Jan 24, 2020

Hyper-growth 4/4 💗 Scaling Culture

By Kerry from Try Catch • Issue #17 • View online

Morning, Friday.

It’s Kerry from Try Catch, we’re here with our last perspective of the January topic of Try Catch Essentials: Hyper-growth.

Try Catch Essentials are:

For HR leaders, recruiters, founders and hiring managers
Handpicked essential reading on key topics in HR and Tech
Sent to you in 4 easily-digestible issues per month

We’ve looked into a lot of logistical challenges with hiring, preparation and resource allocation for hyper-growth; and in this issue we’re looking into how culture reflects the changes in a company during and after hyper-growth phases.

Culture is an important aspect of the 2020 business landscape, from cultural fit from candidates to company culture - it’s not a topic any HR department can afford to ignore.

There are plenty of vocal hyper-growth evangelists who promote the culture around it and covet those that who have come out the other side of the gauntlet and those that adamantly oppose the concept.

We’ve talked a lot about figuratively securing everything you can before the hypothetical “blast-off,” but there are some things that you cannot account for beforehand and have to roll with the punches.

This is how you work with culture in mind as your team grows and you face high-speed daily challenges.

If you enjoyed this series and want others to learn what you’ve learned, we’d ♥️ it if you’d share this newsletter to your network.

As always, we’re just a reply button click away. 📥

Scaling Culture and the Culture of Scaling

Harvard Business Review is back again in our Essential Read section. This time, the article highlights four clear key-points to consider while managing the culture in a hyper-growth environment.

While hyper-growth companies face many challenges, there’s research shows that talent is their primary growth challenge - and one of their biggest priorities is how to scale and maintain culture to promote and retain talent.

Culture is such an interesting concept to consider as something that is manufactured within a company, when in reality, culture exists alongside any relational interaction.

Consider these check-points within organizations of all sizes, but as the stakes are high during hyper-growth, its more pertinent to nail these down early to make them stick.

Scaling Culture Checklist

Define culture in terms of clear, observable behaviors.
Build an accessible, digital library of learning content.
Use blended learning programs to scale culture training.
Ensure managers relentlessly reinforce target behaviors.

Read on for deeper explanations and examples from the Harvard Business Review.

The Essential Read

Scaling Culture in Fast-Growing Companies

It’s not enough to rely on the charisma of the founders. Because hyper-growth moves at such speeds and scale, these orgs need to quickly ensure that they have the right people and systems in place to withstand the velocity of which they are growing. These goes from personalities, to growth potential, to cultural fit.

hbr.org • Share

The Additional Reads

Reflecting on My Failure to Build a Billion-Dollar Company | Medium

In 2011, Sahil Lavingia, left his job as the second employee at Pinterest — before he vested any of his stock — to work on what he thought would be his life’s work. I failed, to create a billion-dollar company, but he learned to be ok with that.

marker.medium.com • Share

Mastering Hypergrowth Infographics | World Economic Forum

An easily digestible array of infographics to help give context to what all of these buzzwords and figures that are being used when talking about hyper-growth. Visual components are useful for considering things at scales unseen.

reports.weforum.org • Share

Have A Listen

MasterClass CEO David Rogier’s Top Four Tips for Hyper Growth by IVP's Hyper-Growth Podcast | SoundCloud

IVP investor, Roseanne Wincek, sits down with David Rogier, founder and CEO of MasterClass, to talk about online education, hiring during each stage of hypergrowth, scaling quickly, leveraging expert storytellers and how personal support is key to effective entrepreneurship.

soundcloud.com • Share

Balancing Hyper Growth and Company Culture | Org 3D

A great transitional podcast that blends right into the next Try Catch Essentials topic: Company Culture. Sue Olson talks about why she used anthropology to get to know Course Hero and how they built an award-winning culture.

www.org3d.com • Share

Next Up

Next Friday is the fifth Friday of the month, and to celebrate we’re going remix our Try Catch Essentials: Hyper-Growth content into a neat little package and send that out to our readers.

We’ll be in your inbox again next Friday morning at 9:10 with Hyper-Growth Essentials.

Next month’s topic is Company Culture, we’ll be taking deep dives into how company culture is fostered, how to succeed on culture initiatives and other insights from the web.

Stay Connected

Try Catch Essentials is always trying out new things, but what’s most important to us is that we’re providing value to our readers.

We’d ask for your feedback about our newsletter: hit reply or send an email to kerry@trycatch.tech, I reply to every message.

See you Friday!

~Kerry

PS, last chance to grab tickets to come bowling with us in Amsterdam next Thursday! Click here or the banner below!

PPS, Happy Lunar New Year! 🐀

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By Kerry from Try Catch

Try Catch Essentials:

- For HR leaders, recruiters, founders and hiring managers
- Handpicked essential reading on important topics in HR and Tech
- Sent to you in 4 easily-digestible issues per month

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