Pancake series: 🥞 Mental model for scaling teams and companies, Part #1

If we were true trendsetters, we’d come up with at least a TikTok video and a series of quick shots on the startup theme. I’ve actually suggested it a few times already, but so far, no one thinks it’s a really good idea to do that with me. So, here we go. You’ll need to read again.

This is our second conversation over fluffy pancakes at our favorite Karlín coffee place, ô-mai coffee and there will be more, so we’ve decided to call these posts “Pancake Series” 🥞. We like to meet up there and talk about company building, various HR topics and life, and like to share our observations with the world. (Hopefully, this article can contribute to obtaining sponsorship from ô-mai or, at the very least, securing some author discount for the next round of pancakes.🤣)

Photo source: 5 Phases of the Startup Lifecycle: Morgan Brown on What it Takes to Grow a Startup (Growth Marketing Conference)

Part 1

The startup league journey

This time we’ve focused on the challenges of scaling teams from the early founding days to a high performing organization. This is something most of the fast growing companies I work with encounter, so it’s really relevant and close to my heart. I have personally made and witnessed many mistakes, experiencing the pain of not keeping pace with the growth, both in my role and with the company that outgrew me. Milan as CFO and COO also has witnessed these stories repeating themselves, almost like ‘ctrl c ctrl v.’

Since I really love to brainstorm and discuss these topics with much more experienced folks, and Milan has been a great pancake partner — my sounding board. He’s always happy to pick his brain about challenging topics. He usually brings very relevant analogies to the table, helping us understand the topic from an interesting perspective.

Are we not one big family? 👩‍👩‍👧‍👧

Milan, an avid football fan and player, took an analogy from the sports world that is close to his heart. Deep down, I imagined cycling, of course, and this is applicable to most sports, so you can pick yours. Companies are more akin to sports-teams, rather than families. You are indeed building a high-performance (sports) team when building a company.

Companies are more comparable to sports-teams, rather than families.

In a sports team, you can fire someone for poor performance. In your family, if your sister does not perform well in cleaning the dishes, you won’t replace her with another sister. Startups that compare their teams to families often face challenges in scaling professionally because everyone is too attached, everything is too personal.

Beers after a game and Milan’s beer team

From pints to premier league 🍻

Milan started talking about a group of friends who began hanging out to play football twice a week and enjoyed a couple of pints afterward. Everyone was excited about the camaraderie, time spent together, weekend barbecues, parties, and occasional trips to football tournaments to compete with like-minded beer ballers.

Then you realize that you are actually beating other beer teams and decide to see if you can make it in a proper league. And it’s going to be challenging and it’s not for everyone. In the startup world, it’s akin to having initial traction and achieving a product-market fit.

⚽️

Just as in the football world, when joining a professional league, you now need to really devote yourself to the game. Learn the sport inside out, train every day (sometimes twice), run every day, do interval training to increase your speed because speed is everything now. You need to skip the beer, the weekend party; the dumplings, the smoking, all the fun is suddenly gone. You need to get efficient, always deciding what makes you execute faster, and go for the faster, just as it is in the startup world.

In the football world, all of this is intuitive and makes perfect sense. You realize very quickly that you can’t perform well the very next day after enjoying fish and chips, and a little party the evening before. In the startup world, people get demotivated or saddened that the scrappy punk culture is changing. It’s too much organization. It’s too many processes and metrics. Now, you’re telling me where I should stand when we are attacking and where when we are defending, and in what lines and shapes. “What a bureaucracy!” Now you need to bring in players who have the experience playing in a league. They will be paid more, get more play time. “Why do I have to sit on the bench? I’ve been with the team since the beginning, and I’ve worked hard for us to make it to the league.” You hire managers to the ICs or other managers and effectively block their growth. This repeats each time you make it to a higher league. Think Series A > B > C > D > and more.

Funny, you hire the early stage people on the premise of growth and lack of hierarchy, more senior on the more space for impact and the success is quite the opposite. It is perfectly fine if people leave a league team back to a beer one, they enjoy the messiness of the early days, the camaraderie, trips to the mountains and beaches, whatever they fancy. Or someone who “sits on a bench” in a Series C team, becomes a star in a Series B team. It is actually a sign of success that our players are in demand.

Funny, you hire the early stage people on the premise of growth and lack of hierarchy, more senior on the more space for impact and the success is quite the opposite.

Strategies for team excellence from football managers 👩🏾‍💼

It requires constant effort to keep a team fresh in the top league and not let it become complacent. One way to do it is to keep adding and removing players. This is what Milan has observed with one of the best football managers, probably ever, Pep Guardiola. He is very effective in managing the drive in his team. Even though he has probably the best players in the world on his team he carefully observes the performance and hunger, and if he does not feel it, he sidelines the players, exchanges them or sells them.

Pep Guardiola, resource: This is football.africa

And he constantly brings in new players who are hungry to keep pressure on the remaining teammates and to bring new ideas and skills. I would also argue that some amount of healthy turnover is good in a company, and if the company is successful and growing, it will naturally happen. Let’s say your Sales Manager becomes VP Sales somewhere else. Or you bring a Customer Success person from a higher league to bring your retention to the top quartile levels. Each time you bring someone new, the person brings new energy and ideas that propel growth.

Manchester City after winning the Champions League, the third major trophy in a year

Milan’s analogy, likening a startup’s journey to a one of a team ascending through the lower leagues to ultimately joining a premier league, illustrates the mental shifts required to achieve it. Reaching the top echelons requires commitment and deliberate action. For example, out of 16 members of the coaching staff at Manchester City, 6 are analysts! It’s competitive out there.

As in football, entering a higher league demands proper training, efficiency, and a departure from the scrappy startup culture. Just as Pep Guardiola maintains a hunger for success and quality in his football team, incorporating fresh, motivated and diverse talent, our startup world also thrives on healthy turnover, diversity of thought and the infusion of new energy to propel growth.