A Tribe called Lumency.

I founded @Lumency in 1996. 

During the first few years and in retrospect, as a leader I am not sure that I really knew what I was doing. Our business strategy was simple, but undocumented. Do our best, be loyal, be honest, work with good people, and work hard, learn from our mistakes, try and earn a little more each month than we spent. 

In 2001, #JimCollins published his seminal book #GoodtoGreat. That book became the foundation for the design of our business thereafter. Around that same time, we drafted our mission statement (which remains unchanged to this day), and we first set down what would become our Core Values: #Credibility, #Transparency, #Kaizen and #Ownership.

Good to Great was the inspiration for how our business was (and is) designed, but as we grew – we were organized on what I came to describe as #TribalTheory.

Lumency Tribal Theory is based on a few simple anthropological tenants that fit with how our brains are hardwired and how we humans naturally connect in social groups. 

The first tenant is known as #Dunbar’sNumber theorem, first proposed in the 1990s by British anthropologist Robert Dunbar. Dunbar’s theorem suggests that our brains have a cognitive limit to the number of people we can map relationships against. The number is somewhere between 100 and 250, with 150 being the accepted baseline.

The second tenant is sometimes referred to as the #RuleofEight. The Rule of Eight says that a group of up to eight people, maybe up to 12, can collaborate and communicate effectively without the need for more formal communication structures. Each person in a group of about eight people is able to create and maintain a personal relationship with everyone else in the group. Shared understanding and empathy form more easily when those personal relationships exist.

Workgroups at Lumency are optimized with between seven and nine team members. Our long term business plan includes a mechanic whereby when our business reaches 150 people in size, across geographies and across lines of business, we’ll divide the enterprise either by geography, or by line of business; whichever makes the best sense for our people and for our clients. 

In 2014, for a Lumency Book Club cycle, our full team read #TribalLeadership, the book by Dave Logan, John King and Halee Fischer-Wright that covers the authors’ eight-year study of 24,000 people and about 30 organizations. The study noted that people are genetically programmed to form into tribes of between 20 and 150 individuals. The study demonstrated that successful companies found success in large part on the strength of their tribes.

The ideas in the book became part of our Lumency Leadership Playbook.

That same year, we began calling ourselves a #tribe. By our definition: a tribe is a group of people that come together around shared values and for common purpose. 

‘Tribe’ became part of our vernacular. People across the business, our clients and our service partners used tribe in describing us in place of team, we used tribe member in place of team member or employee.  The word became part of us. 

In the midst of a pandemic and an economic crisis, the killing of George Floyd ignited a long overdue conversation around race and equity, systemic racism and privilege. 

As part of our own conversations at Lumency, our #DiversityandInclusion Cross-Functional Team came forward and asked – had we not inadvertently culturally expropriated the word tribe, and despite all that word meant to us, was it appropriate that we continue to use it?

During what was about a five-minute conversation at a weekly senior team meeting in mid-June, we made what became an easy decision. Despite what the word tribe meant to us, we would stop using it to describe our team.

While our definition of a tribe is a group of people who come together around shared values and for common purpose, tribe is a word also used in describing nations of indigenous peoples.  In that context, tribe may not be our word to borrow. 

Our change in vernacular hasn’t changed the way we are organized, or our belief that amazing things can happen when people come together around shared values and for common purpose. 

Less and less as the months have passed since we decided to stop using the word tribe, but we still catch ourselves saying 'tribe'. It is a word that has meant a lot to us.

#2020 has been a challenging year in so many ways. It has brought with it a lot of change, much of it necessary and past-due. Much of it for the better.

We are now a team proudly called Lumency.  

#Better #Stronger #Faster