Tony Reeves is MAIAR’s founder. Despite this, and being a director of the business, he’s keen to ‘remove’ himself from our delivery as much as possible, empowering each team to conduct its own work.
We quizzed him on why he thinks “flattening the hierarchy” will be key to our success as a business.
Q: Can you give us a summary of your background, and how you came to be in the position you are now?
A: I come from a family of service people: my mum had six brothers, five of them were in the army. My grandfather was in the British Army, and I had an uncle in the Royal Air Force, so it was a natural fit for me to go to the Royal Air Force.
I joined at 17 as an engineering apprentice. I initially wanted to be a pilot, but I wore glasses, so there was never going to be a viable route for me!
I spent seven years in the ranks as a junior technician, and then as a corporal. But I wanted more, so I commissioned.
I ended up in the world of intelligence and spent the next 15 years progressing. I found that I was really good at being the first to do something; in 2004, I was the first RAF sensor operator flying drones out of Las Vegas in America.
But I came to the point where the opportunities in front of me weren’t really enough to keep me motivated, so, in 2009, I retired from the military at the age of 40 and transferred into industry.
I worked for a small business and then moved on to CGI and eventually Raytheon. But I soon realised that big companies weren’t me either. I was hunting for the sweet spot of what was best for me, and at that point, I convinced my wife Alison that we should start a business and that I would go out as a consultant.
So in 2016, we started Level 7 Expertise, grew to eight people (depending on how you count associates!), and then in August 2023 we acquired RJD Technology, a company that we’d known for a long time.
Overnight, our world changed. The company size doubled. It was now down to Alison and me to run a business that was twice the size of the one we were used to. We had to quickly get used to all the compliance, the legal tasking, and HR – everything that comes with a bigger company.
We rebranded to MAIAR and had to tackle all the challenges that come along with that.
But it’s been an absolute joy, genuinely.
Q: The biggest challenge to entrepreneurs in recent years has probably been COVID. How did you overcome that?
A: As Level 7, we were largely unscathed. Which was a really fortunate position to be in. I appreciate there were people and businesses out there who were not nearly so fortunate, and a lot in significantly worse positions.
We were involved in projects that just couldn’t stop; our Ministry of Defence customers just kept going, while following the new laws of the time.
The challenge we had was adapting to a hybrid delivery model. Typically, in the past, we would have been entirely on client sites, and for a long while during the pandemic, this wasn’t always possible. So we adopted a “work from anywhere policy”, which has actually carried over into MAIAR.
The main challenge for me personally as a leader through COVID was making sure our staff had sufficient rest and were taking breaks. Because we couldn’t go anywhere, people weren’t taking leave. I found that, particularly during lockdown, our staff worked harder, and they just kept working! I know our customers appreciated that, but I made sure I monitored how much time away from work everyone was having and enforced breaks on them when I needed to.
Q: As MAIAR was founded post-COVID, did your experience as a leader and entrepreneur during the pandemic teach you anything which you’ve carried into the new business?
A: Yes – one of the cornerstones of the MAIAR culture is that we still operate that “work from anywhere” policy.
That doesn’t mean ‘work from home’. If our staff want to work at home, that’s fine. If they want to work on a client site, great. And if you want to work somewhere else, that’s okay. We’re deliberately enabling that – all of our systems are now cloud-based and accessible from anywhere.
When we first brought that policy in, I said to our staff: “You don’t need to check with me where you need to work. Just be where you need to be, when you need to be there, and do the work that you need to get done, in the hours you’ve got”.
But then I changed that and told them that I didn’t even need to give them that level of direction anymore. Although I’m the owner of the business, they no longer need my ‘permission’ to behave like that. They just do what they think is right.
As a cultural change, that has been really significant.
Q: Has that cultural shift thrown up any challenges? If so, how have you overcome them?
A: For ex-military people, who are used to being in a very hierarchical organisation where permission is required for most things – expenditure, annual leave, the odd hour off here and there for a medical appointment – this kind of “flat business”, as I call it, can take a lot of getting used to.
For me, it’s been a case of reminding them that they don’t need to ask for permission for anything and reiterating that this culture has a positive impact on everyone. Our view is that if our team is happy, positive, and motivated, then that will carry across to our clients, and they will also be happy, positive, and motivated and will do well.
Q: Why is “flattening” the business important to you?
A: I’ve got a picture in my head of what success looks like: it’s a big bunch of us in our really cool MAIAR T-shirts, standing outside an amazing office, working in a totally diverse organisation.
In order for that picture to become a reality, I have to flatten the structure of MAIAR wherever possible and where it would work.
Previously, in L7 Expertise, I was holding the reins of everything, and the team did most of the delivery work.
In what was RJD Technology, it was a similar structure. It was centered on the directors, and the wider team delivered the services. But things like commercial work, business development, contract management, and project management all sat with the directors.
Now, if we kept that model going, we would not succeed. We wouldn’t hit that golden vision of 30 or 40 of us standing outside the office. It’d be ten or so people, and we would potter along and grow a little bit organically.
We don’t want that. So now we’ve got an intelligence services lead. We’ve got an enabling services lead. We’ve got a research lead. Those people are the functional managers and the leaders of the business. They have responsibility for their own area.
That transition from a hierarchical structure to a much flatter culture is taking some work. Everyone’s learning – including me because my natural tendency is to wade in and fix things! If the team desperately needs my help, it’s fine, and I will, of course, support them, but actually, the more I step in and help, the less empowered they’re going to be. So, I have to control my own natural tendency to fix things, so that’s proving a challenge.
It’s an interesting dilemma, but we’re all we’re all getting into it.
Q: Culture is clearly at the heart of MAIAR’s success. What do you look for in new team members to fit into the “flattened” culture?
A: The first thing I look for absolutely centres around cultural fit. Do they share our values, our ethos, and our behaviours? Do they have the same moral compass as us? These are the qualities I look for above everything else.
I’m actively trying to lower our age demographic. A lot of defence companies are full of men in their 50s who have retired from the military and have become consultants. We could keep doing that, but we absolutely don’t want to as the norm. There are times when our customers absolutely want experience and ‘scars’, but that’s not always the case, so I’m constantly looking for younger, talented individuals to join our team. They change the approach of the business and the pace at which we evolve.
Our engineering team is a great example of that, where we’ve got a dazzling array of capabilities with people who really buy into our idea. And yet, they’re not 50-something ex-military types. They’re completely different in terms of character and nature, but they have the shared values, ethos, and understanding that bring us success.
Talent is the next trait I look for. The ability to understand, absorb, analyse, adapt, and ultimately be really effective.
Skills and experience are often actually quite a long way down the list – because if someone has talent, and all the aforementioned skills, they can be easily trained. We can train and coach people to be great consultants, project managers, or analysts if they have basic talent and the right mindset. So, over and above skills, I judge prospective new team members based on mindset, attitude, approach, cultural fit, and behaviours.
Q: How is MAIAR going to get even better in the future?
A: I’m trying to fuel that energy coming into the company. I’m trying to light a fire under it. We’re not going to add more senior leaders; we’re going to have more amazing young talent because that’s what we need to succeed and grow.
But are we still learning how to be a better business? Yes. Right down to the lower levels of every project, we conduct a reflective review and look back to see what we could have done better. It’s almost like a fighter pilot debrief. It’s really candid, and it can be quite painful, and I get the flack as much as anyone else: “Tony, you really didn’t say what we needed you to say in that very senior meeting. Do it better next time!” But then I ask them, “Well, what does better look like?”. They tell me, and all I can say is, “Okay, noted!”. It’s hard feedback, but that’s how we’ll win in business.
We have to do things in a really innovative way, but that gives us the opportunity to behave differently to go after the more risky opportunities because the easy projects are often sucked up by all the big primes and so on.
Q: What advice would you give to a younger Tony?
A: The first tip would be to trust yourself more, particularly early on in your career.
And the second piece of advice would be to occasionally think before you speak!