Northzone Operator Workshop: Scaling your tech and product team
with Arnold Goldberg, Senior Product and Technology Executive, ex SVP Paypal, Box, LinkedIn, early eBay
We were delighted to have Arnold Goldberg lead a workshop for our portfolio companies. Arnold is a senior technologist with over 20 years of experience in Silicon Valley. He has experience hyper scaling 50 to 5000 person organisations and held leadership positions in companies such as Paypal, Box, LinkedIn and eBay.
Here are some of the tips he shared with us in scaling your tech and product team:
Focus on the all-important individual contributor to manager transitions
As the well known but rather pessimistic “Peter Principal” states, people in a hierarchy tend to rise to their “maximum level of incompetence”. This is especially the case when transitioning from individual contributor to manager and particularly in tech roles. Your role as a leader is to prevent the Peter Principal from coming into effect by providing support to your tech leaders through formal mentorship and training programmes. This cannot be overemphasized.
Overinvest in culture
It’s not enough to advocate for culture but you need to spend time codifying it in order to scale from 50 to 1000+ people. Write down what makes it so special and ensure your leaders can explain it to a new person or the next 100 people they hire.
Beware of toxicity
Politics and personal agendas can poison a company no matter how big it is. It takes a Leader who is empathetic and aware to prevent it. Have a plan on how to recognise toxic behaviour and how to remedy it, quickly.
Avoid linear scaling
As you scale, bear in mind that what you did as a small company won’t work at 10x or 100x scale so there is a need to take a non-linear approach. Bear in mind “Dunbar’s number” of 150, which is the cognitive limit to the number of people with whom one can maintain stable social relationships. Use this as a baseline for when you need to rethink how your company works and do it again every time you double.
Create bridges and common goals across the organisation
Conway’s law is an adage stating that organizations design systems that mirror their own communication structure. This is why bigger companies reorganize constantly as they are trying to compensate for the consequences behind this law. Avoid constant re-orgs by focussing on the objectives first and the optimal communication flows before rethinking the structure.
If you would like to connect to Arnold directly please let us know and we’d be happy to facilitate an introduction.
