March 7th, 2025

_{[ Disclaimer: We live in a world right now where the content of this post is difficult to talk about, and this is a complex topic that is challenging to fully express in written form. I might not get everything right here, and I am building in the expectation that feedback from this will further refine my thinking. This might come across as “snowglobing” (i.e., ignoring the messier world outside of Kipsu) or disconnected from the experiences people are feeling in the real world. There is a risk on a topic this complicated that readers may jump to conclusions without reading the full post or will cherry pick certain excerpts that fit into a broader cultural narrative not intended here. Finally, there is the possibility of this coming across as oversimplifying the problem and not acknowledging the bigger structural issues in society that people face every day that are limiting or that make some of our approaches feel impractical. With all of that being said, I think this is important and necessary to talk about this and to make clear Kipsu’s “default settings.” ]}

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It's important in times of cultural change that we leaders be clear about our values. In that spirit, this post aims to share Kipsu's position on what the word meritocracy means and what our team members, applicants, customers, users and shareholders can expect of us.

At Kipsu, we fundamentally believe that everyone -- regardless of gender, race, ethnicity, religion, national origin, sexuality or political views -- has an important role to play, voice to be heard and potential to be a leader in our organization.

Some will view this post as one more political statement by a CEO that is using his platform to carry out an agenda and engage in the culture war. Unfortunately, whether we like it or not, these bigger cultural debates come home, creep into our company discourse and not addressing it creates a vacuum that is often filled by the national discourse — and we are forced to respond — or be redefined by them. This isn't about politics, it's about being clear on our values and what it takes for us to be successful as a company in a highly competitive environment. My goal here is to address some myths in the national discourse and define what success looks like here at Kipsu.

Over the last month our new political leadership in Washington has commenced on a makeover of the federal workforce. This includes terminating high level military generals that are Black or female, oftentimes rationalizing the firings with public statements that they are "restoring the meritocracy." Last Friday, we started to see this manifest outside of Washington when the Board of Visitors of the Virginia Military Institute voted to not renew the contract of its first Black leader, Major General Cedric Wins. Beyond the indecent way these have been carried out (in one case, "you have three hours to move out of your house after committing 40 years of your life to us in a job that you might have well died doing"), the underlying assertion is that these individuals don't deserve the leadership roles to which they had ascended. These firings and their rhetoric are destructive and in the long run only serve to damage the meritocracy they claim to be building.

Central to this worldview is an assumption that we operate in a zero-sum game, where one person must lose for another to gain. At Kipsu, we categorically reject this view. High performers in our organization, regardless of background, create opportunities for others. We have seen time and again that our highest performers operate at a margin of 30% above the performance of the average team member and that directly translates into faster revenue growth, better retention and bigger cost savings. Those contributions to our business mean we can hire more team members, promote others to take on more responsibility and increase the average compensation across the company. The data is undeniably clear in our organization that initiative, endurance, work ethic and commitment drive this “30% high performer margin,” not skin color, national origin, sexuality, religion, political views or other characteristics elevated in the culture war.

This zero sum game mentality often leaves people thinking they are disadvantaged if someone else has success. In the interest of righting historical wrongs it can be tempting to view the solution to limit or disadvantage those that come from historically privileged backgrounds.  The path to inclusion is not through more exclusion (in this case to the historically advantaged) but rather to be thoughtful and intentional about the needs of our company and how to position each person to have the biggest impact. Education and acknowledgement prevents us from making the same mistake twice but attributing false responsibility doesn’t move us forward -- it just builds resentment and hinders progress. We're all in this together to set each other up for success. And when each of us does our job well that creates opportunity for everyone else -- we all win. That’s at the heart of our value, “We Go Beyond, Together.” We need each other. 1+1=3. 2+1=5, ....

Our experience is that creating a culture of inclusion and making the conscious choice to see the potential in everyone on our team has a substantial impact on the energy that our team members bring to their work every day and has a multiplier effect across our organization.

There's a false narrative out there that we have to make a choice between embracing great talent or focusing on those that come from backgrounds historically under-represented in the workplace. In the fifteen years that I have helped build Kipsu that has never been a choice we have had to make. That view assumes that people are more-or-less a commodity and that there are only minor differences that make them interchangeable. I believe we humans are much more complex than that. We bring different skills, mindsets, motivations and life and work experiences that make one person very different from another. If we have done our job well, we understand the differences in individuals very deeply when we make a choice about who we hire or promote. Being ambivalent between two people or not seeing the differences in performance or potential means we simply haven't dug hard enough to understand who they are and how that applies to the success factors of the job. That's one reason that our interviewing process here at Kipsu is as long as it is -- we need to see people deeply.

Now that can all sound like a bit of a fairy tale and that “it’s not the real world we live in.” You might be thinking, “yeah, but at the end of the day, for some jobs there is only one role and someone is going to get that job and someone else is not.” It's true that we have to make some tough choices, and we don’t always get them right, but our experience is that one person is almost always more qualified or an objectively better selection when we dig into the details.  These aren’t hard choices once we have done our homework. We’re always taking a bet on whether a person can step into a role and be successful but we almost always feel it’s obvious when we make that decision if the choice is a choice between two people. With strong succession planning, for internal candidates -- our preferred path to promotion -- those decisions along the way are informed by thousands of hours of observation. Further, for the other candidates that didn’t get that role at the time there are lots of opportunities to challenge them and promote them in a way that meets them where they are at and leverages their unique skills and interests. Every single team member deserves a plan for the future that sets them up for growth and impact. (Note to reader: The best piece of advice I have ever received is to work for growing companies; growth creates opportunity).

Our goal is to attract, retain and promote the most talented and hard working team members, regardless of their ethnicity, gender, sexuality, religion, political views or other demographic characteristics. The margin for error in a company like ours is too small not to have the very best playing critical roles in our company, including its leadership and the important decisions they have to make every day to guide our bets. We embrace diversity because it does exactly this -- it doesn't limit our talent to boundaries that simply don't play a role in predicting success.

Historically speaking, this is where we as a society have gotten it wrong. When my mother entered the workforce in 1961, the options for women were low -- secretarial work, teaching, librarianship and nursing were largely the options at their disposal. With gender biases alone, we limited the potential pool of talent in this country by an astounding 51%. What a tremendous disadvantage we imposed on ourselves, not to mention the various restrictions that got in the way of other groups from playing a role.

Working hard, making a commitment and applying yourself matters -- that's at the heart of meritocracy. Another one of our core values, "We Do the Work," states this plainly. People don't always like to hear this but let me play it to you straight: putting in the extra effort creates more opportunities to make mistakes and get experience and increases the speed at which one goes up the learning curve. Those that make a bigger commitment are rewarded with more responsibility, greater opportunities to move the needle and increased compensation at a faster pace. I've worked places where the hours expectations are overwhelming (sometimes 80+ hours) and that can be counter productive -- that's not what we are after here. We have another core value, "We Play the Long Game," and you can't be in the game for long if you are burned out or neglecting other responsibilities in your life -- this isn't about unrealistic expectations of long hours or a toxic culture that solely equates hours alone to performance, but, rather, a realistic view on what it takes to be successful in a highly competitive, fast moving environment.

Every day Kipsu competes against better funded competitors. And every day we have the opportunity to either prove to our customers our value, or, conversely, to demonstrate why we cannot be trusted to deliver for them. Whether we like it or not, this demands that we operate at our very best. We need to out-communicate, out-innovate and out-work the other options our customers have at their disposal, all while frequently having less resources so that we can play this game longer than our competitors. It's a tall order and one that we embrace and has been successful for us.

On the path to building an environment where we honor the work of everyone, it can be tempting to tokenize individuals who are having success and also come from an under-represented background. No one wants to be the best gay venture capitalist or the best Black CEO; they just want to be the best. Your background does not limit you from being at the top of your field, period. We measure everyone on the team with the same yardstick.

One final point… As company leaders we need to recognize that in many cases those coming from traditionally under-represented backgrounds may not see themselves in positions of greater responsibility and that our job is to help everyone build the confidence to see greater potential in themselves. A real meritocracy is one where all know that they have a role to play and can achieve their full potential.

We're unwavering and intentional in our views on embracing diversity while having high expectations for everyone. Some companies couldn’t write a response to George Floyd's murder fast enough but folded like a yard chair when the political winds changed and they sensed that might impact their stock price. We took our time to think this through and we stand by our commitment to building a thriving team while rejecting the false choice of diversity versus meritocracy. 

Christopher Smith co-founded Kipsu, a company he leads as CEO that helps hoteliers, retailers, property managers and healthcare service leaders build amazing relationships with their customers by leveraging digital. You can reach him at chris at kipsu dot com.