What are You Pitching About?
Where there is smoke there is generally fire. If we weren’t so preoccupied, we wouldn’t ignore the smoke altogether.
If you want to find out what’s really going on in a company, the last person you should ask is the CEO. It’s remarkable how much is known about a company by everyone except for that company’s leaders — which clients are unhappy, which employees are destroying morale, what direction the company should go to grow. It’s also remarkable how often executives fail to listen to their teams when such information is shared.
Core to RiverNorth’s founding was the belief that the best companies flow south to north — leaders not only listen to the employees, they follow them. With a culture of absolute transparency, I believe that one of my core job responsibilities as a Founder is to solicit feedback from the rest of the company, listen to this feedback actively, and then remove blockers to this feedback being implemented.
It is from this belief that Pitch Fests were born.
Each quarter, the entire company gathers for a night of friendly banter, idea sharing, and problem solving. The goal of the Pitch Fest is to articulate what we are sensing — be it things we need to do more of, less of, or start doing altogether. Every employee has the right to pitch their ideas: they are not empowered to do so with permission from me; rather, they simply have the power to say anything they need to say by virtue of being an employee.
There are a few simple rules:
If you pitch it, you fix it.
Notice we used the word pitch, instead of it’s closely related rhyming word. The goal is not to gossip or complain. It is to solve problems. It is to challenge current thinking and propose a way to fix it. If you sense an issue and bring it up at Pitch Fest, it’s expected that you’ll either propose a solution or solicit the group’s thoughts in a facilitated idea gathering session.
We seek advice, not permission.
The person who senses the change and pitches the solution has the power to make decisions about what needs to be done. The only requirement is that they seek the advice of those affected by the decision and seriously consider the feedback before acting.
We act swiftly.
We prioritize making decisions based on what we know now, instead of what could be the case later, understanding that we have the flexibility and commitment to adapt if our decision is wrong. Therefore, decisions happen in the moment -- the proposer either decides to proceed with implementing the change based on the advice received or nixes the idea altogether.
PitchFests are also a wonderful way that we express our individual purpose within the company. Many of the ideas surround pet projects that individuals would love to take on, based on their own personal interests. Pitch Fests allow people to fill the white space with fulfilling and impactful work.
