“Without continual growth and progress, such words as improvement, achievement, and success have no meaning.” – Benjamin Franklin
I have watched my company grow from an ambitious band of 6 to a mighty team of over 200 employees. With the numbers increasing by 30% every year, I am thrilled and humbled. I am often asked how I did it. While that is an easier answer, the tougher question I get asked is – how do you plan on maintaining this growth? And this challenge is something every CEO faces, and has to take on successfully.
I have found that the role of a CEO changes immensely as the company matures from a start-up to an established business. This change is vital. In the words of Steve Blank, whose Customer Development method launched the Lean Startup movement: “startups are not small versions of big companies. Rather they are different in every possible way – from goals, to measurements, from employees to culture.”
Based on my experience and insight from other successful CEOs, I’ve detailed three qualities that I have adopted to ensure Suyati’s success and growth in the coming years.
1) Prioritization
The biggest change that a CEO will have to adjust to is a change in priorities. When we started the company, my worries were paying rent, making payroll, and getting the next client in. I remember taking in whatever business came our way; our focus was on the here-and-now. As the company grew however, we grew with it and now know exactly what we want and how to deliver it. My focus shifted from day-to-day operations to long-term strategy.
Henry Schuck, CEO of DiscoverOrg, a leading marketing and sales intelligence solution, feels the same. Heading a company that started with 4 college friends and grew to over 500 employees with a revenue growth of over 50%, Henry knows what it takes. When asked how his priorities have changed with this growth, he says: “Two years ago, everything I was focused on was month- or quarter-end. It was a lot more tactical and less strategic back then: How do we hit our numbers for this month for quarter? How do we hire more SDRs? Who are we going to promote next? Stuff like that. Now senior management handles those tactical operations – and I can think about strategy down the road …”
As our company grows, I have reduced my fretting over minor things and focus more on strategy and what the future of our company will be 10-20 years down the line.
2) Agile Decision Making
When you are starting up, you often need to make swift decisions. Joel Gascoigne, founder and CEO at Buffer, says of his startup days: “There was so much risk back then. So we had to make bigger bets. We had to try to make a big change every few weeks or even every few days. Small incremental tweaks wouldn’t get us the progress we needed. As a result, there were higher highs and lower lows.”
We have all seen this. Decisions are made that may or may not be perfect, and in the words of Ben Horowitz, co-founder of the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, “often any decision, even the wrong decision, is better than no decision.” While that may be true and is applicable both to startups and scale-up businesses, there is a big difference in the number of people who are affected by your decision. It isn’t a handful of employees anymore. You have bigger teams, departments and branches that are affected by the decision you make.
Another important factor to consider is the number of people making the decisions. In the beginning, I would seize a problem by the horns, consult a few experienced friends if I felt the need, and then take a call. Some great decisions were made, and we are where we are because of them. That isn’t enough anymore. My decision-making is now guided by my growing teams and their leads. Listening carefully to their suggestions and input has been of great benefit to the company.
There is a fine line to tread here as well. As important as weighing in all their inputs are, there is the danger of the “uninspired compromise” as Brian Halligan, CEO of HubSpot, puts it. “As CEO, it’s your job to make the right decision, not the most popular decision,” he says. “There have been plenty of times during HubSpot’s scale-up period that I’ve left a meeting with some disappointed managers; I feel it as soon as I step out of the room. But uninspired compromises feel much worse.” The key is to listen carefully, take a decision that is best for the company and communicate it clearly.
That is why Agile Decision Making becomes very important. Agility is different from Speed. Yes, we must make swift decisions even as we grow, but agile means sustainable, high quality, and value-driven output. Achieving that is what I work towards every day.
3) Letting Go
This is one area which CEOs and especially founder CEOs struggle with. The company is our baby, we built it up through sleepless nights. To relinquish control of it is understandably difficult. Trying to micromanage a growing business however, is stressful to say the least and could be doing more damage than you think.
Laura Roeder, founder of MeetEdgar and Ropig talks about the dangers of “founder bias” and “single point of failure.” If, as CEOs, we hold on too tight and have every single decision go through us, we are in effect creating a single point of failure. If this point i.e. the CEO fails, the entire system stops working. If you let your biases and way of thinking affect every decision in the company, “then you haven’t built a culture: you’ve built a cult of personality,” she concludes.
To me personally, this has been the toughest change to implement! I have learnt to let go (and still learning every day), trusting others to make decisions for themselves and their departments. I allow people to make mistakes and learn from them. I don’t try to pre-empt issues too much. Guiding them on process while ensuring positive outcomes has become my focus. Strategy and leading the company to greater heights through my personal growth is now my goal.
