Accumulated Wisdom
Cort Brazelton
Cort Brazelton is the former CEO of Fall Creek Nurseries, the world’s largest developer and grower of blueberry stock and blueberry genetics, serving blueberry farmers and fruit handlers worldwide. He is the son of the founders, Dave and Barb Brazelton, who began the business in the 1970s with a small plot of land in Oregon and a dream of finding a way to make a living. Today, Fall Creek is a global company with over a thousand employees and operations in the U.S., Latin America, Europe and soon Asia, with hundreds of millions in annual sales. Despite its size, the business is incredibly complex, involving equal doses of agriculture, genetics, and commercial operations. Its far-flung business across diverse geography and cultures demands leadership that demonstrates a sensitivity to local concerns while maintaining a global perspective.
Dave and Barb were getting up in years and considering whether to sell the company or buy it outright from their partners so that they could keep it in the family. They asked Cort and his sister Amelie what they would like to do. Although Cort had studied in Europe chasing his dream to be a history professor and later working in food and the finance industry, he and his sister Amelie, who also studied in Europe and married a German businessman stepped back into the family business under the condition that the business would transform into a real company. That meant having a board of directors and hiring leaders with experience in working in other industries who could install processes that would replace the baling wire and twine patchwork of systems that were adopted as the company grew.
Despite his deep knowledge of the industry and his close relationships with customers, the final step of professionalizing the company was to replace Cort as CEO with a leader from the outside. Cort and his sister were certainly capable of continuing to run the company and both remain on the board. However, they recognized that the best thing for their families and for other family shareholders was to take a step back. They would continue to guide the company’s growth while not immersing themselves in the day to day decisions. Cort remained on call for the new CEO and still works on several projects that are critical to the company’s growth strategy that he authored.
Stepping down allowed Cort to turn more attention to his children and devote more time to advising the early-stage companies in which he was an angel investor. It was in a talk with the leaders of one of those companies that Cort spent some time sharing his accumulated wisdom about what it takes to be a successful leader and entrepreneur, curated and briefly summarized here, along with my comments.
Cort: Be prepared to say no. Opportunities will come your way but don’t agree to them if they aren’t aligned with your mission. Be comfortable with the anxiety that comes from turning things down and waiting for the right opportunity to come along.
Comment: It has become fashionable to put effort into creating the mission statement for your company. What Cort points out here is that the mission doesn’t matter if you don’t stick to it.
Cort: Stay ahead of paradigm shifts. Don’t play where everyone else is already playing. See what’s coming and prepare yourself to skate to where the puck is going to be.
Comment: Leaders often create bold strategies and then back away from them to take what they think is a safer route. In reality, taking the safe route is often more dangerous than going for it.
Cort: As you build a firm, be aware that the leaders you put in place will create the culture and once it’s in place it will be hard to change. Choose your leaders with knowledge of the culture you want for your company. Once you have the right culture, your culture will attract the right people as you grow.
Comment: Amen. How often have you heard that the best salesman isn’t the best sales manager? Find people who share your core values and grow them into the leaders you need them to be. It’s easier to teach the technical part of the job than the values leaders should live by.
Cort: In a family-owned business, put what’s right for the company ahead of what the family may want. A profitable business is the best thing for the family in the long run.
Comment: In charities, we hear the phrase, “no money, no mission” which is similar to what Cort is suggesting here. Make the business the best it can be, even if it rubs some family members the wrong way; a failed business won’t help anyone.
Cort: As the leader of the company, I was too passionate. I was involved in everything and didn’t realize that by taking over and making decisions I was failing to develop my people. Instead of stepping up, they came to me for my blessings.
Comment: Cort shows a great deal of earned self-awareness here. Every leader should be passionate about their business. Part of that passion needs to be directed toward building a strong team around you rather than simply doing as much as you can by yourself.
Cort: Your people don’t need to be owners to think like owners. You want people to be on your team, not just working for you.
Comment: There are daily signs that reveal how engaged people are in your business. You don’t need an annual employee engagement survey to know whether people are coming to you with suggestions and concerns that reveal their level of buy-in. If people are just showing up for a paycheck, it’s reflecting something about your leadership, not just their lack of motivation. Perhaps you need to empower them more or give them more important work to do; if you make all the decisions, there’s no reason for them to assume responsibility and therefore to care.
Cort: I needed feedback. Everyone does. You should create a culture in which people expect to give and receive feedback on a regular basis.
Comment: Feedback is free and therefore the most underutilized secret weapon in your arsenal as a leader. You need to role model demanding feedback; it’s something I’ve seen Cort do well. Now, people who work with him know he is going to ask and so come prepared with feedback to share. Getting them to do the same is harder but worth the effort.
Cort: I love to be wrong. I found that often, people can do things better without me. I also discovered that when I’m gone, there’s more space for others to contribute.
Comment: So many leaders I know are afraid to miss a critical meeting or even a day of work. We overestimate our importance and underestimate the capabilities of others. Experiment with intentionally stepping away and creating space for others to learn. Even if they make mistakes, it’s the only way for you to expand the capacity of your team to tackle important issues on their own.
Cort: Chaos is normal. When you experience it, keep working the problem. Don’t take it out on each other. Once the chaos is over, take time to learn from it.
Comment: I love this one. It’s a keen observation on Cort’s part to recognize that conflict among members of a team is often the result of the team facing issues that the team doesn’t know how to resolve. It’s easy for team members to locate the blame in an individual rather than recognizing that they aren’t working the issues together as a team.
Cort: Organizations are becoming more global and therefore more diverse. I see us as a collection of tribes. We need to strive to understand one another while also maintaining a focus on what our common goal is.
Comment: If you haven’t worked in a global business, you don’t know how difficult it can be to overcome regional cultural differences to create a common operating model and a shared culture. While many people simply give up and let the differences continue to exist, Cort is suggesting here that it’s worth investing in people learning about one another and taking time to understand differing views. It’s how you turn diversity into a strength.
Cort: You should focus on how the work gets done more than the structure. People work around the structure because it gets in the way of doing what they know needs to be done.
Comment: How many hours have you spent designing the organization or filling out RACI matrices to provide role clarity only to have people pay no attention once the work is done? People seek clarity so that they can be in control of the work they are accountable for when in fact the work is often emergent and interdependent. There is no perfect clarity. Ideally, the focus is on doing what needs to be done regardless of one’s role.
Cort: Celebrate success but never be satisfied.
Comment: Leaders WAY under-celebrate success. We know from research that people need a 4 to 1 ratio of positive feedback to negative feedback to remain confident in themselves. If there is an opportunity to celebrate something, make the most of it. At the same time, be careful in your quarterly business reviews about the amount of negative feedback (or “constructive advice”) you provide.
Cort: Understand when starting a firm that it’s an 8 to10 year journey. Don’t expect it to be quick or easy. Although there were some things we did that slowed us down, it took 30, from 1978 to 2008 for Fall Creek to even have the foundation allowing the almost 30x growth we have seen since then.
Comment: Under pressure from VCs, shareholders and ourselves, we feel compelled to jump into action without a well-thought-out plan and to assess progress much sooner than we should. “The first 100 days” has become a thing; what Cort is saying here is that it should be “The first 3,000 days” that are used to measure someone’s leadership and the progress of firm. The first plan rarely works as expected. Time is needed to learn and try again. We are like kids grappling with the marshmallow challenge; eat it now or get two in ten minutes? Get your leaders and investors on the same page. Invest for maximum long-run return. And know that if you work for an “eat the marshmallow now” investor, you are likely to get eaten.
Accumulated wisdom is a lot like bitcoins; the amount of energy required to refine each nugget is immense. I appreciate Cort sharing his accumulated wisdom with us.