We want to spread the word about "Democracy at work". Just like Nearsoft, Brainpark is also one of the most democratic workplaces (WorldBlu List) in the world. Here is an interview with Mark Dowds, CEO of Brainpark.   

Victor Velasquez: Before we start talking about Brainpark, can you tell me a bit about your own background? 

Mark Dowds: My first 29 years were in Ireland. I grew up working in a family business where I learned the basics of business and sales. When I was 22 I became a professional Youth Worker and Counselor which eventually led me into working with students, incubating their ideas and developing their concepts.

That really brought me back into the business world but much more as an entrepreneur. I moved to Vancouver after I got married and established a business there that helped students develop ideas and businesses and learned how to invest and support young entrepreneurs turn their ideas into reality.

VV: I read on your website that you have been in the software industry for ten years. Can you tell me more about this?

MD: Over the last ten or eleven years, I’ve been helping people start businesses, software companies and products. I love helping people structure their ideas and build teams.  I also started a software development firm to do custom development. You can see it at www.bandofcoders.com . We have an office in Ontario, Canada and we have an office in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

VV: Can you give a general overview of Brainpark, the company as well as its products/services?

MD: Brainpark was incorporated 18 months ago. It was founded by Bobby John and I. Bobby’s background is engineering from the University of Toronto. Previous to doing Brainpark he started a company called “Caught in the Web” later known as Personus, which was acquired by CGI.  It was a 120-person software development firm. We met just before that, and started dreaming about what we could do together on the far side of the ventures we were currently in.  This eventually led us to what we are doing today in Brainpark.

The third person to join as a director within Brainpark was George Boedecker. You can see his bio on our website. He was the founder of a shoe company called Crocs.  I don’t know if you are familiar with them but built that from zero to $6B market cap before exiting.  He still owns Crocs Mexico which is growing quite rapidly at the moment.

Brainpark is still a small company. There are sixteen of us and we are focused on the enterprise market. Our enterprise social networking software helps employees learn from one another to become more productive.

It helps people capture their work stream, so based on a task that you are working on you can gather all the information from all the sources you used to complete the task.  It captures the process of the fulfillment of a task and also captures the stream of information around that particular research.  It then cross-references that with everyone else’s work within your enterprise.  It then identifies people who could help you to complete the task, who can help you do your job.
In a similar way to how Google learns who you are and what you do in order to serve more relevant ads, we learn about your behavior within the company in order to serve you with effective resources and connections. Our job is to help you do your job more effectively and more collectively.

VV: Now I see why your slogan is "Where information comes alive"

MD: We are launching a new website and we are going to do a soft launch of the company on June 22nd at the Enterprise 2 Conference in Boston.  We expect our slogan to change by then.  I believe our slogan is going to be “knowledge at play.”

VV: What is unique about the brainpark product?

MD: What’s unique about the Brainpark product is its ability to filter and interpret the unstructured data in a manner that helps employees become smarter and more productive at work.

It is quite unique as the process takes what is currently known as social networking and turns it inside-out for the benefit of productivity.  I think the most significant aspect on how we have approached the problem.  There are people working on collaboration using the standard approaches and what we’ve done is a relatively innovative and novel approach to solve this problem.

VV: Does your product help companies be more democratic?

MD: Yes it does. Our product helps companies become more collaborative and more connected. It allows the average worker to become more aware of what other people do and also of other people who can help them to do their jobs. In another sense, it enhances the community and enhances the environment so people can help one another to do a better job.

VV: What makes Brainpark a democratic organization?

MD: From the very get-go, everybody’s has had a voice. As we have grown, it has been a very collective community that makes the decisions on which direction to go. We have a strong team of smart and engaged people.

It’s not just me or the CEO, or CTO the ones deciding what we are going to do, let’s go get it. So we don’t just throw ideas over the fence to developers. It’s very much an engaged process where we work with the community and we give them feedback and everybody works together to choose and solve problems.

Everyone is a shareholder. Everyone who joins the company becomes an owner.

VV: What kind of impact have you experienced due to democratic practices?

MD: It’s been fantastic in some areas and tough on others. What we’ve discovered is that we have an extremely engaged workforce who own problems and ideas together. People love to work in our company and we have a lot of people lined up who want to work in our company.

Creating an environment where people are esteemed, feel valued and can wrestle with the complexity of real problems makes everyone excited to be there. It is one of our biggest assets.

We definitely have more conversations and it has allowed us to develop the ability to be more emotionally engaged and more emotionally intelligent.  In an environment like this you need to have good dialogue skills that draw out the richness of thinking within the team in comparison to a more directive approach. My job is to facilitate an environment and help employees to learn how they can engage and work with one another  instead of someone telling them what to do.

VV: Do you do coaching too?

MD: Yes I do.   Throughout the last several years, the way I paid the bills was as an executive team coach for large corporations.  This background really helps me to do my job well.

VV: How do you encourage people to learn the democratic approach? 

MD: Today if someone joined us they’ll experience it.  What we do is try to do most of our hiring two times per year. It doesn’t always work like that but we do our best.  We do a company offsite twice a year and also invite potential new employees to engage and participate with us for three days and learn how we work

On that offsite we facilitate an environment where everyone comes in and brings their ideas, concerns and thoughts in regards to building the company, and not just the product.  They write them down on pieces of paper, stick them on the walls and then the team goes around and votes on which things they want to engage with.  All the people participate in surfacing the most important agenda for our time together

When potential employees engage in this process they begin to realize that it is genuinely democratic. The CEO doesn’t show up with the agenda.  I show up and participate like everyone else and discover what’s most important in that moment.  This necessitates a deep-seated belief that the collective is more intelligent than any individual

VV: What are the challenges of being more transparent within your organization?

MD: There are a lot of people that are not used to it. When a new employee comes in they can become suspicious, thinking “oh, it’s too good to be true,” that they can have a voice, and that they could genuinely challenge me about my job and opinions. It takes a while for someone to really adjust and to understand, but it’s getting better as we grow because there’s more folklore and more stories.  We also ensure that there are a couple of people sponsoring a new employee to make sure they are well briefed without having to rely on someone from HR.

VV: Is there any supervision at all?

MD: Yes there is supervision. Every six months, when we go away, the teams, among themselves decide what’s more important and they set the goals that they are going to achieve within six months. We then appoint someone who supports and monitors progress. This works more as a reminder and follow-up to ensure things are delivered on time and that no one drops the ball.  This is not a “manager” but someone who supports the team.

One other aspect of supervision is that we have a lead person in each office. Their role is to facilitate and coordinate what goes on in within different areas. Bobby is in Atlanta, I am in San Francisco, and Brydon is in Guelph.

We believe there is a difference between management and leadership. Our company definitely has a strong leadership. The team themselves are self-managed.

VV: How do you develop your software products? Has that been impacted by the democratic approach?

MD: Very much so.  Basically, we’ve sought the voice of the community to speak into our product, in addition to our team.  We began by going to the community with the problem we recognized and got them sketching. One of our first employees was a full-time sketch artist.  Jamie has an architectural background and helps facilitate meetings with lots of pencils and paper.

This process of solving problems is very effective.  So every time there is a problem everybody goes and gets their pencils.  We spend more time with pencils I think, than computers.  We’re a software company—it is pretty funny.

In fact, during our initial few meetings computers were banned.  No one was allowed to bring one.
We typically do a new release every week.  It is a very accelerated style because this democratic approach is different than SCRUM or Agile; it’s different than Waterfall.  The problems are faced and broken down into what can be achieved within one week.

Then the product team solves the problems together and ensures it is something they can deal with so that it is not something that grows like a monster.

The only way we can get a release within a week is that the team moves forward without review and approval from me or Bobby.  We see it when it’s done and then see if users use it.

There has to be a significant level of trust in the team’s ability and experience to keep the process running fast.

VV: How many software developers do you have at Brainpark?

MD: I think we have ten, including front-end design too.

VV: What are the challenges that your team have faced while developing your product and have those changed due to the democratic approach?

MD: There’s challenges everyday!  We really are committed to solving a problem which means that as users use the software the team sees what they’ve got to iteratively change.  We are very flexible and responsive to our users.
No one just gets their own way. It is a collective process that everyone believes in and gets behind. But ultimately, we don’t create everything that we think is right. We heavily rely on the community and user feedback to give us the direction of where we need to go.

VV: Thank you. I think we are getting at the end of this interview. Did you like the experience?

MD: Yes it was great. Thank you. I mean, I appreciate you have taken the time. That’s fantastic!

 

Learn more about Democray@Work:

WorldBlu Most Democratic Workplaces 2009

Democracy at Work, Where It Counts