In-Short
The path to Full Stream Group started with a ski photographer in Lake Tahoe, California, way down stream in the brand building process. Armed with a desire to steer brands towards a more authentic expression and greater social impact he began a two-decade long journey swimming upstream, till he found the source of the stream – people; the decisions they make and the culture that results.

In-Depth
What does an action sports photographer living in Lake Tahoe, California know about organizational development?

Nothing. Which means he has no way of effecting the brief that was just sent to him. No way of steering this brand away from the inauthentic expression a new agency just dreamt up. No way of sharing the unique value of that brand and personality of the athlete they’ve chosen to represent them.

This was the trigger that led Full Stream Group founder Matt Levinthal from action sports photographer through a nearly two-decade long journey of magazine publishing, creative agencies, startups, and marketing and multi-channel management; compiling an amalgamation of experiences in search of the secret to building powerful brands that impact culture.

The world of commerce was and continues to change rapidly, seeing this change from various perspectives within an organization and across multiple brands and industries is what led Full Stream Group to the headwaters of where brands are born and raised – people; the decisions they make and the culture that results.

To fix, build and amplify brands requires fixing, building and amplifying organizations that can embody the brand and bring that brand to life. Over time, tools were created, techniques were refined, a collective of support was gathered and Full Stream Group took form as an organizational development group, working as part of a collective to guide companies towards their full potential.

After over two decades of experience in the trenches grinding with teams across a wide range of industries, we’re grateful to have the opportunity to share with you what we’ve learned… unless of course we’re taking a brief moment to relive those ski bum days.

Learn more about why Matt gave up what some consider a dream job.

In-Short
Sales and marketing today only require one thing: be a human who can authentically connect to another human. There is no more authentic person in the world than an excited kid.

In-Depth
Something happens to us when we try to sell something to someone. Something switches in us and we stop being a human talking to another human. Instead we become a salesperson or a marketer talking to a consumer.

We start to talk funny, use different words, try to be more than we are or different than we are. You know who doesn’t do this? Kids.

This inauthentic selling or marketing we do, this is purely an adult thing. Kids have an authenticity we adults can’t come close to. It’s all on the outside for them. They haven’t yet learned to bottle it up, to manipulate it, to try to please everyone.

A six-year-old starts every sentence with, “You know what?!” because they are just so excited to share that they can’t hold themselves back. This question (or “conversation starter”) primes the speaker and the listener for honest and open sharing of whatever is on one’s mind no matter the situation.

We need to be selling and marketing with the energy of a kid: by telling a story about what we did, we saw, and felt –and doing so with deep-down excitement- we remain authentic.

People are craving connection, engagement, transparency, authenticity-the antithesis of sales and marketing as we have known it. Instagram Stories is so popular because it’s unpolished, an inside look into a person or brand’s life. Many adults can’t understand this phenomenon: “You mean I just share my life?” Yeah, just be a kid.

We’re human; and as humans, we crave real connection with other humans. In fact, we’re starved for it. That is why spending millions of dollars creating, polishing and refining ad campaigns is not nearly as effective as a steady drip of iPhone videos.

Sales and marketing as we’ve known it isn’t really a thing anymore. There is only creating stories and sharing stories. That’s it. Just like being a kid.

In-Short
How an organization makes decisions shapes the culture, the brand and its ability to scale. The greatest potential for growth and impact comes from disaggregated decision making that remains aligned to the principles and values that define the brand.

In-Depth
Our next moment, our day, our week, our year, our careers, our lives: they are shaped by the decisions we make—one decision after another, after another, after another, all stacked on top of each other. This is how we find ourselves here, and this is how we’ll find ourselves wherever we might be in the future.

Inside our organization, there are countless decisions being made. The larger the organization, the more decisions.

Decision after decision after decision, the brand is built, the business is shaped, the market is impacted… or not. But how do decisions get made?

Are teams trained to make decisions?
Is there a decision-making process?
Are there guidelines to follow?
Are decisions based on data or personal opinion?
Who gets to decide?

In small companies, decision-making is easy because it’s a dictatorship—hopefully a benevolent dictatorship but a dictatorship none the less.

If employees stick around, they become indoctrinated in the principles and values of that founder (the benevolent dictator). As the company scales, those employees can anticipate the founder’s decisions and make small to medium-sized decisions on her behalf. This is the tribal state, where there is still strong leadership, but decision-making becomes disaggregated.

Then something happens. A threshold is crossed. It can be caused by high turnover or fast growth or changes in leadership; but at some point, if a company continues to grow or sticks around long enough, the tribal structure breaks down. The principles and values which once guided decision-making become diluted.

With no clear guiding principles and values, the organization splinters –often into opinion-based decision making and smaller tribes whose individuals share a common point of view. These tribes attempt to consolidate responsibilities in order to control decision making and shape their slice of the organization based on their view.

Or…

This dystopian, post-benevolent dictatorship, post-tribal, “opinionocracy” is avoided by codifying the principles and values of the founder into decision making tools. The organization can then be trained to use these tools in every decision it makes.

As decision after decision after decision is made using these tools, the people, processes and systems begin to align with the principles and values of the brand. With consistency and time, the benevolent dictatorship, tribe or opinionocracy transforms into an organism: A scalable singular entity, with a collective intelligence, cable of decentralized decision-making and growth.

This is how brands scale without selling out. Not from logos, fancy videos and social media likes alone; but rather decision after decision after decision in every corner of the organization, all fully aligned with the original principles and values that started it all.

In-Short
The purpose of an experiment is to learn. Experiments start small and in controlled environments, then expand: Virgin Galactic could have sent 50 people on its first commercial flight to space, but it’s probably better it started with one.

In-Depth
We think we know, and we do. That is, we know things to a degree and, even then, not for sure. So why not test?

Why not give ourselves room to explore an answer? A safe place, where we can’t do too much damage. A space big enough to be valuable and real enough to be viable.

What is the risk of rushing forward versus the reward of exploration (What is the potential cost, impact to customers, the team, outside relationships, capital reserves, etc.? Can we find a good balance?

Tests are started in a controlled environment. Once we have a safe setting, we can use this test to think differently, to build off of the work of others while pushing further to unlock new avenues of growth. There is no reason to set up a test just to do more of the same; for that, we simply copy and paste.

Tests meander their way towards answers and expand once answers are found. But once we have completed a test, what’s the next step? How do we continue to move forward? How do we build on what we’ve learned and not get stuck in the safety of a test or get complacent with the results of the test? Can we prevent the perfect from becoming the enemy of good? Can we commercialize and scale this?

The tests itself, however, doesn’t need to be scalable; they only need to provide answers to questions or offer hunches. Once we have a baseline, what variances do we need to account for in a live environment? What from the test can’t be executed at scale and how do we solve for that? What impact might this new environment and scale have on the net result?

If the experiment is a complete failure, then we start over. No harm done and a valuable lesson learned.
If there was a spark, we explore that spark further, seeing if we can get it to ignite.
If there is fire, we pour a little fuel on the fire to see how bright it can burn and how far it can spread.
At every step, we are learning– always learning. At the same time, we are always mitigating unnecessary risk in an attempt to make the education more valuable than the potential cost.

In-Short
To physically pivot, we require a fixed anchor point. To leap requires complete freedom of movement. Both initiate change and may unlock growth, but each has drastically different requirements. So, are we pivoting or actually leaping?

In-Depth
There is a big difference between leaping and pivoting. When we pivot, everything around us remains the same except for our point of view. If we untether ourselves from a point and move, our relationship to everything around us changes.

The same is true when strategically approaching our business. If we feel we are in the right place but need to adjust our approach –or we have a desire to explore the world that surrounds us– we pivot.

If we feel we are not altogether in the right place, we leap. We can try our approach elsewhere or try an entirely new approach from an entirely new position.

When I started to work in publishing while I was a photographer, that was a pivot: I was still in the ski industry; I was still working with the same companies and people; I was still telling stories; I just became more involved with the distribution of those stories.

When I jumped from publishing and photojournalism in the ski industry to a creative agency in San Francisco, I leaped­ –both literally and figuratively: I moved from Lake Tahoe to the Bay Area; I transitioned into a completely new field; and I was now working in entirely new industries.

Both transitions were powerful ones for me.
Both opened my eyes to the larger world around me.
Both opened up new opportunities.
Both were challenging.
Both required the development of new skills.
Both increased my income.
Both came with an enormous amount of change to my way of life.
Both endeavors ultimately failed, although I would do them both over again… only differently.
But one was a pivot and one was a leap; two drastically different actions.

Pivots are easier movements than leaps, they carry less risk because there is less change and fewer unknowns. Leaps have the potential of creating a greater impact and doing so faster, because the movement is larger and often sudden.

Two fundamentally different paths with very different requirements. The word pivot gets thrown around a lot. There’s nothing wrong with pivoting, as long as we don’t think we’re pivoting when we are actually leaping and vise versa.