Fast growth needs a culture of pressure and celebration

a culture of high pressure

As you start to scale you need the right culture – the wrong culture won’t just hinder you but it will stop you dead in your tracks. As I wrote last week the right culture needs to combine elements of pressure, failing fast, empowered teams, blame free outcomes, honest objective analysis and celebration moments. Absolutely key is the ability to try new things and empower everyone to do so without oversight, learn from these attempts and not play the blame game if they don’t work.

Any business that wants to grow fast has to accept that it will make mistakes and  they will become more frequent and happen more quickly as you grow. To succeed you have to  understand that your ability to grow as business is simply correlated to how quickly you can spot mistakes and how quickly and how well you can fix them.

 Once you have a culture that allows you to fail fast ( but not too frequently) empowers every member of you team to try new things constantly and avoid the blame game then you need to bring pressure and objectivity to the party.

 Pressure is key. Pressure is good and pressure is to be embraced.  A culture of pressure drives growth. If you’re not under pressure running a startup then you’re probably about to go under and just haven’t realised it yet. As you start to scale the pressure continues to ramp up almost exponentially  but then as the saying goes if you can’t stand the heat then stay out of the kitchen. So, aside from how to cope with pressure yourself, how much pressure should you absorb and how much should you pass on to your team.

It’s no good taking all the pressure and letting your team relax in a chilled out and carefree environment without a care in the world. If you do this then two things will happen- you will have a heart attack and your business will go under. At the same time you can’t pass all the pressure you’re under on to your team- they will freak out and probably quit.

While you as the founder are under huge constant pressure and you need to absorb some of that, your team need to be under a certain amount as well. Calibrating it correctly takes practice but put simply- if your team are not under pressure then they will not perform. Pressure is good because it helps drive fast decision making, fast solutions, aggressive sales closing and helps the business operate at a faster and hence more optimal frequency than it would without it. Every startup needs this.

A culture of pressure also creates a flywheel effect. The initial pressure powers the business to perform, as a result it grows more quickly, which in turn creates more pressure and the team is driven  to respond again so the business continues to grow faster and faster as the team becomes better and better at handling the pressure and at operating at speed.

However every now and again you and your team need a break. Like a pressure cooker if you relentlessly keep the pressure on without at any point letting some steam out then at some point it will blow up. This is why you also need a culture of celebration.

 Businesses that don’t celebrate are joyless places to work frankly but as well as that it’s an important psychological part of the startup culture. Your team is under what feels like never ending pressure as you build a product, get product market fit, start to sell, get some revenues in and then start to work out how to grow fast and scale at which point the pressure ramps up even more. It has to if you want fast growth.

It doesn’t matter if its weekly, monthly, quarterly or tied to a specific target or project you have to at some point create a moment where the team can down tools and celebrate. This provides a reward and thanks for all the hard work they have put in and all the stress that they have been under but it also gives you a moment to release the pressure valve on your startup.

 This is essential. You stop, consider what you have achieved, celebrate and release the pressure for a short period of time and then its back on the flywheel with fast growth and the corresponding  pressure being dialled straight back up again.

 As well as pressure and celebration the final cultural piece is a culture of objective analysis of the business. If over indulged then celebrating can lead to navel gazing and self-congratulations to the point where you start to lose your competitive edge.

Beware subjectivity.

Objective analysis in the form of an identified metric and/or  an advisory board is a great start. However that is useless without a culture of objective analysis and criticism without fear of repercussion. A startup that spends too much time subjectively applauding itself will eventually be displaced. A metric is key but also a sense across the business of ruthless objectivity that almost borders on paranoia. Again every team member has to feel empowered to raise their hand and point to this when they see it.

If you have a culture where a cold eyed assessment of what went wrong is encouraged then you will always be improving your product, your proposition, your client experience and continue to grow. This is only possible it you already have a blame free fast growth culture where everyone is empowered to call out and identify mistakes or areas that need  improvement as soon as they are visible.

If you can combine all these elements, maintain them with the correct amount of pressure and constantly communicate them to your team then you have a chance of achieving fast growth.