80 to 250, real quick.

In June of 2014, I joined Localytics as a marketing co-op. I was ecstatic to join a growing startup and grow we did.

Between my interview and start date, Localytics had moved into a new office. There were 80 of us when I started and soon enough, December came and my co-op was coming to an end. I stayed on part-time while I finished school, then joined full-time when I graduated.

Flash forward to February of 2016. Localytics was getting ready to move into a bigger office. Yet, I wouldn’t be joining them as I decided to leave Localytics to join Barkly. I learned so damn much while I was there and am incredibly grateful to have had the opportunity I did.

While I was working at Localytics, we reached over 250 employees. That growth took place over 18 months. It is refreshing to hear founders reflect on their growth with complete honesty (e.g. Buffer), so I wanted to share what I learned from a similar experience. But from my point of a view, a junior-level individual contributor.

Let culture and values be your rock

In fast growing start-ups, change is inevitable. It’s a good thing too. It means you’re making progress. But, as you grow, your needs change. You start to think about scaling your work. Asking yourself about systems & processes you will need to best assist your team.

You ask yourself so many of these questions about where you’re heading or what you need to do next. You’re faced with an endless amount of options or directions to head, and you end up saying yes to too many of them.

The best thing you can do is to say no more often. But what do you say no to? Use the one thing that should not change in your decision process: culture and values. Their importance is a result of being one of very few constants. It doesn’t matter if you’re hiring employee 25 or 200, in sales or engineering, junior or senior. Your culture and values when evaluating the candidate will be same so leverage them.

Want to try out an ad campaign where you attack a competitor? Take a minute as ask yourself if that would cause a conflict with the company values. It’s a simple gut check you can ask yourself. If everyone is doing the same gut check, you’re all going to be on the same page (or at least on the same chapter).

Defining culture and values is the easier part, enforcing them is more difficult. Three ways I’ve found to be effective:

1. They have to come from the top-down. People say it over and over again, because it’s true.
2. Find ways to put them people’s faces. Throw them up on the walls, on your website, as Slack emoji’s, create an award, hiring criteria, etc. Do whatever you have to do to get them in front of people.
3. Put ownership on the employees. Make that award monthly and have employees nominate each other. We do that at Barkly, and it’s a great way to constantly remind yourself of the values.

Sure you’ll hear them so many times you’ll start to get annoyed. But over time you’ll find solace in that they’re one of the few constants throughout your growth.

Have a clear purpose

You need to be able to answer the question: why am I showing up to work everyday? Ok, this is a bit extreme, but you get the point. What is that greater goal you’re striving towards. Facebook has “connect the world.” That’s pretty far out there, but it’s something you can get behind. It will fuel your desire to push the company forward.

Is “connect the world” broad on purpose? You bet it is. This is your second constant, it communicates the “why”. At Barkly, our mission is to “Protect the unprotected with strong security that anyone can use.” That is what we’re here to do and today that means protecting the endpoint.

How you address your purpose will vary over the course of the company’s life. Like I said earlier, change will happen. These changes will vary in amount and size. But they should always be in service of your company’s purpose.

By using your purpose and culture as guiding posts, you should be able to grow smarter. By that, I mean you should find yourself focusing on projects that will have a longer shelf life. Because as you grow, you will naturally create debt. The debt mainly comes from focusing on short term projects. Creating debt is never fun, just ask engineers about technical debt. It’s not unique to engineers, we all do it. And there is a place for debt, as long as your actively thinking about it when making decisions. But it can snowball and will be quite the burden later on.

HubSpot spoke to their decision about choosing to target only one persona. It worked because it allowed everyone in the org to focus. Instead of trying to solve for two, every decision could now be in the context of the “Mary the Marketer.” If the solution didn’t solve for Mary’s problems then they didn’t have to commit more resources. They actively chose to focus on less and avoided any “Owner Ollie” debt.

Transparency is a two way street

People work at start-ups to try to tackle challenging problems. People sign up for the arduous journey. So when the going is good, let them know. When the going gets tough, definitely let them know. People can handle tough times, and in fact, they will rally behind you. Silence doesn’t help either as that only lends itself to fear. Leaving issues go unacknowledged will only create more speculation. Simply put, people will know if you aren’t being transparent so be honest.

Yes, transparency has to flow downward from the top, but it also has to go back up. Employees have to have outlets for feedback, or how else is management going to now if there are issues? There are plenty of tools out there like 15five, 1:1’s, anonymous suggestion boxes.

One tool I’ve found to be helpful recently is what we called the “Awesomeness Score” — credit to Bruce McCarthy. Call it whatever you want, but it’s a simple weekly survey for managers asking their team three questions.

On a scale from 1–5, how awesome is:

(1) being at the company?

(2) being on the team?

(3) the work you’re doing?

Collect the answers anonymously, calculate the average, and discuss the results as a team. The team discussion is not an individual talking about his/her response. It is the whole team seeing a “1” and asking:

what are possible reasons for this?

how could we fix it?

what are the actionable items we can take away?

The main benefit of this exercise is to identify which level issues (or good vibes) are happening. At that point, the manager understands what he/she needs to do. Is it talking with team members individually? or is something the manager needs to go speak to his/her boss about?

I’ve found this to be especially effective when team members are identifying company-level issues. A manager can take the notes from the discussion with two important pieces. The first being bullet points of potential issues and solutions. The second being the fact that it’s coming from the whole team. This will make the conversation between the manager and his/her boss more impactful.

Empower and trust your people

There’s a book out there that discusses how leaders used to be experts through knowledge. Yet, this has changed because information is everywhere and accessible to all. The book, Team of Teams, explains how the next generation of leaders will be different. They won’t lead through knowledge or domain expertise. Instead, they will lead by empowering and trusting those around, below, and above them.

To lead like that, establish goals for your team and work together to figure out how to tackle them. Let your teammates drive the strategy and solution discussion. If you hired smart and hard working people, they will enjoy the challenge. Through ownership of the problem, those individuals will appreciate the accountability and work harder to be successful.

To be clear, that does not mean as a leader, you get to take credit when things go well or point the finger when things go bad. That is not empowering and trusting your employees. Empowering and trusting them is doing the opposite. Take the blame if things go bad and pass along praise when things go well. By doing so, you will receive trust in return. And when you do have to make tough calls, your team will be right there with you when you do.