Kristin Demafeliz Of NOBL On 5 Things You Need To Know To Successfully Scale Your Business

An Interview With Ken Babcock

Stabilize growth with formal structures. It’s time to double down on what’s working: codify values and rituals, document your ways of working, and map out who has decision-making rights. This is also a good opportunity to step back and assess structures and hiring processes to ensure they’re still serving your current culture. AskMe failed in part because they were drastically changing strategies every quarter.

Startups usually start with a small cohort of close colleagues. But what happens when you add a bunch of new people into this close cohort? How do you maintain the company culture? In addition, what is needed to successfully scale a business to increase market share or to increase offerings? How can a small startup grow successfully to a midsize and then large company? To address these questions, we are talking to successful business leaders who can share stories and insights from their experiences about the “5 Things You Need To Know To Successfully Scale Your Business”. As a part of this series, we had the distinct pleasure of interviewing Kristin Demafeliz.

Kristin Demafeliz is Associate Principal at NOBL, forging operations and relationships to produce work and results that matter at world-famous organizations. Prior to NOBL, Kristin worked at The Michael J. Fox Foundation, leading initiatives to accelerate and expand patient-centered research in partnership with academic, biotech, and pharmaceutical organizations. Before that, she helped launch and scale enterprise software and consumer applications in the tech sector, as well as strategic planning and constituent management for nonprofits.

Thank you for joining us in this interview series. Our readers would love to “get to know you” a bit better. Can you tell us a bit about your ‘backstory’?

I’ve taken a seemingly winding road to the work of change making, but the further I get in my career, the more clear the “red thread” is: I’ve always gravitated towards new, ambitious projects that also have a lot of ambiguity. Wherever there’s a new idea and vision that needs shaping and building, I’m there.

In college, I studied International Relations, focusing on ethics and social justice. As part of that, I studied change movements, community building, and what enables people to work together towards a shared purpose. After a stint at a boutique non-profit/NGO consulting firm, I moved to an enterprise software company, where I prototyped and scaled new products. I then wanted to take all that experience to something more mission-oriented, so I went into clinical research, working on novel research projects that were engaging people digitally, rather than in brick-and-mortar clinics.

Throughout these roles, I spent a significant part of my time and energy engaging teams in different ways of working and connecting their work to the business, and realized that I was most passionate about helping leaders and teams chart a different path together. Figuring out how to get from point A to point B, creating the space for folks to connect to their work and a vision beyond their current reality — that’s what draws me to change work.

You’ve had a remarkable career journey. Can you highlight a key decision in your career that helped you get to where you are today?

The most impactful decisions I’ve made throughout my career have involved first, letting go of expectations of how I thought my career would unfold, and second, trusting myself to figure things out — both of which I’ve reckoned with in split-second as well as milestone decisions. Whether it’s moving forward in a less than ideal situation, or leaving a job without something concrete lined up, accepting and surrendering to my concept of control has pushed me to see what I’m capable of.

What’s the most impactful initiative you’ve led that you’re particularly proud of?

As part of a larger organizational transformation, I coached a leader who had to convince the executives and the board to make a certain business decision. He had the evidence to support his recommendation, but was concerned it wouldn’t be enough to get them to approve it. We worked on how he might present the evidence, as well as build empathy for and an understanding of the executives’ and board members’ perspectives. This new lens helped him bridge his current leadership style with an aspirational one — and when he came out from that meeting, he shared with me, “this is who I really am.” That was a really proud moment: helping someone become who they’ve always known themselves to be, and to achieve great things.

Sometimes our mistakes can be our greatest teachers. Can you share a mistake you’ve made and the lesson you took away from it?

One summer while running a women’s soup kitchen, one woman needed transportation, and there wasn’t a straightforward solution. Out of a desire to help, I suggested a few options that were based on inaccurate and quite frankly, ignorant assumptions. They weren’t what she needed from me in that moment, and she called me out, reminding me I didn’t know what it was like to be in her situation. She was completely right. It was very humbling to realize that not only were my good intentions not enough, they were hurtful. My desire to help couldn’t overshadow her needs. Listening first, asking what role I can play, and giving folks agency in a situation where they are vulnerable was a big takeaway for me, and something that informs how I approach new client relationships.

How has mentorship played a role in your career, whether receiving mentorship or offering it to others?

Mentorship has the power to really fill my cup — in both directions, provided it’s not forced, and when it’s an authentic connection. To me, mentorship begins with seeing and being seen; it’s closer to coaching. I know that I am a better mentor when I better understand someone else’s context, motivation, and challenges, which requires that I be curious and test my own assumptions of why someone is the way they are. That’s how I can better serve as a critical mirror to that person when they’re noodling on a question or a new idea.

Developing your leadership style takes time and practice. Who do you model your leadership style after? What are some key character traits you try to emulate?

Diversifying my understanding of leadership and demonstrating a spectrum of leadership styles is really important to how I lead. As someone who has navigated multiple cultures throughout my life, many questions guide my thinking around what leadership style to test out in a particular situation: what’s the context, and what’s missing from the team? What type of leadership would people gravitate towards or turn away from, and what contributes to that? So there are times when I channel Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, racing driver Lewis Hamilton (off-track, that is!), coach Doc Rivers, or social activist Kipp Tiernan. Most recently, I’ve been fascinated by leaders who play the roles of coach and business operator, like soccer managers or Formula 1 principals.

In terms of character traits:

• Patient. You can’t fight time. Whether developing a team or bringing about change, there’s an element of time that you just can’t shortcut.
• Generous. I always want to give folks space to try, experiment, and integrate learnings.
• Open-Minded. It’s critical to see things from different perspectives and look for what you don’t see. As much as possible, I gather input from the whole group; it makes me and the team better.
• Respectful. I do my best to disagree and make decisions respectfully, and share why.

Thank you for sharing that with us. Let’s talk about scaling a business from a small startup to a midsize and then large company. Based on your experience, can you share with our readers the “5 Things You Need To Know To Successfully Scale Your Business”? Please give a story or example for each.

We’ve actually put together a diagram that breaks down the different stages startups experience as they grow, and what aspects of culture need the most attention at each stage. In short:

• When first starting out, embrace conflict and diversity. While searching for product-market fit, encourage diverse perspectives, and discuss how to debate and disagree as a team in a healthy way. While there are undoubtedly hundreds of stories of startups that couldn’t successfully overcome this hurdle, one eventual success story is PVP Media. While it initially gained traction with users, the co-founders disagreed about the company’s mission, mandate, equity, and leadership roles, and it failed after 10 months. Fortunately, two of the founders took what they’d learned from the experience, and weeks later launched The Muse.
• Once established, create coherent leadership structures. As startups seek seed funding, they need to show their leadership team has the ability to lead the team to a successful exit. Take time to clarify leadership roles, and make sure you’re all aligned towards the same goals. As you start to expand the team, you’ll also need to formalize diverse hiring practices and develop an onboarding process. The founder of Fieldbook, for instance, was “blindsided” by how difficult it was to hire, which prevented the company from developing the product and growing the business.
• Adopt formal planning and strategy as you scale. If you make it to this stage, congratulations — your startup has found product-market fit and is starting to rapidly grow. This is the time to start developing plans for the medium-term: namely, create processes for forecasting and setting team objectives. NOBL has actually developed an approach to strategic planning, Adaptive Planning, which helps teams set big goals and establish regular practices to make sure you’re making progress towards them.
• Stabilize growth with formal structures. It’s time to double down on what’s working: codify values and rituals, document your ways of working, and map out who has decision-making rights. This is also a good opportunity to step back and assess structures and hiring processes to ensure they’re still serving your current culture. AskMe failed in part because they were drastically changing strategies every quarter.
• Refresh leadership when acquired or IPO’ed. The pinnacle of success — what the team has presumably all been working towards — is paradoxically a highly risky event. Assess leadership: are they burned out, or simply most interested in the “scrappy” culture of a startup? Or perhaps they simply don’t have the right skillset to lead the company into its next stages. Review the team and develop succession plans as needed. It’s also a time to revisit values. Blue Apron’s co-founder was replaced as CEO a few months after the IPO, during which time the company struggled with declining subscriptions and increased competition.

Can you share a few of the mistakes that companies make when they try to scale a business? What would you suggest to address those errors?

We see several common errors that affect scaling organizations:

• Unsustainable business models. All too often, startups chase user numbers, page views or other vanity metrics, while profits take a backseat. This isn’t to say that startups must focus on exclusively on profitability from the start, just that leadership should be aligned on creating a viable business model in the long-term. Make sure your team is strong in the basics: does everyone understand key financial metrics? How often are finances reviewed, and who needs to be involved? How do those reviews impact business decisions like hiring and firing?
• Unsupported growth. Companies can become addicted to markers of growth, like how many markets they’ve entered or how much they’ve sold. But if they don’t have the underlying infrastructure to service that growth, they’ll quickly run into trouble. We recommend teams “test and learn” as they scale, and pay attention to the less exciting — but highly critical — internal systems like HR, finance, and legal to make sure they’re prepared for increased demand.
• Moving too fast. Leaders are understandably under considerable pressure to get teams to move rapidly in response to changing market conditions. But if you don’t give teams sufficient time and space to integrate new ways of working, they’ll become frustrated and even reject change if it seems overwhelming. Track progress and evaluate milestones to make sure teams aren’t overwhelmed — and be willing to deprioritize other objectives so teams have time to catch up.
• Relying on restructures. Organizations will often default to making structural changes (i.e., a reorg) in an effort to solve tensions or accelerate progress. Unfortunately, this typically results in minimal changes to processes — how work actually gets done — while increasing employees’ concerns about their future at the company, while politics distract them from the work at hand. Instead, start by reviewing processes and decision-making rights: it will not only deliver changes faster, it may also eventually suggest a better structure — or demonstrate there’s no need for a restructure at all.
• Forgetting the customer. Product-market fit isn’t static, and early success will attract more competitors to your market. That’s why it’s so important to set up regular rhythms to touch base with customers: how are their behaviors changing? What emerging needs do they have, and what’s no longer relevant? How do teams access and share that information? Stay focused on your customer, and don’t get too distracted by what the competition is doing.
• Social debt. In the throes of rapid growth, culture problems may feel less urgent — they can always be dealt with “later,” after the current emergency is addressed. But the truth is you are always building your culture. How you operate during that emergency — the decisions you make, the processes you use to implement them — is culture. So make sure that culture is always part of the discussion at leadership meetings, and identify metrics to assess whether you’re creating the type of culture you want. These don’t have to be elaborate engagement surveys — look for signals like people feeling comfortable asking questions about a new task, or inviting colleagues from another function to attend a meeting.
• Founder fatigue. Founders are often idolized, but they have failings like any other human. And due to their influence and power, those failings have the potential to cause serious harm to the business overall. Check in with the founder to make sure they are taking care of themselves and continuing to grow as leaders, and hire other leaders to mitigate any shortcomings. There may also come a point where founders need to step aside, and bring in a replacement with a skill set better suited to the company’s new stage.

Scaling includes bringing new people into the organization. How can a company preserve its company culture and ethos when new people are brought in?

Onboarding is arguably one of the greatest opportunities to preserve your company culture: when people join an organization, they want to know the “right” ways to do things. To reinforce the behavior you want to see, consider:

• Rituals. Instead of simply conveying information in a presentation or a handbook, think of how you can turn your values into intentional activities. Dropbox, for instance, sends new hires the ingredients to make a cupcake, to emphasize their value of “delight.” At NOBL, we ask new employees to write their own obituaries! We want people to reflect on the legacy they leave and how they’ll impact others — all part of our value of “Walking Our Talk.”
• Relationships. Build connections and give new members a sense of community by setting up meet-and-greets (such as lunches or virtual coffees) early into their tenure. Who are the best representatives of your culture? Can you connect them with someone — ideally, not their boss — who can answer cultural questions as they come up? Set up a series of meetings over a three- to six-month period so it doesn’t fall away as they become more accustomed to the culture.

At the same time, folks often get tripped up by the idea that you have to preserve your company culture in the first place. They get so focused on preserving what exists that they lose sight of what can evolve. Surrendering to and accepting that cultures evolve is key. Let’s say your organization is rooted in people honing their craft (such as marketing, or coding): what elements of that are critical for the current context? How should it evolve? By inviting people to participate and making it a dialogue, not a decree, you’ll see far greater buy-in across the organization.

Many times, a key aspect of scaling your business is scaling your team’s knowledge and internal procedures. What tools or techniques have helped your teams be successful at scaling internally?

In addition to strong onboarding, we’ve found the following essential:

• Modeling behavior. The “I Do/We Do/You Do” model was in one of the first management courses I ever took, and I still use it today. In short, show people how you want them to act (“I Do”), then collaborate with them on a project (“We Do), and finally, give them independent work with feedback (“You Do”).
• Centralize information. Make it easy for people to learn the “right” way of doing things: establish one location (such as a shared drive or handbook) where everyone can access basic procedures and information like how to run meetings, or the different milestones and approvals needed for a frequently used process.
• Train middle managers. Middle managers are largely responsible for executing any changes and making sure procedures go according to plan. If they don’t understand how to do something, they won’t be able to effectively coach their teams, either. So spend significant time with them to make sure they’re onboard with the changes and feel comfortable rolling them out.
• Measure and reinforce. This isn’t a one-time thing. Follow up and be consistent. Watch out for things going off the rails, and course correct as needed.
• Tolerate some variety. Sometimes leaders feel that one consistent monoculture is a sign of a healthy culture — but that isn’t necessarily the case. As long as teams can communicate and collaborate with each other, subcultures can be welcome additions to your culture.

What software or tools do you recommend to help onboard new hires?

We’re platform-agnostic, and believe teams need to determine what works best for their needs at any given point in time. So we encourage them to take a “test and learn” approach to tools, just as we would any other cultural change: identify a few potential options, try them out in one team or section of the organization, and assess their effectiveness before choosing one for the whole organization. In general, we would recommend three types of tools as a baseline:

• A chat platform for asynchronous communication.
• A video chat platform for virtual meetings.
• Centralized document storage for quick access to frequently referenced information — everything from meeting notes and “who’s who” to how teams develop a yearly strategic plan.

A word of warning: while tools are helpful, don’t expect them to solve all your problems. No chat or video tool will improve communication if people are too afraid to speak up; no project management system will ensure delivery if leaders are constantly shifting priorities or changing decisions. Teams must also be effectively trained on tools, an all-too-frequently overlooked part of the process.

Because of your role, you are a person of significant influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most people, what would that be? You never know what your ideas can trigger.

At NOBL, we believe that change is possible if we work together. For that to happen, everyone must have greater autonomy at work: that is, the freedom to choose what you work on, and to do work that’s consistent with your values. (Watch out: it’s not the same as independence, which means you don’t need things from others.) I’d love for ambitious, compassionate leaders to consider how they can increase their teams’ autonomy to achieve great things.

How can our readers further follow your work online?

Sign up for our newsletter: every week, we send out practical advice and exercises for leaders who want to change their organizations. Our goal is to provide at least one tool that you can try with your team within 24 hours, without any additional budget or materials needed. You can also catch up on earlier articles on The Academy. Or, if you prefer social platforms, follow us on LinkedIn or Twitter.

This was truly meaningful! Thank you so much for your time and for sharing your expertise!

About the interviewer. Ken Babcock is the CEO and Co-Founder of Tango. Prior to his mission of celebrating how work is executed, Ken spent over 4 years at Uber riding the rollercoaster of a generational company. After gaining hands-on experience with entrepreneurship at Atomic VC, Ken went on to HBS. It was at HBS that Ken met his Co-Founders, Dan Giovacchini and Brian Shultz and they founded Tango.