https://youtu.be/ksQMpRkGYBE
Stephen Ogburn is the Vice President of Ogburn Construction, a fast-growing family-owned concrete repair company in Central Virginia. We dissect Fredrick Laloux’s Reinventing Organizations and talk about how companies can shift from success-focused into people-focused organizations.
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Reinvent Your Organization with Stephen Ogburn
Our guest is Stephen Ogburn, who is the Vice President of Ogburn Construction, where he runs the day-to-day operations of this fast-growing family-owned concrete repair company in central Virginia. Prior to joining the family business, Stephen worked as a beverage director and manager in the restaurant industry. Stephen, welcome to the show.
Thank you very much, Steve. Thanks for having me.
Well, it's great to have you. Well, listen, my first question is always about the entrepreneurial journey. So what has been your journey from the restaurant industry to taking over running the day to day of your family construction business?
Yeah, cut my teeth in the business world starting out as a bartender. And that was here in Richmond at the VMFA when it first reopened. And I kind of had a great experience there of getting to build a program, a beverage program, and had a great time with that. And as things progressed, I thought, you know, maybe I'll try my hand at some more of the managing side of the restaurant world and i ended up moving to Colorado and working in a fine dining restaurant there and started out as a bartender there and as things progressed I took on more responsibilities and really started to understand um the relationship of somebody who is passionate about their work learning how to not just do the work but being in the care and charge of customers and employees and making the best possible experience for both and that led me to want to do that in the construction industry and so I had the opportunity to work with my father here in Richmond again and i couldn't pass it up and we've been doing some really cool and fun things since.
That's really interesting. You know, I see a lot of the more successful family businesses where they have this, I don't know if that was intentional on your and your father's side, but they intentionally don't have the family members come straight into the business, but they have them cut their teeth in other companies. And then when they have matured to some degree, they got experience, they proved their mettle, then they are allowed to come in and play a role in the family business. So I don't know if that was the case for you or some other consideration.
Yeah, not very intentional. I think growing up with a contractor father, I found my way back and it really was important for me to have that time away and having somebody else be responsible for my development for a time really stretched me in ways that I needed to be stretched.
I totally relate to this, this concept of not necessarily wanting to be in the shadow of your parents to prove yourself. So as you guys are, I mean, this is a fast growing company and you've got a great niche, concrete repair, which is kind of a blue ocean, as we call it, where you're kind of sailing forward, pretty rapidly growing. On your journey, have you used a management blueprint or business framework that have particularly inspired you and which you implemented in your business?
I think like everyone, you kind of take bits and pieces of things that really resonate with you and you kind of hobble things together a bit, but there's a book, Reinventing Organizations by a Belgian, Frederic Laloux, and he kind of explains this evolutionary process of business models. And that really resonated with us when we were reading that book. He makes some strong arguments for why things have progressed in the business world the way they have and how every system has its deficiencies and how the next evolution of trying to solve those deficiencies, brings us into a new age of how we might conduct business with each other, with our customers and with our employees. And so reinventing organizations is less a direct model and more a kind of understanding of the principles that make different types of models work or network.
Reinventing organizations is trying to take a different look at the people side of how we might accomplish success in business.Share on X
So definitely it's an interesting book. So tell us a little bit about what are these kind of different business models or how have the business organizations evolved over time and what is this new concept about?
He starts, he gives them colors, I think, to make it easier to think about them. So red is the first color, which represents kind of a very strong leader, dictator type situation, where you can think of the mafia, where you have one individual who's kind of calling all shots. And to be in that person's favor is where you wanna be in that structure. To fall out of favor with that individual, it's a very unstable system as well. You're pretty much putting everything on one person.
If that person was to pass away or lose their connection to the community, you might have the whole system fall apart very, very quickly. It would create a vacuum kind of thing. So that was kind of how business got started in many ways in the old world. And then he says the next evolution of that would be amber. And that would be more of a getting into a hierarchical structure where you have this idea that everyone is kind of subscribing to, but you have this chain of command that is followed. So the military is a great example of an amber structure where, let's say the U.S. military, their primary goal and objective is to protect the Constitution.
Everyone knows that from the top to the bottom. Everyone understands the need for command and follows it as a way to make that model successful. So there's that. And then he progresses from there to Orange. And Orange is really focused on success. Most of what we talk about in business today in terms of metrics and high growth, high profitability, you know, driving those concepts, everything is built around that orange model where we make decisions for the profitability of companies primarily. And there's nothing wrong with that. I mean, I would say 90 to 95% of businesses fall in that category, but it has limitations in terms of how people fit into that.
And then the next one would be more of a consensus building green model where you have a very tight community. It would feel kind of like a family in that business, but most things are done by consensus where, you know, you take a vote, everybody, there's lots of buy-in, everybody's on board, and then you move that direction. So, there are also some, some limitations and issues there. And then finally, he says that kind of the newest of all these models is what he's calling teal and teal is built around three principles basically self management wholeness, and an evolutionary purpose.
What's interesting about teal for us is that it. or better than any of these. It's just trying to solve maybe some different problems that these other systems over time have created. And people are kind of interested in still maintaining their success. Nobody wants to give up the successful side of being an orange company where you drive profit and you grow and everything like that. But Teal is trying to take a different look at the people side of how we might accomplish that.
So, what are the limitations? So you're saying that 95% of the companies are orange, they are profit-focused growth, focus metrics. So what are some of the limitations when you talk about people in the orange structure that needs to be evolved or needs to be improved?
The thing about orange companies is the way that they're driving that profitability usually has a lot of sticks and carrots, where you drive people by either saying, if you don't do this, here's what's going to happen to you. Or if you're able to produce this for us, here's what we're going to give you out of that. And that model works to a point, but it ignores a little bit the intrinsic value that people try to bring to work with them. It, uh, it makes it so focused on the productivity and the work that we lose a little bit, sight of the, the human side of everything.
So the customer experience, the business to business experience, and the experience of the individual who's doing the work, a lot of times gets sacrificed for the, the greater goal of being profitable and, and I'm not saying that it's always that way do a lot of great things for their employees and treat them very well. It's just kind of the starting position of how you think about the people that you're working with and what you want out of that relationship that might change a little bit with a teal mindset.
You think that, or I mean, are orange companies trying to evolve towards steel or is it an evolution type of thing or is it that more requires a revolution? So can you do it gradually? It's like, can you quit smoking by smoking one less cigarette every day? Some people argue that it's not possible. You have to quit smoking and then you have your cold turkey and you survive this and then you become a no smoker.
And you just smoke one cigarette, you fall back. So, is it possible for an orange company to to pay more attention on to people to, you know, to make sure that they have a purpose which is, and we'll talk get into the evolution purpose but which is a positive purpose, making a positive that is already happening, or it requires an evolution, a complete blank slate and a totally different mindset to be at a tier company?
I think it does require a bit of a starting position shift. I don't know that if you're, if the way that you think about your business and the people in it is, if you're trying to get to an end goal and the experience of those employees is important, but not of the highest importance, I think it does change the way that you make decisions.
