The Future of Work is Flow: Interview with Christophe Martel, Founder and CEO of FOUNT
I recently went one on one with Christophe Martel, founder and CEO of FOUNT.
Adam: Thanks again for taking the time to share your advice. First things first, though, I am sure readers would love to learn more about you. How did you get here? What experiences, failures, setbacks, or challenges have been most instrumental to your growth?
Christophe: There have been many shifts in my career and changes in direction. I started from a much more scientific background as a geologist and a geophysicist. Then, I started to work in the product and emerging data processing technology world. From there, I moved into sales as a way to try to become less shy than I was when I started working. Eventually, I stayed in sales and sales management, and that evolved into business management for many years in Europe, and then eventually in Europe, the United States, and APAC. I spent many years outside of my native country, which is France, and then joined a company called CEB, formerly Corporate Executive Board, which is now Gartner.
I essentially contributed to building CEB’s business in Europe out of London and ended up leading that business, which was my most significant piece of business--around $1 million in revenue. I then switched gears and went to run HR and became CHRO for CEB. Along the way, there have been many shifts to figure out my path and each one carried its weight, experiences, and growth. Also, there were many challenges and shocks to the system, which are kind of all the same thing for me.
The latest challenge came after Gartner bought CEB when I set out to create my own business called FOUNT, a software-as-a-service company focused on reducing work friction. That was a kind of crowning challenge from a leadership perspective—going from a relatively large publicly traded company to a micro startup with initially just one employee…me.
Adam: How did you come up with your business idea and know it was worth pursuing? And then what advice do you have for others on how to come up with and test business ideas?
Christophe: First, I’ve always really liked and needed data to make decisions and to generally think about stuff. In my role as a business leader, I spent a lot of time looking at customer data to figure out what to do better, how to grow the business, how to operate, etc. And there's a lot of data available to guide that kind of decision-making.
Moving to HR, I found myself pretty much data-less when it came to understanding what in HR was working or not working. It’s very difficult in HR to know if you're doing a good job because, really, the only way to know is if people stay longer at the company and whether they are more productive. It's honestly very difficult to attribute these things to any one particular action that HR took to try and make that happen. So, as a business leader, I actually felt this question was a kind of black box of talent and leadership where you have to have good leadership, and - if you do - then people will stay longer or work harder. But it always felt like a very cryptic thing.
And then there was the world of productivity and how much time do people spend on what tasks etc., which really represents the heart of the business in a way, but felt very incomplete. I thought that by moving to HR, I would be able to figure out a way to bring these things together. How is it that people actually decide to stay at a company, work harder, perform better, etc.? I felt like there was no visibility into things I could do to improve any of these outcomes. From a business or an HR perspective, the tools were missing to give visibility into what gets in the way of people trying to be successful at work. That felt like an opportunity.
The idea for FOUNT was very much based on my own lived experience as an executive on both sides of the fence–business and then HR–and also my experience as an employee at different large companies for a fair amount of my career. The impetus was knowing what kind of potential nonsense you may be subjected to as an employee—and usually unbeknownst to the leadership in the company to try and put these things together.
Adam: So what advice do you have for others on how to come up with and test their business ideas?
Christophe: The only advice is to go and explore many different perspectives and be comfortable shifting gears. That's my way so I don't know if that way works for everyone, but it's how you see a problem from different angles and then come up with a triangulated way of solving that problem that wouldn't be apparent from any individual angle. In modern companies, especially larger ones that are matrixed, but actually even smaller ones, everything is perspective. Everyone in their swim lane has their view of the world and the more of these perspectives you can learn about by just occupying some of these roles, the clearer the way forward becomes as far as managing toward better outcomes.
Adam: What are the key steps you have taken to grow your business? What advice do you have for others on how to take their businesses to the next level?
Christophe: The first step was to be really clear about the problem to solve. In our case, it took a while to land on the notion of work friction, which is what FOUNT is dedicated to solving. Even developing the term and starting with the very broad problem definition was not simple. Between business, HR, and IT leaders, companies could do a better job to help their employees perform. That was the starting point. And it took many iterations, constant refining, sharpening, and a narrowing of focus to get to this root question of work friction. In our minds, work friction is what gets in the way of everyone trying to perform at work.
Second, it's almost constant tinkering on the solution to address it. In our case, it was kind of a double tinkering action. One is on the problem to solve and two is on the solution to solve it. It's a never-ending thing and you can always get closer to the truth to make something better. I really like doing that. I'm an engineer at heart so I could tinker forever (sometimes too much, according to a few people on my team.)
It's best to realize that there is no “one size fits all” approach to growing a business. I've taken businesses to the next level in companies that were three, four, or 1,000 times the size of FOUNT. And in every instance, the act of taking it to the next level is just always different.
Adam: What's your best advice on building leading and managing teams?
Christophe: Actually, what I said earlier about perspective still holds true when it comes to building, leading, and managing teams. Truth is really in the eye of the beholder. A company is where multiple functions are supposed to collaborate toward a common outcome. The more a leader understands the different perspectives that these individuals have about the work to be done, the challenges that the company faces, and how to solve them, the more you can thread the needle to bring everyone together. That can be within even one functional team or individuals themselves. Even if they belong to different functions, have different ways of operating and different modes of responding to stress, to the unexpected, and to whatever happens in business. I think understanding these different perspectives really helps bridge gaps between people and then build teams without which it's just definitely not as much fun. So, go walk in the shoes of the people that you manage. One of the most inspiring things recently was to see the CEO of Uber decide to drive an Uber. That's when you realize what it's like and when you can manage real things rather than concepts. The more you advance and the higher you go, the more esoteric the work becomes, so whatever you can do to gain perspective is going to help you become a better leader.
Adam: What are your three best tips applicable to emerging leaders and to senior leaders?
Christophe:
In general, the famous book from Marshall Goldsmith, “What Got You Here Won't Get You There,” is very true. In other words, whatever you know, you can lean on, but as an emerging leader (e.g. a frontline manager becoming a leader, an individual contributor becoming a frontline manager), if you've never done it before, what you know from your experience being an individual contributor may actually go counter to becoming a good manager or leader. Just being aware of that is a really important step.
The second one is that teams actually begin with individuals. Within really large teams, it's easy to lose sight of the fact that everyone is a person who has their way of doing things—their aspirations, their moods, whatever. And even though it can be sometimes daunting because if you have a really large team, it's hard to keep track. But actually, that's the job. You have to have at least some understanding of who these people are and how they're coming together, which is easily lost as you become more senior.
The third one is that leaders are not made, they're elected. In general, good leaders are those who are elected by their teams to go and have bigger teams. Therefore, the most powerful person in the room is not your boss. It's actually the people who work for you.
Adam: What do you believe is the future of work?
Christophe: I don't know how distant this future is, but the future of work is flow. Companies that win will be the ones that can provide to their workers—all of them, not just a few—an environment and a job in which people can get into that state of flow where their higher self is engaged and where they're self-realizing through their work. I think that's what individuals aspire to and eventually, they'll get their way because companies are competing for people. The more that the system of companies and workers matures, the more workers will dictate the terms of the deal, which is essentially, “I'll work for you if you can offer me that.” This is something we believe at FOUNT. Individuals aspire to high performance most of the time, and if you can provide a place where they can do that, and feel great about themselves when they come back home, that would be the future work.
Adam: What is the single best piece of advice you ever received?
Christophe: The single best piece of advice I ever received was not actually advice but rather an order from my wife on our very first date. She said, “don't be a prisoner to perspective.” I said something stupid, and she called me on it. I had to get married after that.
Adam Mendler is an entrepreneur, writer, speaker, educator, and nationally-recognized authority on leadership. Adam is the creator and host of the business and leadership podcast Thirty Minute Mentors, where he goes one on one with America's most successful people - Fortune 500 CEOs, founders of household name companies, Hall of Fame and Olympic gold medal-winning athletes, political and military leaders - for intimate half-hour conversations each week. A top leadership speaker, Adam draws upon his insights building and leading businesses and interviewing hundreds of America's top leaders as a top keynote speaker to businesses, universities, and non-profit organizations. Adam has written extensively on leadership and related topics, having authored over 70 articles published in major media outlets including Forbes, Inc. and HuffPost, and has conducted more than 500 one on one interviews with America’s top leaders through his collective media projects. Adam teaches graduate-level courses on leadership at UCLA and is an advisor to numerous companies and leaders. A Los Angeles native, Adam is a lifelong Angels fan and an avid backgammon player.
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