Embedding the Foundational Human Work

We announced something this week that we hope will help make some start-ups/scale-ups fly.

A super deep discount to our software so they can start on the human work early and make it a pillar of their culture so they don’t amass any HumanDebt™. One of the things that were clear was that there is no founder who won’t recite TED-talk level ideas when it comes to what it takes to run a modern tech company - Agile to the bone with happy people. They know all about vulnerability, compassionate servant leadership, giving people the space to grow and making sure they are heard. Any founder at all would pass any theory test on what the ideal culture should contain if you want to succeed. Needless to say this knowledge rarely if ever translates into practice.

Part of it is how insane of a ride building a business is and take it from me, it is utterly centrifugal and trade-offs are made every day. The other part is how the best of intentions when it comes to people never do translate directly into action without effort and just knowing this stuff is utterly insufficient. And then it’s the way that new companies start - in a flurry of survival needs and continuous dread from all sides. It’s tense, nervous energy and a desperate battle to keep your cool and simultaneously keep as close to principles as possible while fighting to draw air.

So remembering what counts, what really really counts and then acting on it, is extra hard. The main thing founders can do is surround themselves with others who can be guardians of the principle because if they should slip and become enchanted by someone’s CV that doesn’t translate into a human with the needed attitude, then the new hires can easily come as a package with antiquated business practices and processes from the years they’ve worked in waterfall shops complete with the command and control and the lack of care for the teams that usually packs.

In other words, in the founding team, you need everyone to have that same crystal clarity and extreme obsession with “Agile and people” and if they don’t, then they’ll default on what they learned in business school in 2000 or what they’ve done in other shops before and those practices and ideas will simply never work to lead a modern company to success.