Reference no: EM133184457

Tough Madder Video Transcript

I think Tough Mudder is pretty special pretty unique there have been a lot of copycat events that have grown up over the last four years, but we really do have a unique value proposition it's all about teamwork camaraderie hi my name is Jesse Bull I am the SVP of brand and creative at Tough Mudder you know it's a great equalizer where you know the most fit person can't do certain obstacles on their own and so you really need that full team time to get through the course, so I think it breaks down barriers you know people have to kind of expose themselves laughing themselves and I think that's just a great a great way to get people together it's not about how fast you finish it's about getting through the experience having a fun time with your friends and you know really building up the sense of teamwork over the course of 10 to 12 miles teamwork is so important that Tough Mudder and we put on an event that's all about teamwork and the event itself couldn't happen without teamwork.

Hi, I'm Antonia karke and I'm a senior marketing manager at Tough Mudder and that's not just the ops team on the ground putting on the event but it's also about the creative team working with the teams that are on the ground sourcing content from them working with our merchandise and partnership teams to make sure that we can integrate partnerships it's really really really a cross-departmental experience to both work here and then also be on the ground had put on the event

So, my name is Alex Patterson VP of brand here at Tough Mudder we have a very collaborative working culture because I think the nature of work these days needs to be very collaborative so tough mudders event is very team oriented as compared to things like marathons and triathlons that are more about individual achievement and we try to bring that here to the office as well we work in an open plan office here there are rooms and cubbies and conference rooms where you can you know get your work done on your own but most of the office is very open and collaborative working spaces you know in school when you're growing up you can achieve a lot of things just by yourself you're given assignments your graded against other people but as you enter the adult world it's really difficult to complete or achieve anything of great significance you know just completely working by yourself but when you're trying to create a business like we're doing it has to be very collaborative and so you know the very philosophy of our event which is overcoming obstacles through teamwork making sure no one gets left behind I mean having a good time while you're doing it is what we try to bring here to the office as well and have that same type of collaborative teamwork focused culture at the same time you know a team isn't just having other people make up for your weaknesses a team effort often is you being really good at what you're good at you know so when new employees come in we say that being a team member means two things first it means really being good at your job because the best way you can support your teammates is to do your job well and second it's supporting other people to make sure that they don't fail to fill in the gaps where things may have fallen through or to pursue new opportunities that you know weren't necessarily in someone's job description we are a medium-sized company but we're not an enormous company so that means that people have to wear multiple hats they need to coordinate sometimes to do multiple roles and it's very difficult to do that if people are saying this right here is my specific role and I do this every day and when I'm done I get to go you know tough mudder is much more flat and we really need to collaborate and work with each other to get new things done we're trying to accomplish things that are completely new that no one's ever done before and so to stay within completely siloed roles is not the best way to do that

Jesse Bull: You know we are we are organized like most traditional companies in many ways you know we do have managers and we have tried to institute some crazy revolutionary structure like a Zappos or something but do you think what we what we do have is again we have people that have no egos so the managers are willing to be led by the people that work for them we give people a lot of leeway to own their own projects there's no culture of micromanagement or face time here because again we find people that are really ambitious they're really smart but ultimately we want to contribute to kind of the greater purpose of the organization

Alex Patterson: May I think there's a time to be working together and there's a time when you have to you know button down and and push the ball forward yourself whether it's writing a report or like really analyzing data and so I think the open plan office is better for the for the former it's better for collaboration it's better for coming up with new things iterating on concepts but we are very clear that if you want to come in at noon and work at home in the morning to get the reports done that you can definitely do that because we know that sometimes you'll spend all your day in the office and end up doing things you you didn't think you were gonna do in the morning so you didn't get to that big project that you had planned and that's one of the toughest things about an Open Office plan is getting that kind of project work that deeper thinking that the bigger planning done it's much easier to get caught up in they're responding to the next email or someone dropping by your desk so we try to strike the balance those things

Jesse Bull: I think as we grow it'll never become necessary to give more and more autonomy you know ultimately you know three years ago our CEO was at every single event and staying up every night worrying if he's gonna get a phone call that something went disastrously wrong you know now that's just not possible and we we hire people that you know we trust can take on a lot of responsibility can deal with difficult situations on the fly and we really try to kind of engender that empowerment in people to deal with situations on their own so we've basically set up regional event delivery teams we have three of them based here in the US we have one based in the UK that focuses on the UK events the one based in London focuses on Germany events and we have one down in Melbourne focused on the APAC region you know essentially we've built the structure that is a really flexible scalable and again devolve eight kind of ownership to those regional teams so that they can really you know within the structure that we built really be creative and execute those events and really own the delivery of those events so yeah as we continue to grow you know it's important to have certain frameworks and make sure that the event is consistent and the brand is consistent that ultimately have to trust your employees to kind of translate that on the ground

1. What kind of team culture do you think Tough Mudder has? What are the characteristics of this culture? Name another company that has a positive team culture. As a future leader, what kinds of things should be done to build a positive team culture?