Lead Better - Overcoming the Challenges of a Rapidly Expanding Team

0:00Good afternoon, Scott Baker. Tom Fox. Good to see both today. You too. Indeed. All right. Here we go. Thanks, everybody. Joining us here on lead better time to talk about today's field note from admired leadership, number 1730, the title is overcoming the challenges of a rapidly expanding team. And it would be kind of fun if it like we start with the three of us and then all of us and 42 people join us and we're like, you know, all right, let's have a discussion. You could imagine how that could go off the rails pretty quickly. If we jam 42 people into into one, you know, live stream at this moment. But I think that the question here is it like there are some organizational problems in rapidly expanding teams or some talent recruitment problems in that. But the heart of this, I would think Tom is really the culture question, right? Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. This is this is a field note that hit home. I went through something like this myself, you know, leading a team of one or two people that overnight

1:02through to 10 and then, you know, a year later was 20 and 30 and got to about 60 folks. And if, yeah, if you're not paying attention to it, your team is going to evolve. It's just the question of whether it's going to evolve in the direction you wanted to. Yeah. The culture will become something. Are you just going to fall into it? Are you going to think about it as you go along? Yeah. Yeah. I was working with a. Oh, sorry. No, I'm interested in hearing like some more details about a team that goes from 10 to 60 within a couple of was, was there a combination of cultures that was going on or were those all new hires that was going all the way up? That's such a great question. Because I think that, you know, the field note talks about team growth. But when you are actually combining a couple of teams, it makes it all the more difficult. So it was all of the above. It was the combination of two teams plus organic growth. And I was lucky enough at the time to be working with a coach who,

2:03you know, very wisely told me, you're not just adding people to the team. You're changing the nature of the team. And so, you know, you have a choice. You can allow the team to emerge sort of organically or you can be really intentional about how you want the team to operate. And in those cases, especially when you're bringing two teams together, I think it's all the more intentional, all the more important to be intentional so that you can really sort of honor and respect the different cultures that are coming together and jointly define something that will be new. Right. So I've been part of an organization where I was employing number 28. By the end of one year, we had more than 200 employees and 50 of them were brought in from a much more season. So it was an acquisition that took place. And, you know, those original 30 of us who felt like loose and scrappy and we didn't wear ties like all the notion of like what it meant to be kind of

3:04free-flowing in the way that we want to go back to wearing ties. I like to. Right. Well, no, we were actually asked to like stop wearing ties. No, just. Oh, oh, oh, okay. I see. I see. And it's so funny the way that it works like even like I hated it. I hated having to like go back in that. And so my little act of rebellion was to like put on the loudest most obnoxious ties that I can find. Right. And like my ugly tie collection got started as an act of rebellion there. So like how can I do this in such a way that people don't know that it's rebellious, but I'm actually saying to myself, I don't want to do this. Right. But all of that was based on like because that's where we felt like the culture is changing, but then the conversation was at such a shallow level, the only thing that we really had to talk about what was changing is that the basketball hoop came down the ping pong table went away and now we're wearing ties. Right.

4:04And so it culture should be much more than that, but we didn't have that level. Right. And so we didn't have anyone in the building who really understood the kinds of expertise that you would have about changing culture. So so so go back, you know, 15 years for me, what how do we start where are the conversations that we have and apply our field note for us? Yeah. It's it's such a great question and they're they're you can go a couple of different routes, but but when I'm working with the team, so having been through it, there's much greater pleasure in coaching others through it because you don't have to sort of bear the scars of the actual change. And so, you know, when I'm coaching people through that, you can either start with what is it that we're doing now is so successful? And you know, how would you sort of label it? What would be sort of the headline? What would be the definition? And then what would be the behaviors? Alternatively, what you could do is say think of the most successful team you've ever been a part of

5:06that you've ever witnessed. And what is it that they do at an observable level and then create the headline, the definition, and the concrete behaviors? Or you can do a combination of the two, right? Maybe that the most successful team you've ever witnessed is one you've been a part of. And so, you want to make that the sort of a core defining characteristics. But I think it is, Mikey, you said it well, it's the conversations. You need to include people in these conversations so that they can be a part of not just articulating what is so important, but that they can see, you know, sort of their imprint on whatever it is that you ultimately define moving forward. And that's just the starting point. You know, getting the definitions right is the starting point, there's more work to follow. Right. So we've got Netflix Ultra Deck that we gave us an example. One of the things that kind of stands out for me comes from a conversation that Reed Hastings had with Tim podcast or Tim, I'm sorry, I'm blanking on his name, Ferris, Tim Ferris, where he introduced to

6:09the world this idea of farming for descent, which is mentioned in the Ultra Deck, but even before the Ultra Deck was written internally, they had talked all about farming with descent and the first time he kind of made it publicly was on the Tim Ferris podcast. And then so lots of people have been talking about farming for descent, but that that as like a concept and what they did and the behaviors around farming for descent was something that they had talked all up and down in Netflix way before it actually showed up in their culture doc. And so if we're saying, right, a culture doc, I don't necessarily want to necessarily pluck farming for descent out of somebody else's culture and say, this is the culture doc that I'm right because I really love what Netflix did, but if I haven't had those things bubble up from our own organization in the way that farming for descent, bubble up, how do we identify? How do we actually practice those things? Where do we actually get them from? Well, I think it's ultimately, it's from your own experience around sort of what's

7:16worked and what's not. I love the farming for descent because it's so evocative, right? You can literally imagine someone cultivating this whole idea of getting alternative opinions. And that's great for Netflix, but you're right, Mikey, it may not be great for the next organization. And so that's why those conversations are so important. So you can use sort of the language and the imagery and the metaphors that make sense for the people that you work with. I love that the Netflix culture memo was included as well as examples from Amazon and Toyota and Zappos, but you don't even have to look in the business world. You can go to the creative world as well. Disney picks our studios, has their own set of behaviors, the fan, the food fighters, they actually have their own set of cultural norms as well. And you can always find it in athletics, too, right? So this is sort of a tool or technique that can work in any sort of setting. And even if

8:21you're sort of a maybe slightly resistant business leader, you think it's maybe a little too touchy-feely, I assure you, it has been applied in so many different domains and really worked well and effectively every time so long as you make it sort of unique and reflective of the people in your organization. Yeah. Well, one of the things that is interesting in the field note, and you kind of hit a couple of the key points, but we kind of go right to some businessy buzzwords about effective and culture ratio, right? So when you're bringing in all of this, you're rapidly growing. You guys gave great examples. I was, in fact, that kind of led me to admire leadership I was in an organization where I was employing number one and pretty soon we had 300 and things were a little bit shaky management wise. And then I got recommended to get coach admired leadership and eventually they dragged me over here. But the, in this idea of saying it doesn't just happen, you have to codify the culture, right? So you have to go about this process of documenting and

9:23doing the things that then produce the like the Netflix culture memo. One of my question time is we sometimes think about, you know, old style from 40 years ago, company mission statements, or as it evolved into kind of, you know, Lenshioni sort of advantage era of have three things that are for internal discussion, not external marketing. This is why we are unique strategically, right? So how do you differentiate between a company mission and a company culture? And because pretty soon you might have like too many documents, right? Yes, you know, it's a really, it's a really great question, right? When you think about sort of a mission statement, it's, you know, what you exist to do, what you're trying to do. And when you look at something like, you know, behaviors, culture, norm, it's how you get things done, right? And I think that's that's sort of the distinction that I would make. And so, you know, this, this is part of the lifeblood

10:24of a place like CRA admired leadership, right? We simply want to achieve a set of goals or work with leaders who are simply trying to achieve a set of goals. You want to do it all along the way by bringing people along with you and developing those people, finding that balance between those two things. And I think that's what, you know, a business leader would seek to do between sort of a mission statement and, you know, a culture document, a values document, that sort of thing. It's like, okay, it's not just what we exist to do, but how we want to do it and how we want to navigate both the external world as well as the internet. And Tom, I have a question. You know, sometimes just real quick, Mikey, because then I want to come back to your passive aggressive behavior with the next. Yeah. The, sometimes they often say, particularly in startups, that a culture really does reflect the personality of the founder, right, that the vibe of the founder. And that probably is true, even in re-haste things and in Netflix and probably in many regards. What do we need to be mindful about in terms of like maybe that maybe we're in the next

11:25stage, but usually that rapid growth, the founder is still around most often, right? How much does it, is it good to reflect the personality of the founder and how much is it good to distinguish as the culture is evolving? It's such a great question. And I don't know that there's a singular answer, but I do think it's important to raise that sort of issue. I believe, at least based on my experience, that finding a balance point between sort of that top down sort of leader led or founder led, set of behaviors as well as sort of the bottom up and finding a place where you can sort of meet in the middle, that would ensure, I think, some consistency and longevity to the organization. I think not only being aware of it is important, but also recognizing the risk associated with it being exclusively defined by a leader. In that case, then you do run the risk of creating an environment where there's a bit of a cult of personality. And it's likely that you won't be built for the long term. I see this all the time in startups or coaching startups where there's a

12:31certain ethos that people bring, unstated, always implied, and then they hire people as they grow, and they get frustrated with the new folks who come on board because they don't have the same sort of energy and enthusiasm for the mission. And oftentimes, say to them, it's the difference between creating something and being hired to do something, right? You got to find the balance. Yeah, right. Tom, when you were first talking about it, you mentioned three things, headline, and then something else. And then yeah, so like a headline, something that would fit on a bumper sticker, a more meaningful definition. So that like farming for descent would be the headline. Exactly. And then you would have a definition, and then you would have concrete behaviors. So what can we say? That's the point inside of the Netflix culture doc that I feel like is lacking. And so if we were going to be giving recommendation to the way that Netflix even wrote theirs, is that nowhere in there are, do you have an example of like how farming for descent might actually work on a day-to-day basis?

13:33How to practically do that? And maybe read Hastings had all the the reason in the world to like, let's leave this principle based and knock it into behaviors. But does it feel like it's too much of a company handbook if you write it too behaviorally? And is that maybe why he stayed away from it? What are thoughts about whether or not it could be more specific in what it was written? Yeah, it's a good question. I know Netflix in terms of their approach to managing the organization tend to keep things at a higher level. You want to rely on people to use good judgment as opposed to sort of litigating exactly everything that you want that person to do. That being said, I think when it comes to sort of culture, you want to give folks some guardrails. Maybe it's not these are all of the behaviors, but these are examples of the sorts of behaviors that people would exhibit. I think having something along those lines is important because someone

14:36could adopt what they think is that cultural norm, but doing it in a way that's stylistically or observably the opposite of the intended effect. Thinking of just something as simple as farming for dissent, I'm sure we've all worked with people who've done that extraordinarily well and people who will say they're doing it, but it's nearly as effective as the person who does it. Oh, right, right. That's where articulating the behaviors really matters. Exactly. It does. Well, I think one of the things that you can say is that these can take all kinds of forms. You could write it out like Netflix did. I think others have maintained that if you say we're different than other places because of this and this and this. If it's not even like a bubble up democratic thing, it's like the people that formed it have made this the thing, then part of it is, and I think Lencioni says this, like no bumper stickers, no t-shirts, just talk about it relentlessly. This is who we are. This is what we do. People like us do things

15:37like this that you are sort of a living embodiment of that memo, and maybe that's the better way to do it in some cases. So what I do know is if Mikey shows up in the next time, I'm going to be like, oh, we're a troll. It's definitely going to be an ugly one. Yeah, that's true. All right, thank you both for your time today. I enjoyed the conversation. We'll talk again sometime this weekend's got. See you. All right, bye now.