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I’m consistently amazed at how different Hamsa Daher’s and my upbringings were, yet how similar our experiences are at this stage of our lives. While I was in college, watching the US bomb Iraq live on TV, Hamsa was actually there, living through the bombing. What seemed surreal to me at the time was very real to her. Now, when we get together to talk about life, business, and the Small Giants Community, I’m grateful that this special person is a part of my life. To me, the lesson is that we are all human beings living through human experiences. As we sit in a park chatting, our lives now feel so similar that it is as if we grew up together.
I’ve been lucky enough to be part of the Small Giants Community for over ten years. A few years back, Paul Spiegelman, who co-founded the Small Giants community with Bo Burlingham, decided to grow the organization to share Small Giants principles with the business world more widely. Paul has always known his own strengths and weaknesses and is a master at surrounding himself with amazing leaders. So, he reached out to his network, asking if anyone knew of a good person to take the Small Giants Community to the next level.
I did! I’d met Hamsa Daher through a friend and learned that she was a talented leader and high-quality person with an infectious energy. Hamsa had recently left a position with a software company and was looking for the next challenge in her career. Hearing from Paul, I didn’t hesitate and called to let him know that Hamsa was the person he was looking for. He acted quickly, had several meetings with her, and asked her to be the Executive Director of the Small Giants Community. No one is now better equipped to lead the community’s programs and principles.
Hamsa is an extraordinary woman with an extraordinary story. She was born in Iraq during the Iraq-Iran War, and lived there until she was twelve, at the time of the first Gulf war. Although she has many fond memories of her early childhood, “The Persian Gulf War was traumatic. That was my last experience of Iraq, because we fled the country at the time.”
After moving to northern Iraq for a time, the family decided to emigrate to the US, and moved briefly back to Baghdad, and then to Amman, Jordan. Hamsa’s father stayed in Baghdad for two more months, taking care of problems with his paperwork, an extremely stressful time for Hamsa’s mother.
After Amman, the family’s first stop in the US was New York, just for one night, which thrilled Hamsa: New York perfectly matched her ideas about what the United States was supposed to be like. She and family soon wound up in San Diego, living near relatives on her mother’s side. A serious student, always at the top of her class in Iraq, Hamsa was on a track to study medicine. Suddenly, she found herself in Southern California, with teachers teaching in a language she didn’t understand, and she didn’t feel so smart any more.
“The class I could do work in was math, because I had covered much of the material before and math is universal.” Everything else was very tough. Highly motivated, Hamsa learned English by translating books and encyclopedias her aunt brought her. “Every day, I would sit there for like four to five hours after school and translate word by word.”
A move to Detroit followed. “We moved from California to Michigan because it was easier for my parents to find work. We also had more family there.” Then, halfway through eighth grade, something clicked. Hamsa realized she could now understand and speak English. “The teacher was talking, and I could get like 80% of what was going on.” She continued to be mainly silent in class, however, until she got into college.
Hamsa went on to attend Wayne State University in Detroit, Michigan, on a scholarship, intending to become a doctor. Given all the family had been through together, it was difficult for her to move away to college, although she was ready to experience some independence. In the end, she chose to live at home and commute.
Hamsa continued on the pre-med track until she decided to get a feel for the profession by working in an emergency room. “The more I worked there, the more I realized, this was not the environment I wanted to be in. I wanted to help people, but I just felt that the hospital was very down and depressing. I realized it wasn’t what I wanted to do.”
Making the difficult decision to switch focus to a different career, after graduation Hamsa went to Walsh College in Troy, Michigan, to earn an MBA. While there, “I saw an opportunity for an international advisor, working with students who come from outside the country to come into the US. I thought that, once upon a time, I was that person. I realized that the experience of coming to the US is so critical, especially in the early stages, and how awesome it would be to have the opportunity to impact those individuals. So, I interviewed, and I got that job. I was, in a lot of ways, the first person they would see when they’d come here. I’d help with the transition. I just loved doing that.” She soon became Walsh’s director of international student services.
Before long, Hamsa moved from academia to business. “I loved being in academia. It was really hard for me to leave. But higher education moves slowly, and I was itching to do something different.” She was hired as part of the HR department of a language-learning software company, and two years later, true to form, was promoted to company COO, a position she also held for two years.
Hamsa saw her COO job there as what Gino Wickman’s Entrepreneurial Operating System (EOS) calls an Integrator. The Integrator in an entrepreneurial business is the executor or manager who complements the company’s Visionary. She and I have this quality in common, as my role in the business I co-founded, Image One, is primarily that of Integrator. In fact, I was fortunate enough to share best practices with Hamsa while she was in that role.
After four years at the language-learning software company, Hamsa found a great opportunity with the Small Giants Community. In 2006, veteran journalist Bo Burlingham, then editor-at-large at Inc Magazine, published his highly influential book Small Giants: Companies That Choose to Be Great Instead of Big. It profiles different companies that consciously chose to be the best at what they do rather than focus on rapid growth. This is not to say those companies didn’t experience rapid growth. Many did and still do, but that wasn’t their primary focus.
Bo’s book attracted the attention of many like-minded entrepreneurs, among them Paul Spiegelman, who founded and sold a very successful healthcare call center, BerylHealth, and is a New York Times best-selling author and the winner of Ernst & Young’s Entrepreneur of the Year award. In a series of discussions, Paul and Bo saw the opportunity for turning the Small Giants concept into a business movement and co-founded the Small Giants Community “to identify, develop, and connect purpose-driven business leaders.”
Hamsa became the Small Giants Community’s executive director two and a half years ago. When asked about what the Community has accomplished so far, she says, “We have reached a lot of incredible leaders and companies, which is the first step: getting people to know about the Small Giants philosophy and understanding there’s a better way to run a business and impact your people, your communities, and all your stakeholders.”
When business leaders first contact the Community, they are asked to read Bo’s book to see if it resonates. If so, Hamsa says, “we tell them there’s a community of like-minded leaders, whether company founders or next-generation leaders, interested in implementing these ideas. We’re focused on those individuals, because it really starts with setting the right foundations. Everything else follows.”
A key characteristic of a Small Giant, Hamsa says, is, “…a human scale. You have intimacy in the workplace. Whether it’s 50 or 150 employees, you have access to the leaders and the leaders have access to those on the front line.” The Small in Small Giants “is a feeling rather than a specific revenue or number of employees.” Although community members lead companies with anywhere from one to a hundred million dollars a year in revenue, the typical Small Giant company has gross revenues between five and twenty million dollars. “We say that Small Giants prioritize people over profit because, if you’re prioritizing your people, we feel that profits will naturally come.”
Hamsa is closely involved in organizing regularly scheduled virtual peer-group meetings, the Small Giants Leadership Academy, and the annual summits where Small Giants Community members engage with and learn from one another. The annual summit is two days long, with interactive workshops during the day, in which “we really focus on the practical piece. We dig deep into how to do this in business because we want you to walk away with tools and resources.” The evenings are devoted to social events focused on connection, “because we’re all about relationship-building. Typically, you’re going to have a lot of new friends by the time you leave.” Indeed, many Community newbies come away from their first summit saying, “Oh my gosh. We feel like we’ve found our tribe.”
The Small Giants Leadership Academy, another important resource, “is really meant for those who are ready to institutionalize these practices in their business. This takes time and discipline and is best done within a cohort of people.” These cohorts typically consist of eight business leaders who work together for a year-long period, learning from Paul Spiegelman and other Small Giants masters, “those who are really exceptional in certain practices.” Between sessions, you can also pick up the phone and speak to the others in your cohort or go visit them at their companies.
Virtual peer groups are another important Small Giants resource. These peer groups, which function “almost like a board of advisors,” consist of eight to ten like-minded business leaders who meet virtually for 90 minutes once a month. In these calls, Hamsa says, “you’re either sharing your best practices or working through business challenges. It’s a think-tank of a group of leaders you’re talking through your challenges with.” These are conducted through live video, which raised some skepticism at first, but turns out to be extremely effective.
Finally, there are live video presentations known as “fishbowls.” Each has an expert speaker or presenter whom you’re able to question or interact with in real time. Fishbowls are usually focused on specific best practices, such as a hiring methodology or cultural initiative.
As vital and useful as the Small Giants Community resources are, what’s most important is the Community itself and the overall support it offers. As a member of that Community, I know how fortunate we are to have as extraordinary an executive director as Hamsa Daher. Also, I will never forget how far she has come and how fortunate I am that our paths crossed. Hamsa is an amazing person, and I’m proud to consider her a great friend.
If you’d like to listen to the podcast of my talk with Hamsa, please go to: http://www.donothingbook.com/podcasts/hamsa-daher/
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