It Takes a Tribe

by Will Dean

  In those kinds of negotiations, you use what you can. I think there was an advantage to me and Guy Livingstone being British. We could use cultural differences to our advantage or as an excuse. The naïveté and innocence that come with being an outsider can be useful allies. Guy maintained that had we stayed in England, we would never have started the business, because we would have been more aware of the negative voices in our heads: “England has been much more of a trading economy where establishing careers in finance, law, and accounting are the keys to success,” he once suggested. “This is different than in America, where it is the big dream to build something from nothing. It seems as if entrepreneurship is more deeply ingrained in the culture than it is where Will and I were raised.” There’s some truth in that.

  As well as those advantages, there were unforeseen consequences in trying to set up a business—and lead a tribe—in a foreign country. A good deal of that came down to the old saying that Britain and the United States are two nations divided by a common language.

  My favorite example came one afternoon when I was standing talking to a couple of venue owners in Upstate New York about events we were thinking of creating and whether they would be interested in being involved. I was talking about doing a Tough Mudder Half and described it in relation to the popularity of duathlons—a duathlon being a triathlon without the swim. I could see the venue owners looking increasingly alarmed as I explained this concept, and I couldn’t quite think why. Eventually one of them couldn’t contain his disbelief. “You talk about ‘duathlons,’” he said, using my British pronunciation, “but are you sure a triathlon aimed exclusively at Jewish people would even be a possibility in this country?”

  Language difficulties aside, there were plenty of challenges in translating my vision for the company to the reality of leading it. The entrepreneurial mind-set, which drives innovative change, is not always best suited to the inevitable compromises and difficulties of leading a team. I think I expect a lot of myself, and I am aware that I can feel let down by people who don’t share that sense of mission. My wife, Katie, recently said something to me which resonated. We were talking about the rights and wrongs of whether I should go out of my way to compromise in a certain situation. Katie suggested, with a laugh, that I was actually quite a straightforwardly ethical person: “If someone’s been an asshole in your eyes, it’s perfectly acceptable for you to be an asshole back to them.” She knows me too well. I do my best to avoid conflict, but if I find myself confronted I don’t, for better and worse, find it easy to back down.

  One solution to this for me as a leader was to try to make our organization a haven for those who shared that attitude to the world: people who could take responsibility and initiative, who were frustrated by bureaucracy and hierarchy but who had a very clear understanding of our deeper purpose and values. There are consequences to this style of leadership, and they are exacerbated when the founder continues in the company as CEO, as I have done. Concentrating on values rather than processes, and trying to instill those values in a very hands-on way—through Tough Mudder University, for example—rather than outsourcing that responsibility to others means that you are often seen as the personification of all that the company stands for. That can feel like quite an exposed position. If an employee is feeling unfulfilled in their work for whatever reason, or underappreciated in some way, they tend not to blame the company or the system; they blame you.

  We did an anonymous employee engagement survey a couple of years ago. The results were unambiguous. It wasn’t that half the people in the company were somewhat happy and half were a bit grumpy. Ninety percent of people were extremely happy and 10 percent were extremely unhappy, and there was nothing in between. Afterward I talked to all the staff about those results. I told them that we made the survey anonymous so there would be no consequence of any negative reports. But also, that if you were among the 10 percent who really didn’t like it here, I had to say that, honestly, that fact was unlikely to change. Still, on the bright side, there was an obvious solution. The same solution I followed when I decided to leave the Foreign Office after my unambiguous appraisal.

  Some of the people who were unhappy were completely outraged by this idea. They came to see me one by one. “Will, you’re telling me that if I’m unhappy I’ve got to leave?”

  “No,” I said, “I’m not saying that at all. But you should never forget it is an option. Empowerment works both ways. We try to create an organization at Tough Mudder where people can take responsibility and thrive, where they are encouraged to learn from mistakes and not be blamed for them. Where they feel that they have a real stake in any successes. But we, like any organization, do not have the power to make every individual who works here content and fulfilled. That part—finding out how to be happy—is not our responsibility. It has to come from you.”

  I think a couple of years before I wouldn’t necessarily have had the conviction to deliver that particular message to an employee. When I first tried to lead Tough Mudder, if someone came to me and said that they were unhappy my first thought would have been, Well what can we do to make you more content? How can we change our ways? One of the things you learn about leadership the longer you practice it is the fact that though you can try to nurture a culture in which people feel that they have a stake and in which you hope they can thrive, not everyone will seize that chance. I don’t think the solution to that is to try to modify the way you work so everyone feels at home with it. I think it is your role to be consistent to the values that culture emphasizes and try to communicate the reasons behind them. Values can’t be tailored to fit everyone. If somebody doesn’t want to take responsibility for the work they have been given or wants to be handheld through it or needs to be constantly singled out for special praise, then there are probably other organizations that will suit them better. In this sense, the Tough Mudder events themselves offer another metaphor for the company; though everyone is completely welcome at them, they are very clearly not for everybody. Some take one look at our obstacles and can’t wait to get stuck in them. Plenty of other people run a mile in the other direction.

  I started this chapter by suggesting that entrepreneurs find it hard to live by other people’s rules. That is not the same as living by no rules at all, however. James Kerr writes in his book about the All Blacks: “Wise leaders seek to understand how the brain reacts to stress and practice simple, almost meditative techniques to stay calm, clear, and connected. They use maps, mantras, and anchors to navigate their way through highly pressurized situations, both personal and professional, and to bring themselves back to the moment. In this way, they and their teams stay on top of their game and on top of the situation.”

  I used to try to lead as much as possible through instinct. With a small team made up mostly of people I had come of age with in the business, it was possible. But as the complexity of the business and the scale of the staff grew, it quickly became clear that instinct alone wouldn’t be enough. I have found the advice contained in James Kerr’s observation useful as I’ve tried to grow Tough Mudder from its original “business of belonging” roots. For most of that time I carried the mission and principles of leadership style in my head, but to find some consistency a while back I decided it might be a useful exercise to clear a day or two to think exactly what those principles should be. The kaizen credo had defined the culture of the office, and the Mudder pledge was a statement of intent for our tribe, but what were the rules of engagement that I might best use to lead the business and keep it on track? In the end, I wrote down five rules and pared them down as much as possible:

  Be Bold: Push through big ideas and patiently build consensus. Don’t fear failure or avoid difficult conversations.

  Stay Focused: Don’t procrastinate. Focus energy solely on achieving goals and priorities. Be willing to say no and cut losses when necessary.

  Live in the Now: Don’t put too much pressure on yourself to do e
verything all at once. Make time for others—particularly family.

  Act Rationally: Don’t take things personally. Keep problems in perspective. Evaluate your own emotions when making decisions.

  Be Positive: Focus on others’ strengths (not weaknesses). Avoid being judgmental. Focus on the future, not the past. Be grateful for all you have.

  I keep these thoughts on my to-do list and try to review them at least once a week. Quite often, I have the feeling that they keep me sane.

  MUDDER LEADERS: Seven-Day Warriors

  It’s been important, given that Tough Mudder was partially inspired by the military-style psychological training I had gone through in the Foreign Office, and our links with Special Forces’ challenges, that we should have a strong bond with veterans and veterans’ charities. Much of our Mudder spirit—No Mudder Left Behind—is based on that ethos of collective responsibility. Veterans identified with Tough Mudder too. From the beginning, we had interest in the event from lots of enlisted and former soldiers, who used Tough Mudder to get their fitness levels up or to rehabilitate—or just because. My understanding of leadership has evolved from the best of those examples, of never asking someone to do anything you would not be prepared to do yourself, of trying to lead through the example of clear-thinking strategy and courage, remembering that you are only ever as good as the weakest link in your team.

  We formalized our emotional relationship with these values by partnering with the major charities that supported soldiers injured by the wars in the Middle East and Afghanistan. The strength of those partnerships is bolstered by wounded veterans being very visible in nearly all of our events; and their attitudes prove infectious. This association was encouraged by the example of a few extraordinary individuals. One was Noah Galloway, who had been severely injured in an IED attack in Iraq in 2005. Noah lost his left arm below the elbow and his left leg below the knee. He went on to be a multiple Tough Mudder and also won third place on Dancing with the Stars and led his team to victory on the American TV series Grit. We made Noah our first official “Muddervator” in 2015. It was awe inspiring to see him not only hauling himself around the course, with his prosthetic leg and one arm—even swinging through the Funky Monkey bars—but also helping others at every turn.

  Before he ran his first Mudder in 2011, Noah had been reading obsessively about the event. “I started reading article after article about Tough Mudder and I read a lot about injured veterans who came out to these events,” he recalls. “But what I read was these vets weren’t finishing. They were out there to raise money and awareness for various organizations, but they weren’t running and completing the course. I thought How hard can it be? This motivated me. I had something to prove.”

  Noah did complete the course that year, despite his prosthesis coming loose and having to be held together with a makeshift emergency repair for the last three miles. He has done many more Mudders since.

  Noah’s pioneering efforts inspired many other wounded veterans to train to complete Tough Mudders. Mark Holloway, another of our ambassadors, based in the United Kingdom, admits he felt a little humbled when he saw Galloway’s feats. “I’ve been reading Noah’s book,” he says. “I look at him and he has lost one arm and one leg. He’s still phenomenally fit and he does it all. I just look at that and think: I have got no excuse.”

  It was seeing people who were worse off than he was in the Royal Centre for Defence Medicine in Birmingham, England, that helped Mark shrug off his own severe injuries, sustained while on his third tour of duty in Afghanistan in 2010. He had been leading his platoon of the Rifles regiment on patrol when he was blown up by an IED. The bomb went off right next to him, and the blast ripped through his forearm, severing a radial artery and causing catastrophic bleeding. Despite this, Mark organized his own recovery by radioing through instructions to a U.S. Special Forces helicopter to pick him up. “By that point,” he says, “as platoon sergeant I was so used to doing a casualty evacuation for my guys that were injured that when it came to me being the injured person I just did my own. I’d seen more blood in my three tours than Rambo. I went through all the protocols while I was pouring blood into the ground. It was just natural.” Mark almost died from the bleeding, and once he got back to the hospital it was unclear if his arm could be saved.

  After a series of operations and a long period of rehabilitation, he did manage to regain use of his arm, though he has lost two of the muscles in his forearm, and he has no sensation in his upper arm. He made the decision to start raising money for Help for Heroes in part because he felt he had gotten off so lightly: “I kind of felt a little bit guilty because the treatment and attention that I was receiving when I was in the same hospital and same rehabilitation department was the same as for guys who had no legs,” he says. “So that was the turning point for me.”

  When he subsequently took up a job as color sergeant at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst, Tough Mudder became his vehicle for raising money and awareness. “I spent a year in recovery and then at the end of that before I went back to work I did a Tough Mudder with my brother—the first event in the UK in 2012—to raise money for Help for Heroes. From there on the hunger grew to want to do more and to compete in World’s Toughest and to push myself more each year.”

  One of the things he appreciates about running the events is the opportunity they give for soldiers to run alongside civilian participants. Since the wars began there haven’t been that many chances for the general population to show their appreciation for the sacrifices some of the military have made, so Mark and his teams receive a lot of encouragement. The same goes for Wounded Warriors and Team Rubicon in the States, who get a special shout-out at the Tough Mudder start line.

  “It’s definitely a good support,” Mark says. “You hear people cheering you on when they see your running T-shirt, Help for Heroes. I think it touches a nerve with people especially when we were so heavily involved in Afghanistan.”

  The other response he gets is people suggesting that he must find the courses a breeze after all his military training. He suggests that is far from the case.

  “They say, yeah, you are used to doing this stuff with a helmet on and a weapon and gear. But it’s a completely different thing. People tell me any soldier should be able to run World’s Toughest, and I am like, no, not really. Not at all. It’s a twenty-four-hour event and it takes a year to train for it if you want to do well.” In his first year, Mark didn’t train for it. He decided to go to World’s Toughest with two weeks’ notice. The aim was just to survive. “I had a box of doughnuts and a flask of coffee and just went for it,” he recalls. He’s learned a lot since then, and now he sees the event like a big family reunion. Last year Mark had the British “super volunteers” Guy and Miranda Richardson as his pit crew, and their presence has become a regular fixture: “They live and breathe it. They are amazing people. They are flying out with me this time to support me again.”

  Mark was posted to Edinburgh last year, so he is away from his family and young son during the week. “I have those hills literally less than a mile away from my accommodation. So I am up there most days; it’s perfect Tough Mudder country. Yesterday afternoon, for example, I was there for six hours in the afternoon just running around the hills and the lakes.”

  When he gets home on the weekends, his little boy greets him with the words “Daddy’s been running.”

  “I never admit to being good,” Mark says, with typical Mudder understatement. “I’m just persistent. But still, the level that I am at now, I’ve never got to that in anything else in my life and it’s a good feeling that I can actually do that now.”

  In that sense, he says, doing Tough Mudder has given him a focus and a purpose that he has rarely experienced before. He doesn’t look back at all, apart from counting his blessings.

  “I went in the army at sixteen,” he says. “I wasn’t that interested in school. I was a fit young la
d and for me the natural thing to do was to join up. I wouldn’t change anything about it, even getting blown up, because I believe the person that I am now is partly down to nearly dying in Afghanistan, and the injuries I sustained have shaped my future and the person that I am. Part of that is being a Tough Mudder. Anything different and it wouldn’t be me.”

  CHAPTER 7

  The Business of Belonging: Connecting the Tribe

  I get by with a little help from my friends.

  —Ringo Starr

  If you remove a single cell from a human heart you can watch that cell carry on beating on its own under a microscope for several days. If you add a cell from another human heart to the first, the two communicate in interesting ways. Though the two cells are beating at different rates when they are put together, they quickly start to beat in time when they get close to touching. And when they touch they tend to keep on beating longer than they would apart. Add more cells from different hearts and the same thing happens. Quite soon all the heart cells are beating with each other strongly in time. Some scientists have speculated that this subconscious adaptive rhythm may begin to explain how social animals bond from birth—and perhaps even how tribes begin to form.

  Tribes differ from other groups, in the way we think of them at Tough Mudder, because they exhibit a stronger human bond than simple social networks. Individual tribe members are encouraged to express their full potential, but in the context of the values shared by the wider group. There are always two competing positive forces in any functioning society. One force is cooperation: people are healthier and happier—and perhaps wealthier—when they collaborate. The other is competition: personal striving to be the best creates the most successful communities by spreading aspiration and prosperity. In my view these forces work best when they are held in tension. If cooperation is the only driver, there is not enough of the spark and energy of the individual. If selfishness dominates, you lose the social power of altruistic networks and connected tribes.