Tag: jon stewart

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On Scale – Lessons on Culture, Hiring, Operating, and Growth

flower, scale

One of my favorite thought exercises to do when I meet with founders who have reached the A- and B-stages (or beyond) is:

“What will his/her company look like if he/she is no longer there?”

The Preface

While the question looks like one that’s designed to replace the founder(s), my intention is everything but that. Rather, I ask myself that because I want to put perspective as to how the founder(s) have empowered their team to do more than they could independently. Where the collective whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Have the founders built something that is greater than themselves? And is each team member self-motivated to pursue the mission and vision?

It reminds me of the story of a NASA janitor’s reply when President Kennedy asked: “Hi, I’m Jack Kennedy. What are you doing?”

“Well, Mr. President,” the janitor responded, “I’m helping put a man on the moon.”

From the astronaut who was to go into space to the janitor cleaning the halls of NASAs space center, each and every one had the same fulfilling purpose that they were doing something greater than themselves.

And if the CEO is able to do that, their potential to inspire even more and build a greater company is in sight. Can he/she scale him/herself? And in doing so, scale the company past product-market fit (PMF)?

For the purpose of this post, I’ll take scale from a culture, hiring, operating, and product perspective, though there are much more than just the above when it comes to scale. Answering the questions, as a founder:

  • How do you expand your audience?
  • How do you build a team to do so?
  • And, how do you scale yourself?

And to do so, I’ll borrow the insights of 10 people who have more miles on their odometer than I do.

While many of these lessons are applicable even in the later stages of growth, I want to preface that these insights are largely for founders just starting to scale. When you’ve just gone from zero to one, and are now beginning to look towards infinity.

The TL;DR

  1. Build a (controversial) shocking culture.
  2. Hire intentionally.
  3. Retaining talent requires trust.
  4. Build and follow an operating philosophy.
    • Create, hold, and share excitement.
    • Align calendars.
  5. Upgrade adjacent users as your next beachhead.
  6. Capture adoption by changing only 1 variable per user segment.
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Setting Culture

Photo by Aron Visuals on Unsplash

I just started my second read of Ben Horowitz‘s new book, What You Do is Who You Are: How to Create your Business Culture. It’s a brilliant deep dive on what culture and virtues mean for a growing company or team. From the most successful slave revolution in history to prison culture to the samurai bushido, Ben draws parallels between those and startup culture, where you can get a snapshot here.

On page 31, Ben wrote “Create Shocking Rules.” Why “shocking”? So people will ask why. So people will pause, think, and remember them. What is “shocking”? In a time when raping and pillaging was the norm, Toussaint Louverture, the man who led the Haitian Revolution, forbade officers from having concubines. And he kept to that promise. When “shocking” isn’t the only game changer, you need uncompromising commitment to those rules. Weak follow-through is another fallacy in creating the culture you want. What you let slide will define the new culture, with or without your approval.

Sun Tzu and the Concubines

Rereading about Toussaint Louverture reminded me of a story my dad used to tell me by my bedside. About another brilliant general, who lived 2000 years prior to Toussaint during the Spring and Autumn Period, and best known for authoring The Art of War, Sun Tzu.

Through his thirteen chapters, dubbed The Art of War, he eventually earned an audience with the king of the State of Wu. Hoping to test Sun Tzu’s strategies to its extremes, possibly expecting to see Sun fail, the king asked Sun to test it on his harem of concubines.

After accepting the task at hand and separating the concubines into two companies, Sun had them all take a spear in hand and said, “I presume you know the difference between front and back, right hand and left hand?”

The women answered, “Yes.”

After explicitly explaining what “Eyes front”, “Left turn”, “Right turn”, and “About turn” meant, he issued his first order at the sound of the drums, “Right turn.” But, the concubines responded with fits of laughter. Sun Tzu proclaimed, “If words of command are not clear and distinct, if orders are not thoroughly understood, then the general is to blame.”

In another attempt, he called out, “Left turn.” His words met the same fate as the ones he uttered just prior – with laughter. This time, he said, “If words of command are not clear and distinct, if orders are not thoroughly understood, the general is to blame. But if his orders are clear, and the soldiers still disobey, then it is the fault of their officers.”

Subsequently, he ordered the heads of the two companies beheaded, whom happened to be king’s favorite two concubines. Seeing what had unfolded from his pavilion, the king sent a messenger to plead with Sun to keep his two favorite alive. But Sun did not relent.

After their execution, he immediately installed two new officers, and from then on, the concubines followed every order that Sun issued to the T.

Using the principles he shared and taught in The Art of War, Sun Tzu won many battles for the State of Wu, most notably, when Sun Tzu led an army of 30,000 to defeat an enemy numbering ten times more than the troops from Wu. As Jon Stewart, former The Daily Show host, once said:

“If you don’t stick to your values when they’re being tested, they’re not values: they’re hobbies.”

In Closing

In his book, Ben shares quite a bit how some of the best leaders in the world shaped their organizational culture. It wasn’t from catered lunches or having dogs in the office every Friday. Culture comes down to setting “shocking” rules, paired with a set of priorities, and more importantly, keeping them. Culture is what your team members remember about your organization and how it made and makes them feel 20 years down the road.

Though not perfect, my former swim coach instilled the same virtues in us. He was never a fan of tardiness. To him, it demonstrated a lack of character and commitment. And to enforce that, if we were late, by even a minute, to get into the water (not arrive at the pool), the offenders had to swim the entire warm-up in butterfly – the whole 2000 yards. And not one person escaped that law, not even him – not that I ever saw him late.

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