Katya Laviolette, chief people officer at 1Password. Passionate about all things people.
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All hypergrowth companies face a challenge as complicated as it is enviable: melding the critical elements of the culture that led to past success with the new ingredients required to build for the future.
Hypergrowth is a great problem to have. But how can companies retain their effective practices while onboarding large numbers of new employees weekly and creating a solid infrastructure to support expansion? After all, a 10-person company that’s laser focused on a single winning product must operate differently from one where hundreds of diverse employees, based around the world, are developing multiple products.
As my company has grown from 180 employees to more than 1,000 over the past four years and expanded beyond our core product, we’ve preserved the most critical elements of our foundational culture. Here are five ingredients that helped us get there—and can help other companies do the same.
1. Spotlight your values from the start.
As we began rapidly growing at 1Password, we codified our company values to align on three: lead with honesty, put people first and keep it simple. But writing these down wasn’t enough. We also began weaving them into recruiting. This helps us evaluate and hire talent that’s inclined toward and excited about the values that guide our organization.
To assess how candidates lead with honesty, for example, we might ask about mistakes they made in previous roles. How did they use setbacks as springboards for growth? How did they share their experiences, allowing others to learn from their missteps? Candidates’ answers can indicate the extent to which they’re naturally inclined toward open, honest and authentic leadership.
When companies identify the key values underpinning their culture, they can integrate them throughout recruiting and onboarding. Instead of leaving interview questions to each hiring team’s discretion, HR leaders can help develop a pool of questions specifically designed to elicit the extent to which candidates understand, appreciate and live the company’s core values.
2. Listen closely before making big changes.
Every time we bring aboard a new executive, they have a single mandate for their first 30 days: listen, listen, listen. New executives spend their first month in office hearing from our founders, long-time employees, newer hires and customers. They then integrate these perspectives with their own expertise to create a road map for our next phase.
When onboarding new employees, companies should send a powerful message that there’s value in what’s come before. They must encourage and enable new leaders in particular to understand what’s worked well, then be able to explain their reasoning before making changes. When new employees signal their respect for the past, they earn the buy-in and credibility needed to build for the future.
3. Capitalize on the bonding power of innovation.
As organizations grow, they might experiment with team-wide or company-wide forums designed to spark imagination, ideation and cross-functional collaboration. In a large company, this can be an excellent way to generate excitement and keep things from feeling stale and overly corporate.
Our company has been fully remote since 2005, but we’ve always had opportunities for in-person collaboration, from annual cruises to multi-day coding hackathons. As we scale, we experiment with different mechanisms for infusing our larger organization with the startup energy that was critical to our early success. This includes facilitating the turbocharged collaboration that transpires during short spurts when everyone's together, highly focused and poring over a problem.
We’ve had success with hackathons varying in scope and size. On the final “demo day” of a recent three-day event, contagious energy radiated from our screens as teams presented their ideas for everything from user-facing features to internal employee tools (some of which we’re actively implementing).
4. Review the performance of performance reviews.
In a small company, it’s easy to see who’s performing. But larger companies need strong management systems to ensure employees are clear on what’s expected of them and receive the support they need. As my organization has learned, this isn't a matter of “one and done.”
As companies transition from informal to formal performance management, it’s critical to continually evaluate the performance management systems themselves. Which processes work well? Which have (or soon will) become unwieldy as the employee base continues to grow? The goal should be nurturing, developing and supporting people over time—without placing an undue burden on managers.
5. Set clear expectations for senior leaders.
As workplace culture evolves, senior leaders need to guide the way. But executives face their own challenges and questions as they manage larger teams and handle new demands.
Just as we codified our company values, we thoroughly explain valued-based expectations for senior leaders. These elaborate on the behaviors and practices needed to bring our values to life, and they incorporate elements from our founding culture and new elements that our growth trajectory requires.
By clarifying expectations for senior leaders, companies provide a consistent framework to guide their journeys—regardless of how long they’ve been with the company. They also signal the attributes and behaviors to which up-and-coming leaders should aspire.
Building On The Past For The Future
In a hypergrowth environment, it can sometimes feel like change is the only constant. But companies that are scaling always have critical ingredients worth preserving and honoring.
By being intentional about which aspects of the culture are kept, which to adapt and how to smooth the transition, it’s possible to build for the future while retaining the best of the past.
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