Happy 8th birthday to Artemis!

March 31st marked our 8 year anniversary!?I’d always hoped to write a look back / look forward reflection like this one but there just hasn’t been space or time. Going from nothing to something is one of the most humbling experiences (probably right up there with parenting!). We have a strong leadership team and it is amazing how that has created capacity and energy.

For an accidental entrepreneur, I’m finally comfortable with saying I built Artemis because the way work happens is fundamentally broken. I realized this the moment I became a mom.??If we could fix the broken workplace?we could unleash untapped potential in the public, private and social sector to be more intentional with talent.?

Part of the problem of having your primary job being problem solving is that you constantly see all of the problems that still need to be solved.??Yet Artemis has a lot to celebrate. I would like to share a few reflections.

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Looking Back

The vision was simple “Every person in every organization has the help they need to make positive change; Every talented person is able to find its productive outlet”. We started from a talent focus with the belief that if we could attract the best problem solvers and inspire knowledge worker productivity, we could solve problems for our clients and bring them energy as they worked on their innovations. We wanted to build a healthy workplace with the belief that this was good for our clients, our team, the communities the team lived in and society.?

Company anniversaries are a great step to step back and say??“What are we distinctive at and love doing?” and “What doesn’t exist today, but the world would love it if we made it?”

We were able to attract great people, specifically those in transition, who we knew would be with us for a brief period of time, and a second amazing group of talent that wanted flexibility.??Our alums have gone on to take big roles at major companies. Some are CEOs, some are leading innovation, some are investing and many are entrepreneurs.??We’re building entrepreneurial leaders and walking beside them as they lead wherever they feel called to lead. One of our clients shared the quote from John Quincy Adams that “If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more and become more, you are a leader."?

When Covid hit, I felt hopeful. Suddenly everyone was forced into remote work. The integration between work and life was obvious as pets, children, aging parents and grandparents popped up during online meetings. Yet as I watch a battle over return to office happen between leaders and talent, see spyware being installed on remote workers computers, and layoffs I still feel we need to exist.

We’ve had inbound calls from investors looking to acquire us which is something I never expected. While it was flattering and with one company I felt it might expand our network, I decided we need a female led strategy firm in the world. I take a longer view on talent and I want my children and all of the future generation to have a better work environment.???Being rigorous in hiring and then granting people autonomy and trusting them to be adults. If we do good work it will yield incredible results.?

Meaningful work matters. When my twins were born, we were in the NICU and I didn’t know if they would be okay, life felt very very out of control. Having a little bit of work grounded me, made me a better mom and centered me so I could deal with the world. Work and good family / friends support helped me deal with anxiety and the blame I was placing on myself for them coming early.???Here at Artemis we focused on building a compassionate workplace. We intentionally went with compassion over empathy because we will work with people to come up with a plan. That means that from the beginning we offered 4 weeks of paid vacation with the last week of the calendar year being a company shut down. Having a chance??to wrap up the year with no messages, no emails to return to is really nice. We also offered 4 months of paid maternity and paternity as a very small company. Even though this was expensive for us, we have been able to attract caregivers to the company and allow them to keep a hand in the labor market while also supporting aging parents or children. We’ve had a 4.5% promise that has given people paid time off to volunteer. It has allowed us to do pro bono projects for leaders focused on major challenges.

Thank you to our incredible clients. All of our clients have come to us through referrals.??The vision 8 years ago was that there were a lot of entrepreneurial leaders who wanted to have a positive impact on the world. This group wanted to DO something, not just talk or politic or build board documents.??

—> Our entire business model is built on making it easy to turn strategy and operations support on and off.??Strategy consultants can be useful.??

—> Brave leaders “Dare to know” and want an outside, rigorous and objective opinion. We have told leaders that the business idea they are really excited about might not work because the existing company’s core capabilities are so different from what the new market needs. We’ve pointed out the merger might work and then asked how the company can learn from the two-thirds of majors that have failed. We’ve investigated if the nonprofit is still needed now that the government has stepped in to support the constituent the nonprofit served.??

—> We’ve also made specialist knowledge available quickly. For example, when a hospital system CEO was wondering what to do about obesity, we were all to bring in several subject matter experts who had looked at the space from different angles.?

Thank you to our incredible team.??All of our talent has come to us through referrals. During the great re-evaluation, great resignation, whatever you want to call it, we still had more incredible talent than we could staff.??We’ve adopted a??mantra of Mia Hamm’s to “Leave the team better than you found it“ .??While we’re sad for Artemis when people go on to be CEO, Start a company, get involved in politics, care for family or invest in more advanced education, we’re excited for you as a human. For the team that is here, your commitment to constantly learning and serving others is inspiring?

Looking forward

The vision Artemis has is still needed. While there’s been talk of the “Robots coming” for jobs for decades, this moment feels different. Work is changing. The way we train people to do work is different.??People are not machines. In order to maximize knowledge worker productivity, we can’t work professional service leaders 60-100 hours / week.??People need inspiration. This comes from letting our brains rest, be creative. We wish more companies would

Our hope is that our model is copied and spread. Project based work will become the norm for many.??The organizations who are??able to quickly form and disband high performing diverse teams will win. The basics are:

1)?Focus on trust and economic security. As a founder, I check my cash flow model every single day. Asking people to work with me is a commitment on both parts. We both have the responsibility to have direct and honest conversations about the work. Artemis has a responsibility to its Clients and its talent.??

2) Provide people??autonomy and let individuals control aspects of their job like when and where they work

3) Empower people to integrate work and their family and personal life in a way that works for them,?

4) Work reasonable, predictable hours with paid time off. Instead of asking your team how many hours they worked, instead ask if they worked too many, too few or just right and

5) Provide employees access to both mental and physical health care and behavioral health and physical health. Talk about activities outside of work that help people be healthy.

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Then if you care about inclusion, diversity, equity and access be as data driven with your talent process as you are with your customer process.??Look at your supplier base. As a small company, some of our major clients have wonderful policies for certified businesses. Thank you for having reasonable payment terms. For the big companies,without 4 to 6 month payment terms and expensive insurance requirements, think about what you might be missing.