Triana Newton
Doug McRae
On the surface, Claritee Co-Founders Triana Newton and Doug McRae are polar opposites.
Triana’s intelligence and confidence is apparent from the moment she speaks. Doug immediately noticed this when they met more than a decade ago to watch her as a keynote speaker.
“She had presence,” he recalls.
Doug is like your fun uncle, who will give you a big hug and brighten your day. Give him a few minutes, and you’ll be belly laughing about something he’s said. “It doesn’t matter who he’s talking to,” Triana says. “He’s able to build rapport with an ice cube.”
Yes, on the surface, these two individuals seem like unlikely business partners. But look deeper and you will find an alliance built in overcoming obstacles from their past, shared beliefs, mutual respect and a vision of making lasting changes inside the companies they serve.
Before they met, and later created Claritee, they each forged their own career paths, filled with accomplishments and results, that someone ended up intersecting.
When she was just 16 years old, Triana left home. Money was always tight, but she was driven and had a strong work ethic. This served her well when she got a job at McDonald’s during school to pay her bills, but also took time to learn what would take to rise within the organization.
And rise, she did. In less than a year, 17-year-old Triana was managing a team. She received promotion after promotion, eventually to the corporate level, for her performance, her ability to lead and her results-oriented mindset.
“I learned the system,” Tri recalls of her success at McDonald’s Restaurants in Canada. “Once I knew that, and learned how to develop people, the career path was very apparent.
Her success in creating high-performing teams at McDonald’s lead to an opportunity with the prestigious training organisation Dale Carnegie. Triana became a corporate trainer, and began another ascension, this time to the role of President.
It was during her time at Dale Carnegie that Triana was invited to give a presentation on leadership and building effective teams back 1997 and this is where she and Doug first met.
In true Doug fashion, he was the first one to arrive and, as he loves to do, chat with the presenter. Tri remembers Doug’s thoughtfulness and the sincerity in which he spoke. And Doug remembers Tri’s command of the room.
At the time, neither could have known their commonalities and the bond they would eventually form.
Of course, they both had very successful track records in leadership, training and development, coaching and building effective organisations. Doug was an independent business consultant who is deeply knowledgeable in the sciences of people, creating dynamic cultures and arming leaders with common-sense business strategies. Prior to starting his own consultancy, Doug initially developed a name for himself as the Sales/Business Development Team Leader for one of the world’s largest commercial and industrial tire supplier.
But what they had most in common, although it wasn’t spoken, was their spirit of independence, born in childhood and engrained early in their careers. Like Triana, Doug left home at a very young age, his reason being that he wanted a better life from his somewhat dysfunctional childhood. Their entire careers had both been built on a sense of purpose and generosity.
For years, they stayed in touch working on various projects.
Two years into a new role as Global Vice President for Workplace Learning for the Asian market at Dale Carnegie, Triana was diagnosed with cancer. She continued to work throughout her cancer treatments, but a new CEO took the reins at Dale Carnegie and cancelled her contract along with some of the other members of the senior leadership team. It would take another 18 months to successfully beat cancer but it gave her the time to really focus on her next professional chapter.
In one of their long conversations about business in general they were discussing the pros and cons of consulting. “The industry uses complexity as a business model,” Triana vented to Doug. “For years, we have watched companies battle with this addiction to complexity. I am tired of watch that happen to good companies!”
“So, let’s do something about it,” prompted Doug.
Claritee believes the most undervalued leadership competency is simplicity. As co-founders of Claritee, Doug and Triana are bringing the world’s first organizational simplicity movement to the market. Organizational simplicity is a 21st century discipline, which includes re-engineering the company’s core beliefs, zero basing strategy and structure. This blueprint becomes real when the entire organization is devoted to the core beliefs and passionately enrolled.
“When a client sees that the complexity they’ve been operating with is completely unnecessary, it is the absolute best moment for us,” says Doug. “That’s when the real fun starts!”
At Claritee, we have six crucial values at the center of everything we do:
- Purpose – Simplicity is more valuable than complexity.
- Creation – Find the essence.
- Justice – Defend what’s right.
- Truth – Don’t hold back.
- Fairness – See value in everyone.
- Generosity – If you’ve got it, give it.