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...