CREATING A CULTURAL BAROMETER FOR SUCCESS
Clio has been on an uninterrupted trajectory since Rian Gauvreau, chief people officer, and Jack Newton, chief executive officer, founded the company in 2007. A winner in the Growth and Small Cap category of the Waterstone Canada’s 10 Most Admired Corporate Cultures awards, Clio ranks as one of Canada’s first and fastestgrowing providers of cloudbased practice management software for small to midsize legal firms.
Since the beginning, the co-founders have believed in working differently to grow an organization that is both human and highperformance. That is exactly what they have been able to achieve, through their commitment to creating and maintaining a culture that drives excellence.
Clio had a strong corporate culture even in the early growth stages, Gauvreau says. “At first, it was intuitive. Jack and I were really careful about hiring for fit and equally invested in the process. We made sure anyone we hired was compatible with our organization, our philosophy and the way we do things.”
“After we raised our Series B financing and began hiring more aggressively, we got a bit more removed from the day-to-day hiring,” Newton admits. “One day we bumped into someone in the cafeteria who we didn’t recognize and we discovered that neither of us had been involved in hiring them. We realized for the first time we were scaling at such a rate that someone was brought in without weighing in on our cultural barometer.”
They both realized that a more formalized approach was in order. The team began with a grassroots exercise to ask employees their thoughts about the company’s value system, and to enshrine it.
Those cultural values revolved around the notions of improvement, transparency, agility and minimizing burnout. They were then articulated as: customer success comes first; thrive as #TeamClio; Draw the f***ing owl; live a learning mindset; no doors, only windows; work hard, be agile; and stay fit, have fun.
“It allowed us to reduce the communications overhead and create a high level of alignment and velocity,” Newton explains. “Now, people know at an instinctive level if the decisions they make are right.”
A new mission statement was another outcome from that process, he notes. “Eight years ago, our mission statement was pretty much a survival-oriented one: to make it to the next quarter without running out of money. Now, it’s ‘transforming the practice of law, for good’. With that, we have seen a really positive response in employees. It has driven the really terrific engagement levels we’re seeing at Clio right now.”
Another important lesson learned along the growth path is not to compromise culture for performance. Maintaining high standards for those who join the team is critical, both for the skills they bring to the table and how they elevate the company culture.
“You have to learn how to identify who is adding value to the organization. Who is raising the bar and pushing others to do better? That’s something that takes time to understand,” Gauvreau says.
One of the terms that is often applied to describing the Clio community is a ‘sense of tribe’. The underlying principle is that people who join the company are part of a team focused on helping and advancing the best outcomes for the business, Gauvreau says. “People here don’t have to worry about internal threats or politics. They really feel that the group has their back. They know that once they’re part of the Clio tribe, we will look after them.”
“We all feel like we’re pushing in the same direction,” Newton says. “If we give a piece of work to someone else, we have every confidence it will get done.”
That applies to everyone on staff, whether they work in a Clio office or not. Of the more than 200 staff members (with projections it will reach 300 by year end), up to 10 per cent of them work remotely.
“Remote workers are an integral part of the Clio tribe,” Newton says. “When Rian and I started, we were working remotely — I was in Edmonton, he was in Vancouver. Our first 10 hires were also remote. It was five years before we established a head office. We believe that our ability to hire and support remote employees continues to be one of our competitive advantages.”
Newton says although “remote workers are part of our DNA,” the company invests in bringing its entire worldwide employees to its Vancouver headquarters once a year. This annual “Team Day” event allows Clio’s global team to forge relationships through a day of strategic planning and team-building activities.
“Nothing can replace seeing your colleagues face to face,” he says.
Beyond its innovation and customer service, Clio’s success has always rested on hiring people who are inspired by what they are doing, Gauvreau says. “Some join us to build their careers, others because they like a challenge; and others are just inspired by the people. We believe that if people are passionate about their work and their workplace, the rest takes care of itself.”