5 Ways to Navigate Change at a Growing Company

This post was co-written by Jason Saline and Mike Hoffman

As companies go through their 2020 planning, big decisions and subsequent changes will be made to help improve the business. This is especially true in the startup world where companies are fighting for market share and survival and have daunting revenue targets to hit.

Whether you’re an individual contributor or the CEO, it’s necessary to always be evolving in order to grow both your career and the company. Too often we see employees get outgrown by the companies they helped build, often blaming external factors rather than looking inwards.

Having combined startup experience at over 7 early stage companies over the past decade as SDRs, AEs, Managers, and Directors, we wanted to share our thoughts on how you and your company can prosper together. We have been a part of CB Insights longer than any other company we’ve worked for (3 years for Mike and 4.5 years for Jason), and it’s been the most rewarding career experience for each of us by far. 

Our hope is that while different things will resonate with different people, this post will help people rethink their approach to handling difficult situations that have major career consequences.

It is important to preface that this post is primarily meant for individuals who have found at least some success at a growing company they have been at for at least one year. If you are genuinely struggling to do well at a company and/or the company has no future, you likely should be looking for your next opportunity. 

Additionally, this post is not about the best ways to hit your numbers and achieve quantitative results. That’s table stakes for career development. Rather, this is about the intangibles and qualitative actions to best position yourself and your company for growth. 

With that, below are our top 5 recommendations to keep in mind if you want to excel at any company, but particularly geared towards a fast paced, high growth startup where change is happening frequently. In advance, we’d like to thank all the brilliant minds highlighted below for sharing their wisdom on the topics that we will mention.

1. Be Open to Change

“It is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the one more responsive to change.” Leon Megginson

As companies grow, adjustments must be made. It’s that simple, yet some people aren’t open to it. Change can be frightening, but in the long run, it’s a necessary component of growth. 

The saying “if it ain't broke don’t fix it” will not work for long as product, headcount, competition and market forces are rapidly shifting. Instead, your mindset should be, “what got us here, won’t get us there.” Of course, companies shouldn’t make changes just for change sake, but if you aren’t constantly getting ahead of tomorrow’s threat and testing new ideas and running experiments, you’ll be left behind and growth will likely stall.

As an example, at CB Insights our Sales Rep’s territories are largely unstructured and people can add and drop accounts as they please. This worked well in 2015 when we had fewer Account Executives and there were thousands of accounts to go after, but it won’t work today where we have roughly 30 AEs and a better idea of our buyer personas. As a result, we need to be more systematic and go to a named account model, which we will be rolling out early next year.

While many AEs, particularly the tenured ones, won’t love losing some of their accounts due to this change, these changes have to be made in order to best position the company for growth. And if we don’t iterate to best position the company for growth then individual growth opportunities will soon become limited. As long as leadership has done a good job explaining the WHY and everyone is still given a fair opportunity to succeed, there should be no lingering frustration.

 That said, if stability is what you are after, you can always take a job as an accountant for the police department.

2. Stay Patient

As fast-paced as high growth startups can be, things don’t always happen as quickly as we want them to on an individual level. That promotion you were promised may get delayed or that big project you worked so hard on may get shelved for the time being. Your first instinct when this happens may be, “if they don’t value me here, I should go somewhere that will.”

It’s natural to get discouraged and think that this means your personal growth has stalled, but as long as the company continues to grow, additional opportunities for you to develop in the not-so-distant future should become available. Furthermore, the company’s success is your success even if you feel like you are not directly benefiting. Everyone wants to hire people from successful organizations. Think about how many people have made their career saying they were the #X employee at Salesforce. If your company is winning, everyone is winning even if you don’t feel it right away.

Joe Chernov says it best (along with Jeremey Donovan’s response):

Sometimes waiting an extra quarter or year for the next step can seem like an eternity, but waiting things out is often the way to go versus starting over.

Jason: When I was an SDR I was told by my manager that I was next up for a promotion to AE, only to find out in a team-wide meeting that someone else was tapped ahead of me. Initially, my blood was boiling, but after giving myself time to cool off I decided to use this event as fuel to put my head down and focus on being the #1 SDR for as long as it took to get promoted to AE.  

A few months went by where I was able to gain additional prospecting and discovery call skills and was then promoted to AE. It was only a few months, but that extra time set me up to succeed as an AE and to come out of the gate much stronger than had I gotten promoted when I initially expected to be. This early success as an AE then set me up for continued growth and put me on an accelerated career path. For all the SDRs out there, Pete Prowit describes patience best in his post: A playbook for the impatient SDR: 4 key tips to grow your sales career.

With the benefit of hindsight, it’s now clear that what I initially viewed as a set-back was actually the thing that propelled me to succeed over the long-run, largely due to the fact that I stuck it out at the company.

Mike: When I was an AE, I was so eager to go into leadership that I got attracted to a fancy title and big base and somehow got a role I was not qualified for. With no management experience, I was hired to build out a sales team from scratch at an early stage startup and had no idea what I was doing. While I learned a lot, I realized how important it is to learn from great mentors before doing it on my own. Skipping steps will cause you to stall. Not just for job security, but also for your overall success and earning potential as Jordan Wan mentions below:

3. Lead by Example

In a rapidly changing environment with aggressive goals, it may be tempting to simply put your head down and execute. If you want to emerge as a leader though, you will also need to be a mentor to others, take on projects and responsibilities outside of your job, and keep an even temper, as this will give off an Executive Presence that others will pick up on.

(Credit: Keith Cowning)

Additionally, do your best to shy away from controversy and petty disagreements. As companies grow, new people will join the team, and you will inevitably feel less connected to them than the folks you started with on day 1, and issues can and will arise. It may be tempting to voice frustrations over perceived unfairness or to argue over an account or a deal, but more often than not this drama will suck up your time and energy and reflect poorly on you in the eyes of leadership. 

(Credit: Dave Gerhardt)

If you are someone who is complaining aloud to your peers on the floor or at the bar, your comments will likely find their way to the current leadership team and you will not be viewed as a future leader. If instead you are someone who approaches leadership with constructive ideas, solutions, and thoughtful feedback, you will be in a much better position to grow.

Our co-founder, Jon Sherry used to say, “Always complain up. Never complain down or sideways.”

In order to grow, you need to think about how you’re perceived as Chris Fralic explains below:

If you can consistently rise above the fray and come up with rational ideas to solve problems, the example you set will reward you with new opportunities in the long term because you will already be viewed as a leader within your organization. 

4. Don't be Entitled

A company starts to outgrow you the second you become entitled. Both individual contributors and leaders often have the mindset “well, I’ve done x,y, and z for the company so I deserve the raise, promotion, additional responsibility, etc.” There may be some truth to that, but no matter how successful you’ve been, it doesn’t guarantee something should be handed to you as there are likely additional factors to consider (i.e. Is your desired individual next step also what’s best for the business? Is now the right time for this move? How will this impact the team more broadly?)

Zoom out a bit and ask yourself, “where was I in my career when I walked in the door on day 1, and where am I now?” Whether it’s skills developed, relationships built, or compensation earned, the company has likely given you more than you realize. 

That’s not to say you shouldn’t advocate for yourself or go for the promotion or raise you feel you’ve deserved. You should always vocalize your career aspirations, but there is a fine line between advocating and demanding, and people too often go for the latter. 

Simon Sinek explains that with the Navy Seals, trust is of greater value than performance. If you are constantly pushing your own agenda rather than being company first, you may get a quick win but you will also lose trust and damage yourself over the long run. 

5. Show Gratitude

Showing gratitude is one of the best ways to grow and outwardly practicing gratitude in the workplace can be extremely powerful. Time and time again employees think they need to keep pushing for more, fight internally and hint or threaten to leave, but that can often be counterproductive.

The page below from Dan Sullivan’s the Gratitude principle summarizes the importance of having gratitude to help grow your career:

Gratitude is infectious. It will benefit the culture of your company and will attract new opportunities and ultimately lead to growth.

Closing Thoughts

(Credit: Tyler Hogge and Andy Rachleff)

Take a look at the executives you admire and you will likely notice a common theme: they've had at least one, often multiple great runs at successful companies. Clearly it wasn’t roses the entire time, but they stuck it out and it paid off. 

Your career is much more likely to take off if you stick around at one great company for many years instead of bouncing around from company to company every 12-18 months. 

If you’ve found a growing company in which you’ve had some initial success and are building important skills and relationships, remember to be open to change, stay patient, lead by example, avoid entitlement, and show gratitude.