Lead with Context, not Control

Getting from zero to one is not as hard. With Supersourcing, we reached a 1 million ARR pretty quickly. But, it looks like reaching from 1 million to 10 million is harder!

So, here’s what we did. We went backstage, identified where we needed to improve, and analyzed our growth. We read a bunch of books, met quite a bit of other entrepreneurs, and attended growth conferences to understand our plight better.?

For two whole years, we were hustling, preparing, and getting closer to our goal one step at a time. After this, we got to work with a bang. I would like to share how we went about this as it can help a few of you too.

1. First, it was an incredibly hard decision to make as the market was rapidly changing and salary packages were shooting higher and higher! I had to make a decision - to either retain loyal average performers and provide them with average growth or retain top performers and provide them with immense growth. For the growth of our company, I decided to choose the latter.

I proposed that the average performers either upskill themselves or they move out to other companies. We made sure to offer them recommendations and gave them enough time to find another job so that they don’t have to worry about paying their bills. We helped them in several ways - sponsored training, offered them networks and connections. We also gave them ample time to train. This decision was super hard and I felt very stressed saying “no” to folks I care about. But, this sense of concern comes with being able to protect them and help them grow.?

When you hire the right people, they value culture, even if they leave, they are thankful.

2. We hired the top performers who were capable of increasing our bars. Out of 23,618 profiles, we hired the best 71 of them. We also had great parties to build relationships and break the ice.?

3. The third mantra is to “train hard, build trust, and treat employees as adults.” We trained really hard and provided unbiased feedback directly to the concerned person. All of our employees appreciated this method of feedback, and we were able to observe plenty of improvement from their side.

4. We shared every single number and metric with complete transparency. Some of the people we know, who are engineers, are charging nearly $x000. You may wonder “But, why am I not making that much money?” ?? !?

We explained the entire process of how money is spent on marketing, sales, growth, taxes, tools, new initiatives, travel, and finally, what our profits are after all these expenses. We also explained where we are strong, where we lack, and why we are doing this!

5. We removed unnecessary policies. All of our employees' leaves are approved by default and the manager has to ask the employee if they wish to reject their leave, not the other way around. In our opinion, cutting a cake or having a pool table does not define work culture. But, trusting people and helping them become the best version of themselves is! All of our teams work independently, and our leaders lead with context and not control!

6. Data is our goldmine. Our entire company relies on data with a slight pinch of what our gut says. This helps us move at a fast pace. We know that if a 7% sales conversion helps us make X amount of money, then if we grow the lead to 10X, we can make much more. Every team, no matter the nature of their department, has access to data and uses data to make decisions!?

7. The last but most important one is trust. Trust comes from telling the truth, taking responsibility for both good and bad. Our employees are very direct and straightforward with us. They come to me and say “Mayank, we should not sign this client.” or “Mayank, we should stop focusing on this marketing channel!”.