A case study on the ongoing commitment to practice and doing better as a path to social responsibility, empathetic leadership, and the creation of an inclusive work culture.
In the world of leadership it can be easy to get weighed down by operations in the maintenance of sustainability, and the proactivity necessary for scaling growth to accommodate demand. Through years of trial and error, success and failure, I’ve learned perhaps the most important thing an leader must do on a daily basis is step outside of the day-to-day, reaffirm how the big picture impacts those involved, and understand the responsibility of an leader is not just to the product or service, it extends to the team, which a leader serves. That’s right, you read correctly: it is the job, no, duty, of the leader(s) to be in service of the organization, and put to social responsibility at the forefront. You see this idea embraced with the most successful of startups, and they only lose control of this, when they lose sight of it.
It takes not only gumption and resilience to be a great leader; it requires the commitment and discipline in choice to lead by example as a global citizen. Such a leadership model is exemplified in Craig T. Wood, co-founder and Chief Product Officer of Minerva, and his co-founders CEO Joaquin Roca and CTO Rafael Gonzaque.
Established in 2019, Minerva has already raised $5.1mm from investors including Craft Ventures, GGV Capital, Max Ventures, Charge Ventures, Sage Hill Capital, Bayes Ventures, New York Venture Partners and Capital X. It scaled from its original three founders to 17 full-time, employees and operates offices across four countries.
Before we dive into this case study, let’s take a moment to talk about Craig. As a necessary disclaimer, Craig and I have been collaborators and friends for a Baker’s Dozen in years. That out of the way, I have no stake in Minerva, other than the incredible insight Craig demonstrates in what I’d like to present to you as a case study on successful leadership with accelerated growth, and a growing market share. Like all of us, Craig is a fallible human being. And yet being self aware, he strives to grow and deliver in service of his family, collaborators, friends and strangers around the world. This inherently fuels the global citizenship component vital to successful entrepreneurship. Next, let’s talk about adaptability. In all of my years working across different and varied sectors, I have never met such a versatile individual. Craig manages new environments with ease. How does he do this? Craig knows each experience we have in this life is an opportunity to learn. His career has spanned from managing high-profile music concerts to spearheading book tours to film production to journalism to advertising/marketing to product management, and tech development. Prior to founding Minerva, Craig was the General Manager for Digital Platforms at The Madison Square Garden Company. Craig and his team are a living example of what could be for all leaders if we would simply take the time to get to know thyself. Let’s begin the case study:
Chris: Craig, for our readers, might you provide a little background on Minerva?
Craig: Minerva makes clickable instructions for anything on the internet. We're still evolving how we talk about the product and what we do. But, once we show people a demo, then they have the eyes wide openmoment- people get it, they see it and like, “Oh, now I get what you mean.” We've made a product that people want and that they need.
Chris: How would you describe the company’s environment?
Craig: The company is a collection of people who really care about doing good work are determined to be good people. Those are really important elements for me. At Minerva we built the type of organization that I've always believed could exist, but had never before experienced. We’re the kind of company that has clearly stated goals, clearly stated values – not just values written on a piece of paper or posted on the wall –values that are part of the way that we work every day: in the way that we treat each other; the way that we treat our customers; and at the heart of how we make decisions. These values came to life at the mutual desire of our all three co-founders, Joaquin (Roca), Rafael (Gonzaque), and me,before any of the daily work really began. That also was important. It helps that we all have such a nice kind of blending of skills and talents and interests. We keep each other honest, which can be hard to do, but it's necessary. We also know how to push each other and to inspire each other. Where one is learning, the others can step up with their experience. It's a testament to true partnership and that feels really magical.
Chris: What was the genesis of the partnership? Did the product idea resonate with you from the start?
Craig: Honestly, at first, I didn't get it. I understood the idea for the product conceptually, but I wasn’t seeing the opportunity. Let’s start at the beginning. Joaquin and I knew each other socially. We were both groomsmen at a mutual friend’s wedding. We first met at a bachelor party. Peter, the groom, is an outdoorsman, and we went on a hike. That hike ended up being an eight-hour day on the side of a mountain. I'm sure you've had those experiences where there's physical exertion and then you've reached the literal mountaintop.
Chris: It can get emotional, and that can lead to moments of connection.
Craig: Exactly. You have a conversation that maybe you wouldn't have sitting at the bar having beers, at least for me, I find on hikes that you get into deeper conversation. And on this hike I found myself very easily opening up with Joaquin. And then at the wedding party, we just really hit it off. But then it was one of those things where Peter was the glue and so, Joaquin and I only really saw each other when we were together as a trio. I didn’t take long to realize Joaquin was a man of ideas. It's part of what drew me to him and together we could dig deep. You find with some people you can ask questions and they love to explore the possibilities of what answers could be discovered. Other people are aligned closer to one-word answers and then move on. I really enjoy the discovery in exploration.
Chris: What was that moment that you said, “this is what I want to do and where I want to be?”
Craig: One day, I was supposed to have lunch with Peter, and in good fortune he brought Joaquin along. I thought, well, this is great. I asked Joaquin, “what are you working on now?” So, we talked more about the product — the production that would eventually take life within Minerva — and of course, I’d heard the concept before, but this time the conversation deeply evolved. I asked tough questions like: “What’s the business model? Who's your audience? How is this going to make money? Can the product scale? Is it universally-translatable?” And then, the start of collaboration: we started to spitball.
Joaquin is an organizational psychologist with over 20 years of practice. At the time, he was working for big NGOs like the United Nations and UNICEF. He traveled the world helping organizations see the upside potential of their social environments. And at one point, he decided to teach himself to code because he wanted to build a software platform to support the organizational psychology and philosophy he had crafted and was actively teaching. So, he followed through, taught himself how to code, and built a platform to start selling his organizational psychology. Through this, he found that ultimately, the people who were buying his software, were really buying his time. And time isn’t scalable.
Chris: It’s a measurement in limitation.
Craig: That’s right. So, Joaquin ended up shutting down that business. And he was trying to figure out what to do next. And at the time he was coding for a company within TechStars’ accelerator program, which helps young companies “start up” and grow. About 6 months in, he realized it was time to move onto the next thing. Joaquin realized he didn’t want to be a full-time engineer, and with respect to due diligence, he wanted to ensure his replacement would have as much of a leg up on the information, documents, and procedures that were in place as possible. He was taking screenshots, putting together Google docs red arrows and text blobs that read, “do this, do that.” It was taking too long. And in the tech world, that information was going to be outdated by the time his replacement would likely start. So, Joaquin started asking what state-of-the-art processing there was for documentation? People looked at what he did and said what he had been doing was par for the course. And his thought was, “no way, this is garbage, I can do better.” And then it clicked for Joaquin, he saw a way, and started building. At the time it was a program that was a Chrome browser plug-in, that when you clicked on it, a little widget opened up that allowed you to capture a set of actions on a website. You could then share that with someone else so that they could follow those exact set of steps. That was the start of the concept moving towards a proof of concept.
Chris: And to clarify, not a proven concept.
Craig: Exactly. Which is why I had asked those tough questions. Following the lunch with Joaquin and Peter, Joaquin pulled me to the side and said, “Hey, would you ever consider coming to work on this with me?” I was completely floored because, 1) I didn't think he saw me that way; 2) he appeared very well connected in the tech industry. All I could think is “why are you coming to me? I haven't created a startup before. There are so many things I haven't done before.” And he said, “All right. So let’s talk.”
I've tried to start my “own thing” before and had a lot of false starts. In getting to know myself, I’ve established personal criteria about what it would take for me to go and start my own company. I agreed to continue with the conversation. We met over dinner, and it became quickly apparent how aligned we were with our criteria.
Chris: Let’s dive into that word, “criteria.” What does that mean for you? What did it mean for him?
Craig: Well, for instance I don't think a startup, by definition means working 100 hours a week and sitting on your couch eating ramen. I don't believe that has to be the case, and Joaquin wholeheartedly agreed. He said, “I think we can build a company for adults (and treat each other with that respect) from the ground up, and if we can't do that, then it's not for me. Also, I don't think we have to be a billion-dollar company in order to just start a company. I think we can build a business that can provide value to the world. That value is what can generate a self-sustaining revenue, that feeds a good culture where people want to come to work.” I said, “if we can do that, if we can just be self-sustaining, that would be a major win.” I've spent my entire career, wherever I was working, trying to meld vision and work environment progressively, to benefit each employee involved, and further, to inspire each employee involved.
Chris: Often organizations can do much better by their people. There is a fear to almost embrace empathy over bottom line, and undercut the power standing by-and-for those who build with you. The short sightedness here is when leadership does not recognize that a positive environment is a boon to a strong product, and that formula yields high morale, which ultimately will drive an organization’s fiscal responsibility and help keep a healthy bottom line. Would you say you and Joaquin shared this philosophy?
Craig: Yes, and in a very profound way. So we left that dinner with me going off to do some “homework” before committing to any next steps. It took me maybe two weeks to think through how the product and concept could find its “opportunity.” I don’t want to underplay it, but when something clicks, it clicks.
Chris: I think that’s very true and not underplayed at all. The “ah ha” moment is something I too have experienced. When you are able to reposition the variables to chart a path, and that path has greater positive measurable outcomes that tell a story of sustainability, scale, and growth, it’s both an extraordinary moment, and at that moment an idea becomes very real.
Craig: And very attainable. I could see how to bring the concept to product and the product to market from A to Z. That's really big for me. I have prided myself in my career at being very good at problem solving. That doesn’t mean I’ll get to the best solution alone, nor would I want to—what it means is I can get the ball rolling proactively by starting at the problem’s root. Ultimately, you want a team and when you build that team there’s a responsibility and accountability to these humans. These humans have families. These humans are not two-dimensional characters in some employers chess game.
Chris: Recognizing that is critical. The choices made in leadership have an impact on everyone in an organization. If you neglect the foundation, the rest crumbles.
Craig: It’s an awesome responsibility to be able to see how to grow at a level that enables employer and employees to share the same vocabulary.
Chris: To share the same vision.
Craig: To share the same values. It was such an important part of our foundation that we lived our values. It wasn't just, here's an idea, let's go raise money and make a billion dollars. That was not the genesis of this at all, in fact, we explicitly said, we do not need to be a billion-dollar company. It was about how we can take this great product and not just create positive outcomes for customers, but ensure we create an internal supportive and collaborative environment, where we genuinely care about those in the company, their quality of life, and their work-life balance.
Chris: How did you go about ensuring leadership has its checks and balances?
Craig: Let’s start here. Joaquin is incredibly self-aware. From the start he was candid in that he could be very strong willed. I reciprocated that I could be very convincing. It then became clear that there had to be a trio in leadership, so that those checks and balances were in place.
Chris: And fair.
Craig: No ganging up. Free thought. No strings. That Joaquin and I agreed on this matter spoke volumes to me. I'd like to think I also have very strong self-awareness, so you can imagine how inspiring this revelation was.
Chris: Then there were two. You both had strengths to bring to the table, and now you needed a technical wizard.
Craig: We did. I'm a product guy. I'm a production guy. I make things. I've learned to code, but I'm not an engineer. I know good design, but I'm a terrible designer myself. Joaquin had the technical know-how, but he carried vision and would be the guy to make the deals. So, we needed that technical co-founder.
Chris: Enter Rafael.
Craig: I worked with Rafael over a decade ago at The Daily, the tablet newspaper from Apple and News Corp. That was my first job in technology. I knew very little about technology. But, I knew that it was disrupting the arts world, which is where I was at the time, which is where I met you, Chris. YouTube had come on the market around 2005 or at least that's when I first really caught wind of it and just the democratization, the availability of technology, to create content and then distribute your own content, was just becoming available to so many people and was changing the way that the arts were functioning, for better or worse. I realized, if I were going to succeed in that world, I needed to better understand technology at a basic level. I ended up at The Daily, as one of the publication’s producers, knowing very little about technology, but understanding that it was changing the way that people were engaging with content with each other.
Chris: What did you do as producer? You and I know that producer is such a nebulous term. I often find I am explaining the variations and distinctions with that role between each Industry. It can vary so widely.
Craig: In this instance being the producer meant I was responsible for getting the publication out every day. I was at the center of every department. I was coordinating with all the editors from news and the arts and the photo editor in the copy editors and then I was shaping the work. Then as the news stories were coming in, I’d work with the designers to conceptualize the art, the feel. Knowing that I knew very little, both about technology and publishing, I spent a lot of time asking questions, like when things broke, why did they break? How do we prevent things from breaking again? Was it a good thing that something broke? And so, as I’m asking these questions and I came across Rafael, and not only would he take the time to answer my questions, but he actually gave the critical positive reinforcement and said, Craig, “I love that you asked these questions. Very few people ask these questions. I'm happy to help you, and help inform you.”
Chris: That such an important point: asking questions. There's a lot of "how" in this world and not enough “why?” You and I know that the "how" never works out, well, not really, according to plan. You can plan, and you can plan, but if you don't have the direction, the insight, and intuition, it's not going to go anywhere.
Craig: Asking “why” helps you get to the root cause of what's going on and there's this concept of the five why's that I utilize regularly. We’ve talked a lot about this.
Chris: Often the answer to the question, “why” is not right at the surface. You have to dig deeper.
Craig: The five why’s basically instructs that when you ask a question, and you ask “why,” answer it, then ask “why” again, answer it. Do that five times and generally, by time you get to three, four, sometimes it takes to five, you'll start to see there is a much greater underlying issue to the problem.
Chris: It's important to understand the problem, because how else are you going to fix it?
Craig: If you don't understand the problem, you're unlikely to eliminate it, or reduce it, or reduce the risk of it occurring again. Sometimes it can be hard, when you don't have a lot of time. Sometimes there's a lot of pressure. Let’s look at The Daily, just because that's where we left off. There was a lot of pressure to publish. Because it was a daily (publication), we had to get the book out the door every single day. Sometimes decisions would just have to be made. As much as I love asking why to understand the root cause, sometimes I would have to make a decision just to fit today's deadline. But also, make sure that I was communicating with the app team, or the CMS team to say, hey, “this is what’s happening,” or “I don't know what’s happening.” But, when all is said and done, you’ve got to address the elephant in the room: “this is the outcome that we’re seeing, and we need to get to the root cause.” And sure you can find a workaround, but those are only temporary and eventually you’ll end up with a Frankenstein that you can’t control.
Chris: And, let’s face it, that will do more harm than help in the long-term.
Craig: Only understanding the root cause can help you actually solve the problem and enable you to move forward.
Chris: There’s an importance in the distinction of assumption, fact, and emotion in communication. Why is this important for an entrepreneur to understand?
Craig: Well, they all have a place: assumptions, facts, emotions, right? When Joaquin first brought me the idea and he had this prototype, I looked at it, I saw and I said, “Great. Stop building.” And he said, “why would I stop building? This is the product that we want people to use?” But, we didn’t know what the product needed to be, we didn’t know who it was for. We had assumptions, not the facts. So we wrote down the assumptions, we formed hypotheses around who we think the product is for, what problems the customers would need to have solved. Then, we found people who fit the criteria and talked with them. 75 customer interviews over two months. The factual information we got from that experience helped us to specify and narrow the focus. And, what we got was the incredible validation that yes, what we are trying to solve is a real problem. Process documentation is a problem, and we had just identified three core customer segments for whom this was such a problem, and they would pay for the solution that we were already working on and so, what that afforded us was facts. With that primary research in hand, we started to raise venture capital. At first, there were a lot of people who were dubious about what we were doing, but now we had those interviews, the video and recorded documentation that qualified the desire for our product to scale. It took our initial assumptions to lead to the fact finding. Having facts enables you to get people on board much more quickly. Especially when there's agreement on the facts, and what I mean by that is a fact, by definition, cannot be in disagreement because it's a fact. However, we live in the world where facts can be subjective. I'll extrapolate that also to say that data, in and of themselves are facts, but what the interpretation of what that data means, does not yield to fact. That’s where intuition and assumption and hypothesizing comes back in. You have to make assumptions to help you understand where to start because sometimes the data isn't that clear, or the interpretation can be split any number of different ways. And then there’s emotion. When building anything, really, you have to deploy your emotion, especially when talking to customers because it's primarily about empathy. It's putting yourself in their shoes and trying to understand what are they going through. It's understanding their problem. What have they tried? Why hasn't it worked? That takes incredible empathy, and then bringing those learnings back to the execution teams.
What we try to do at Minerva is give as many people who are building product, direct access to customers as possible. We have our engineers run customer interviews to help build that empathy to understand you're not just laying down code, you're not just building a shiny thing that works really elegantly and quickly, you're building something that can solve this person's problem. You’re making a difference.
There can be people who like, take great pride in being great at what they do. They want to make their work just a little bit faster and they want to make it work a little more elegantly, that much smarter because they innovated on something. But the right solution for the product is putting the customer first, solving the problem without the bells and whistles, which may be in immediate conflict with that sense of pride. Someone who is emotionally intelligent understands when to make the choice to solve the customer's problem, even if it is not the most elegant solution, it’s a solution.
Chris: And it’s a solution that best serves the customer and therefore the production and therefore the company, and lives within the company values.
Craig: An inelegant solution today is far better than an elegant solution a month from now and someone who can recognize that, and recognize that they are in service of the customer is so important. So, that frankly, is where emotion does matter.
Chris: Let's go deeper into that. We've talked about agreement, communication, connection. When I'm talking about connection, it's also emotional intelligence, leading and learning with empathy and values. Understanding there is a relationship is so often overlooked, or, sometimes, not necessarily even understood. So, how does that relationship take shape at Minerva?
Craig: One of the things that we instituted from day one, and this is all kudos to Joaquin because this has been his training, is a model for delivering feedback called SBI: Situation Behavior Impact. I don't know that I've been very good in my career at giving feedback. Because I've always felt like I don't want someone coming down on someone else, or I'm nagging someone. I have had the tendency to boost strengths, but I don't think I was great at giving constructive feedback. That led to some tenuous working relationships that I’ve had, where I felt like someone was not being empathetic and trying to understand what was being done. I would try to give feedback, but I would maybe be short with someone, and not as understanding in return. I never liked that and I never liked the way that felt. But, I didn't know a better way, and I didn't have the tools.
When Joaquin introduced SBI as part of Minerva’s workflow, it fundamentally changed the way that I communicated with people, not just at work, even at home with relatives. The way it works is in not telling someone what you think they did wrong.
Chris: Right, because when you do that it’s like putting someone under a microscope.
Craig: It can make someone feel exposed and vulnerable, and that can be really hard. Then it’s very easy to put up defenses, thereby preventing someone from actually receiving the feedback, even if it is fundamentally correct. SBI is focused on what’s actually happened and the impact. Here’s an example: “you didn't turn this in on time, this is the impact it had on me.” Just the facts. If I'm communicating to you the impact your behavior had on me, I'm not judging your behavior. I'm not saying you shouldn't act a certain way. What I am doing is communicating to you, in awareness, that your behavior had “X” impact on me. It's making it about me, in a way which, on the surface sounds bad, like to make it about me. But, what I've seen in practice, is it builds much stronger trust.
Chris: It’s the tough conversations, again. And it’s using “what happened” instead of the story we create. “A” happened, “B” was the impact on me, “C” is what resulted because of it. Now, how do we move forward?
Craig: Precisely that. When someone wants to share feedback with me, I lean in, I get excited for it. Because now it’s not about judgment, it’s about results. This is particularly important for us as the co-founders. What we're doing is also leading by example. We will sometimes deliver feedback to each other in front of others. Most organization etiquette stipulates giving feedback directly with a person in private. But, as co-founders, we agreed that we need to model the openness and transparency of our behavior. Some cynics might dismiss this as touchy-feely mumbo jumbo, but the reality is it’s far from that.
Chris: Well, to hell with them. It takes guts to allow yourself to be that exposed. It takes high emotional intelligence to receive that feedback in that way. And to exemplify that in front of people may at first take them by surprise. And Craig, I think this is the normal. Or rather what we should strive for as the normal. It’s really just open communication.
Craig: Oh, it's a highly effective communication tool and watching other people go through it has been remarkable. Communication is so important. Trust is so important. And it’s work. It is hard work. Another thing that we do at Minerva that I find atypical is we talk about the human experience in the present. This past year in the pandemic, the whole world changed. We had an employee who lives alone in a studio apartment. She would not leave her building because there was fear. At the start, nobody knew what this virus was, or how it was going to spread. So what did we do? We would talk about it, and we would create space for people to take mental health days, and encourage them to take those days. The employee who lived alone in her studio apartment loved sweets, and we would send her cupcakes on occasion, as a little jolt of joy.
Each week, every Friday, we have one hour where the entire company comes together. We talk openly about our culture, our values and how we live them, and even the learning opportunities from the moments we fail to live up to our values. We speak openly about it. And because we do, there’s trust, and with that trust we hold each other accountable- not as punishment, in camaraderie.
In the midst of the pandemic, we’ve started to talk politics, which is usually a “no-go” at most companies. For us, it’s easy. There’s that mutual respect. In fact, the question came up once on why we talk about politics so much at the office. And at the root, we discovered, our view is this space isn’t political. What we actually talk about is humanity as unraveled from the political lens. Take the recent horrific hate crimes within the Asian-American community. Walking down the street and feeling safe isn’t a political element, it’s a human right. Those rights have been politicized. And people are using them as political weapons. Your right to be you, and your right to love who you love, that’s a human right. What we talk about is not political, it’s human rights.
All of us deserve to be happy and to avoid suffering. At Minerva, we recognize that and we talk about that and when those rights are violated. It's important that we recognize that and foster the conversations. We hope that anyone who works at Minerva feels like they are seen, heard, and respected. That's really central to who we are. On the outset, it might seem silly, even naïve, to say a company that is in the business of clickable instructions can change the world. So, now, let’s refocus that perspective. At Minerva, I feel like, we have an opportunity to change the world for anyone who works with us. There is a different way to lead, and it is in the service of others. That's our aspiration for the company. If we can succeed to some degree on that front, then I think we are changing the world. If values in human rights and positive work conditions can beget those same values, spread from business to business from business to customer, we are making a difference. I want people to be able to look at Minerva and say, “wow, a company like that can exist. Look, they're doing it. What's happening at this company is not good enough. We need to do more. We need to be more.”
That's what I've always felt. For as long as I can recall, I’ve felt like an outsider. Ultimately, what it came down to is, I just need to build it. I need to build this thing that I see and create it to prove to others that it can exist, and then hopefully, it will make others believe that it can exist and inspire others to build. In that way, I think we can change the world.
Chris: This leads perfectly into the last area I want to explore with you. Let’s first recap. We’ve touched upon a lot of important issues and a lot of things identified vital to creating an opportunity to make space available for people to evolve into their own; to have a commitment to them for better work-life quality, so they can help navigate an existence worth living; you're pushing an agenda of workplace altruism in a capitalist society, and proving sustainable business and ethics can co-exist, and thrive; you choose to have the difficult conversations and the identification of root problems to address effective solutions, and this openness lives in Minerva’s values.
You and I touched upon self-awareness within the first few minutes of our conversation. You mentioned that you had criteria for yourself. That’s a miracle, Craig. So many people walk this life asleep to who they actually are, and what they actually want to become, and most important, why they have a chosen intent to their path.
In being self-aware we understand that the construct of beliefs are manufactured by human design, and imposed onto by those in power to those playing by their rules. What the brave few know is breaking the constructs is as simple as designing your own, and helping others see there is another way. You, Joaquin, and Rafael are doing this within Minerva.
We talked about assumption, truth, and emotion. What we didn’t touch on is that those three things entwined, with a dash of self-awareness, create a recipe for togetherness. And embracing togetherness, we can lead best with not just the values we live, but the value we assign to each other with equitable consideration for one another as human beings. When do you see this in action? And when does togetherness, direction, and integrity meet?
Craig: I think it's every day, because every day, it's work. You don't reach this destination and then you are these things. You have to continually work to maintain and grow all of these traits, as an individual and as an organization. That's why we have values, and our values are a part of our every day. So, when you get a performance review, and we do performance reviews every six weeks, so that the feedback is recent and relevant. We have a kudos channel in our slack group. When good things happen, we recognize the SBI model: this was the impact your actions had, and these are the values that it touched. Every single day, we’re highlighting how employees are touching on our values. We even share that with some of our service providers and collaborators. We will always positively recognize others when they're living those values.
And so, when do togetherness, direction, and integrity meet? I mean, we have to be asking ourselves every day, am I living up these things in our values. I do think we've reached a certain threshold where I can say, yes, how we do things here at Minerva, is different. It’s definitely something I've never experienced before: togetherness being a driver for direction and integrity. But I don't know if we'll ever be there. You know, it's always a continual strive to live up to togetherness. The way those three things interact and manifest every day is going to change over time. It was far easier to share feedback and show vulnerability when it was three people, because it was smaller. Now that we're 17 it can feel that much more vulnerable to share. When you have 16 people looking back at you, it can be really hard for someone like me, who leans toward the extreme of over-sharing. I like to share about my emotions and my thoughts and talk about it. Not everybody is that way, and so we want to ensure we’re also creating a space for people who are not necessarily comfortable sharing in that manner. There are different people in the world and not everyone sees the world in the way that you or I will. Not everyone likes the same thing that you or I do. It's important to be aware of that as best you can.
So, everyday we are bridging direction and integrity with togetherness. And sometimes, the togetherness shines gloriously. Other times, we stumble, and we riff. And, well, I think that’s natural. At Minerva, we talk about that as natural. Everyone makes mistakes. Even the leaders.
Chris: Especially the leaders.
Craig: Definitely the leaders. We've already made mistakes. We’re going to continue to make mistakes. It’s just going to happen. No one can be perfect and so, we try to set that example that it’s okay. As long as we’re integral, as long as we’re working towards the same direction, as long as we’re in it together, for each other and for those we serve. I think it's working.
Chris: It sounds like it is. Craig, thank you so much for allowing me use Minerva as the case study for this article. And without any previous discussion on this, Craig, I can reveal our dialogue has gone almost exactly as I have predicted, or, at the least, had hoped. I had already, in fact, written the title to this piece when you first agreed to join me in this conversation.
Craig: What does that read?
Chris: “The Journey, Not the Destination: A case study on the ongoing commitment to practice and doing better as a path to social responsibility, empathetic leadership, and the creation of an inclusive work culture."
Craig: That’s great! That’s brilliant!
Chris: As is the work you, Joaquin, and Rafael, are doing with Minerva. Let’s hope those who read this will be inspired by the values you’ve all exemplified as leaders and as global citizens.