing technology and experimenting with it going first once again. And then the next thing is I want to hear a little bit more about Civitas itself and how that actually creates this ecosystem of community, of support, of authenticity that at the end of the day,

Francois [50:00] else in creating a business where people are actually deriving true immense value from being part of something greater than just a scale up, trying to get to product market fit and to the next level. So, but first let's talk a little bit about going first in terms of technological adoption. I know you, you started playing around with OpenClaw a little bit. Luckily, you didn't give it your credit card details. So, I mean, that's a good thing.

Ryan [50:31] That's a good thing. There is value in being on social media. Thank you, X. It's crazy.

Francois [50:38] So, so you like started playing with this technology as a leader. And I mean, you're not a software developer. You're someone that's very tech forward in my opinion. But you're not someone that labels themselves as a technologist, right? So why would you experiment with this? And what's the mental model that you use to actually justify spending the time there because you're the highest leveraged resource in your business, right?

Ryan [51:05] You know what? I think we've had a lot of sessions on AI and a lot of questions on how to get your team to adopt AI. And a lot of them have come with the same starting point. Like the leader has got to be using it. You can't expect your team to use it if you're not using it.

Francois [51:18] Exactly.

Ryan [51:24] So there's definitely, and listen, we spoke about, we've got lists of AI use cases and we try to set up, you know, half an hour meetings with the team. And it's just always like more, more important and urgent things always. So it's never like a main priority, but you know, part of my question was how can I be part of the inspiration for the team to be doing stuff? And listen, I think it resulted in me spending time with people such as yourself that influence my mental model around it. And to be honest, like I can almost say there's been a penny drop moment where I just realized, yes, I've been using AI for a long time. It's been in the strategic thinking capacity for a long time, the rudimentary for a long time, but like in the capabilities of the tool with the leadership mindset, right? And for me, it's been very much about surfacing visibility, surfacing unknowns that are hidden in your data, that the correlations will just take an incredible amount of time to try and find, being able to query data real time. So it's actually been strategic questions that have been the initiator and the driver of adopting that technology.

Ryan [52:34] And so, and listen, I do, I like to try things. I like to break things. I like to optimize things. You know, again, going back to the former point, like recognizing what type of leader the business needs from you also starts requiring for you to ask questions around where can you make a great impact in the business? What do you need to make a great impact in the business? What information do you need to make a great impact in the business? What do you need to get off your plate that you can automate to be a great leader in the business? So I think there were a lot of questions that prompted this. Simultaneously, we're being exposed to, you know, great speakers that will just tell you that the companies that don't adopt AI soon are going to lag, you know, so there's certainly like a reality check that one has to be doing this. But, you know, just the immense value that we've got now, the decisions we're making as a result of surfacing the data, and these are like top level strategic decisions, they're not operational decisions, you know, and I've done a lot of the building, you know, because I also feel like if you can do the building, you can work with us, all of a sudden, your capabilities, you know, you can execute in multiple high outputs. So it's, I do actually think it's an investment for the business for you to be AI or technology competent. In actual fact, I actually think it's where time should be going. Because yes, there's always going to be an initial trade off. But once that trade off proves successful, you're just becoming the multiplier yourself in the business.

Francois [54:06] 100%. So I do this thing, not necessarily as a product at all. But what I've come to realize is that senior executives needs someone that both understands the technology, as well as all of the actual problems they deal with. And I'm ironically one of those people. And so I made a rule to say, okay, I'm going to only allow myself to have five coaching clients, only five. And it is unaffordably expensive for 99% of people that we encounter. But what I've realized is, a lot of the businesses that we've been working with, the biggest limiter is the leader not actually actively adopting the technology, right. And so I mean, I'm full up with my five now. So maybe next quarter or next year. But I think what is super important there is that you're your organization's highest leverage resource. So if you can get two hours back, the value that you can derive from that is immense. And I think you're enjoying the fruit at the moment, not just bearing it, but enjoying the fruit of investing that time in technology. And that is the high leverage skill today, right. And so that's what leaders need to really do to accelerate both themselves and their business.

Ryan [55:49] And I think it goes back to the same question around like, you know, as a leader, what do you need to equip yourself with? To not outdate yourself?

Francois [55:58] Yeah, it is.

Ryan [56:02] It's like, this is, it's going to be a standard, right? Like, I mean, I know you speak about a lot. It's like, it's going to become a standard. And if that's, I think it's also a cultural thing, again, how do you develop this culture of innovation, experimentation, like if you can empower people and inspire them to start using things that they weren't before, and by virtue of them using that tool or that system or that process, they're now able to run an experiment they weren't before. It's like, I feel it all connects, you know, all of a sudden, the cycles just keep moving and moving and moving and moving.

Francois [56:34] 100%. So, so Civitas has been a very, very interesting and near and dear environment personally for me, because I think the journey that any entrepreneur goes on, when they start a business, scale a business, and then grow the business from there is incredibly lonely, but also it's a very, very specific type of problems that you're dealing with. That isn't something that you can really Google beyond the literature that's readily accessible. And so one of the things that I've personally found a lot of value from Civitas is that a lot of the times it's just worth knowing that there's someone in a boat next to you heading in the same direction, asking the person, hey, have you used these oars before? Is this good oars, right? And so I'm curious, like, how do you see Civitas? I mean, that's my personal experience, but how do you see Civitas creating value for scale-up founders and scale-up leaders in other spaces, other than just that camaraderie sense?

Ryan [57:55] Yeah, listen, it's got to be qualitative. It's a big part of what we're after, is you've got to be able to prove a qualitative and quantitative benefit. It's a lot of the people first join looking for the quantitative, funny enough, but it's the qualitative that's unmeasurable. You're feeling super down, you're dealing with a major issue, you chat to a bunch of people, you feel better about it. What's the price of that? It could be motivation for the next three weeks to keep going, or years, or whatever it might be. So I think there has to be a quantitative angle here that you can turn back and you can recognize that. But I think for me, just where we're at at the moment, I almost see there's a comparison, there's similarities between COVID and AI. And one of the similarities between COVID and AI is none of them had playbooks. You go to COVID, they don't have playbooks, same here, this is what we're seeing. And the default when there's no playbook is who do you ask? You ask people like you that are dealing with things like you. And I think there's, in a world with unpredictability, there's certainly been like a cognitive shift of founders more towards a me versus you versus me with you since COVID for sure. There's definitely been a retreat since to

Ryan [59:20] some degree, which can be good, but it's the same with growing a business, right? You're getting from 10 to 20 million, 20 to 40 million, 40 to 50. If you've ever been into that territory, you don't know the playbook, right? If there was a playbook to say, here's how to get to a hundred million Rand, like we'd have a lot more hundred million Rand businesses. But even within that, like what falls short enough, it's the founders. So I really feel that it's, hopefully for us, we can just continue to add impact to people. The things that we really want to try and get people to do is like move to the next level, both in life and business, you know, make this you more confidence in the decisions you're making. So, you know, get better night's sleep as a result of it. You know, you're actually seeing your business bear the fruits of the effort, the exposure, the insights. And then you actually like, you're actually enjoying what you're doing. Like you actually feel like, you know, at every stage of a business, I think a founder hits a point where they're probably doing things they shouldn't be doing or don't want to be doing or don't enjoy what they'll be doing. And if you can get like a, like growing a business is a 10, 20 year journey. Like that's just a reality. And if you can't be in a position where you're really taking out value, enjoyment, you're freeing yourself up from what you don't want to be doing. And like, hopefully that's an area in which we can really influence. Like if you can't do that, I guess the journey of entrepreneurship probably will be short-lived because at some point you're going to ask a question, is this all worth it? So, you know, it's, you know, impact's I think a broad word, but we like to just stay close to people, hear where we're falling short, how we can improve, where they're getting most value, how do we double down on it? You know, and just continue to hopefully impact more and more and more people locally and globally.

Francois [61:11] So I'm curious, who's the person that you're solving that problem for today? Like how would you describe them? Is it a revenue number? Like how would you describe that?

Ryan [61:21] Look, revenue is a number and it's definitely an important number. So generally it's a five to 300 million revenue bracket, is the sweet spot. Number of reasons why on either side doesn't work, but, and maybe one of the main reasons is just a lot of our content that we try and host our speakers for or topics around addresses the problems of the fast growing businesses within those bands. But that being said, you know, you often get a founder doing a million Rand a month or less, but they had like exceptional experience. They are just like, you just, you know, you ask yourself the question, would I love the opportunity to sit around the table with them for three hours a month? Like there's a qualitative, you can't just quantitatively, you've got to look at the qualitative characteristics, benefits, experience of the founder themselves. They can be a great fit. Whilst, in the early stage of a business, your priorities are quite different. You know, your priorities are customers and product, like everything else is just a little bit of a distraction. So we also want to try be quite honest with people around who we think is going to get value. And if you're not going to get value, why and when is the right time to get value? So, whilst it might be quite a broad revenue band at the moment, you know, we try and ensure that there is like stage matching within those bands, within each of the communities. But ultimately we've seen that's the founder that is primed within the network.

Francois [63:02] So if someone wants to consider a community like Civitas, where do they find you?

Ryan [63:10] Yeah, so on socials, Civitas on LinkedIn, Civitas.network's website. Hopefully you'll be seeing us in a few places and spaces soon. But yeah, I'm Ryan Osher, hit me up on LinkedIn. Also always happy to have a chat. If anyone's got questions, like really would always be willing to make my time available. I can help anyone anytime. But yeah, Civitas.network's probably the best place.

Francois [63:37] Awesome. Yeah, just generally you're one of those people that just adds value wherever you go. And so thank you so much for spending the time today here sharing some of your personal insights in the world of innovation, the world of scale-ups, a little bit of inner game, as I would call it, about leadership and how to think of it.

Ryan [64:00] It's part of it. It's been a pleasure, hey.

Francois [64:02] Thank you for being here with us.

Ryan [64:04] Thank you for the invite, and yeah, always learning a few too. So this was as valuable for me.

Francois [64:10] Great stuff. And if you're still here right now listening to us, this means that you've really enjoyed the episode. And what would really help us a lot is if you were to share this with someone who'd also get some value out of this episode and learn from what Ryan has had to share with us. I hope you have a fantastic day and I'll see you in the next episode.