Your growth is in your DNA

Welcome to 📈🧠 Scale Smarter.

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🔗 Jake’s Picks

Must-Read Resources for Founders

🚀 Scaling Startups

• Inside the engine room: Debunking the myths of scaling a new business (McKinsey & Company)

🧠 Founder Self-Development & Mental Health

• 5 Unconventional self-improvement hacks for the unapologetically busy (Forbes)

📈 Productivity Hacks

• Forget greatness: Manage your time like a lazy genius (Fast Company)

🛠 Tools for Scaling

• 5 best AI note-taking apps for Google Meet to make each call easier (Android Police)

💡 Hiring Insights

• ‘Talkers Vs Doers’: Ranpak CEO shares hiring insights to spot authentic talent (News18)

👀 ICYMI

• What is a performance management system (Scale Smarter Newsletter)

🏗️ Build it early, build it to last

There comes a time where one day you wake up and realize, for better or for worse, you have a company culture now.

There’s so many things that can get easily swept under the rug when you’re so focused on growing your company.  As a founder, the natural move to make is to put on the blinders and plow through wall after wall to get to the proverbial “other side”.

And if you are one of those founders who likes to put the blinders on, there’s a whole other facet of your business that you’re missing out on that will inevitably rear its ugly head if left to ruminate on its own - your company’s culture.

In Activision-Blizzard’s case, employee complaints were ignored or minimized for years until lawsuits against the company were made public in 2021.  What was described as a “frat-boy” environment became the norm and unfortunately defined the culture in the company, something that Microsoft began and continues to address upon Activision-Blizzard’s acquisition in 2023.

The bright side is culture can always be fixed.  The sooner it’s addressed, the more likely you are set up for success.

The operating system of your business

If you were to think of your company as a computer, the hardware would be your people and tools, the software would be the skills and processes, and the operating system (or company culture) overlays all of this.

Culture defines how things get done and why they matter.

Instilling the “how” and the “why” across your company, including within the hiring process from the very beginning, ensures employees join and come to work with a shared expectation of their role within the company.  As employees all share the same values, it becomes easier for parallel teams to move in unison.

Shared ownership

Your culture should create an environment where it makes employees feel like they truly own a piece of the mission that’s driving the company forward.  When you create an affinity for the mission with your employees, they’ll start to take ownership of problems and opportunities.

Patagonia does a great job of this by hiring employees that align to their mission of “being in the business of saving our home planet”.  The company then provides perks that align to what the employees would most care about like paid time off for environmental volunteer work and the “Let my people go surfing” policy.

In order to build teams that align to your company’s mission, you should not only be hiring employees who align to the mission, but also enabling them with a mission-related environment and perks.

Evolution without erosion

Naturally your company will evolve as it scales, and to some degree so too will your culture.  At this point it’s a true test on how solid the foundation is that you’ve built.

If you’re seeing your culture remain familiar to what it was prior to growth, then you can assume the foundation is strong.  However, if you see that your culture shifts and becomes unrecognizable each time you have to do a series of hiring, then you know there are cracks in the foundation.

Encourage feedback through simple satisfaction surveys to get a sense for if employees actually have a sense for what the culture should be in your company and then adjust accordingly.

There was a point when I was at Uber that Travis K. would run all hands calls with the entire company. Even as the team(s) got bigger, the company had a chance to hear from stakeholders who drove the original entrepreneurial culture.

✅ The culture checklist

A strong culture makes it possible for your vision and values to live on through the team, even as you step back from having to make day-to-day decisions.  As a founder, it’s your job to set the tone and maintain it.

Define your values early

As mentioned, the sooner the better.  But tie them to real behaviors, instead of buzzwords.  For instance, instead of using “innovation” as a core value, use actions like, allocating time for employees to work on new ideas.

Trust built with clarity

From company goals to leadership decisions, when you’re transparent with your employees with what’s going on in the company, you build a culture of trust.

Build bonds by building teams

Naturally, it can’t always be about the work.  You have to create opportunities for your teams and employees to bond outside of their job function in order to foster the culture you want to see in your company.  The good part is this can be whatever you want it to be, keep it simple.

Don’t just announce, reinforce

It’s not enough to just say “this” is who you are as a company.  Celebrate wins, call out behaviors that exhibit examples of the culture, and keep sharing when you see activity reflecting your values and mission.

Evolve as you grow

Scaling a team means scaling the systems and processes that reinforce culture.  Inevitably how your company operates will change, the balancing act will be how you align your culture to these changes.

Culture is like your company’s magnet.  A good culture not only retains talent, it attracts the right people to your mission, creating alignment before they even join the team.

When done right, culture creates self-sustaining momentum that actually fuels growth from the inside out.

🎬 TLDR — Your Actions For The Week:

• Scale Your Team → Create company perks for employees that align to the mission of your company

• Scale Yourself → Create a checklist of the key items that keep your culture intact

Whenever you're ready, here’s how I can help:

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