How to lead as CXO in a hypergrowth company

Finding your "leadership sweet spot" as CXO in a hypergrowth company matters. During my two years as COO of N26, I have experimented with various leadership principles and the role I have taken on within my leadership team. Hendrik Backerra recently introduced us to the concept of “delegation poker” as a means of clarifying roles in a leadership team. A great system demonstrated by a great coach. Together with a very talented group of operations leaders at N26, we set out our roles clearly.

What is the role of a CXO and the leadership team?

When building operations in a hypergrowth business, you and your leadership team have three levels of tasks to address. The closer you are to the day-to-day operations, the more autonomy you need to provide to your leadership team on these three levels.

L1. Setting the direction and strategic priorities

What is it? This means defining the big idea(s) and your annual OKRs. For Star Wars fans, here is a really nice description how to explain OKRs to your team. At N26 this is turning the service experience into a factor that differentiates us from the competition (other neo-banks). Customers should be attracted to and remain at N26 not only due to fantastic products, but great service. This includes annual performance OKRs, such as achieving 80% service levels while reducing costs per contact, delivering improvements in chat bot resolution rate, or increasing first contact resolution rates of your live service. 

Role of the CXO? This is your playing field. Ask for advice from the team by all means, but you’re ultimately the one who is in the driver’s seat. Lay the big bets, provide context for your decisions and remember that there can never be too much communication with your team. If you’ve heard the story so often that you can’t listen to it anymore, you’ve probably told it enough.

L2. Delivering structural upgrade initiatives

What is it? Set out between 3 and 5 major initiatives that will drive your performance KPIs — no more at one point in time. This may include introducing a knowledge base, conducting back office automation sprints or negotiating a multi-million contract with an external partner. These initiatives are particularly important in a hypergrowth company in which constantly upgrading your organization is essential to your survival. Task-force based crisis management is also a factor here. 

Role of the CXO? You provide advice and recommendations, organize resources and remove roadblocks for implementation. Here, however, it is your team that is in the driver’s seat. They design solutions, propose targets and deliver on them.

L3. Driving business as usual (BAU)

What is it? Over 80% of the work of an operations leadership team in hypergrowth is focused on ensuring BAU. This can mean resolving hundreds of thousands of tickets per week. Performance evaluations, daily KPI monitoring and people management are critical at this level.

Role of the CXO? If you are involved in this, something is not working. It may be an emergency or you are called in to provide help. However, if you are at this level for too long, you need to engage with your team to get out as quickly as possible.

A word of warning: An approach where the focus is on “I direct, you implement” or “I have my eyes on the horizon and my hand on the steering wheel” are usually not enough when taking a start-up from a tribe stage into a city stage. In these (hyper)growth settings, hands-on leadership matters. That means you need to set an example, wield the tools yourself from time to time and show you can get things done. Write some code, finalize a job description, revise the structure of a new customer journey map. If you’re willing to roll-up your sleeves and get things done as a CXO, a hypergrowth scale-up company is the best place to be.

Photo by Austin Chan on Unsplash