Be ahead of the future; prepare for the next phase of growth
"Never stop learning, cause learning never stops." - Nas
When I was given my first chance as a VP, the company's CEO invited me to lunch. I expected a congratulatory "let's do this" type of vibe.
It wasn’t.
He looked at me and said, "Congratulations, you are fucked."
I responded with a version of what looked like this: 🧐🥺
He replied, "If you miss your numbers this year, the board will ask me to fire you. If you hit your numbers this year and in subsequent years, the board will ask me to replace you with someone more senior. It's on you to make sure neither of those happens."
There was a pit in my stomach, but this turned out to be some of the best advice I had ever received. It was clear that if I wasn't consistently prepping for the next growth phase, even doing well in my job was a suicide mission.
Here are some strategies that worked:
Study your positive future. We were crossing 1M in revenue when this happened to me. Therefore, I would need to study 1-10M, 10-25M, and 25-50M. What did companies go through? What bottlenecks and challenges existed? What resources were required? And most importantly, who were the people who failed at making these transitions and why?
Find mentors. I found two who had gone through the two stages ahead of me. I picked their brains on what to expect and got their written plans and playbooks. It was like getting a syllabus six months before your course started.
Make growth a team sport. I shared this with my reports. At the end of each year, I'd share "the new sales org" vision and ask each manager and director to "fire themselves" because most of their skills wouldn't be relevant for our next phase.
Communicate upward. I never wanted the CEO to doubt I could do whatever came next. I constantly communicated what I was doing to get better and shared ideas on how we could make our business better in the future.
Deprecate and replace. To keep growing as a leader, especially at a startup, you must constantly get rid of or update your work. This can be taxing on the ego, but you must admit things you did successfully at one stage may not scale to the next.
Hire owners. My life was made easier by finding amazing sales directors and managers to share the burden with.
The moral of the story: if you join a growth company, you must think about your job as something different each year. Companies grow exponentially, but humans grow linearly. Figure out a way to kink your own growth curve and stay ahead of yourself.