Creating a culture of ownership beyond the tech team | Pip Spyksma from Sprout NZ

Speaker A: What we see as almost equally beneficial is rewards for how someone has lived, your company values and how they really showed up. So if you had a value of uh, like we show up for each other sort of thing, how did someone show up for you and then you do reward that behavior as equal to closing a deal and making revenue that comes from one person in the business or a team of people in the business.

Speaker B: Welcome everybody to the latest episode of the Upwards podcast. So today I have a special guest with me, uh, Pip, uh, Spixma, uh, from Sprout nz. She's the chief growth and operations, uh, person over there and she's going to talk all today, today all about culture and growth and how we can build a thriving culture of ownership within our startups. So this is a topic super near and dear, I think, to me and to Pip certainly, and to probably many of you listening out there, uh, as well. So, so if you don't know me, my name is Phil, Uh, I run Ahmedly. Uh, we are, uh, a cyber resilience and privacy platform which helps small businesses build and scale out, uh, their privacy and security programs. And today we're going to talk about startups, we're going to talk a little bit about culture, ownership and how that ties into uh, security and privacy and how we can help get people to a point where they are responsible. It's uh, embedded in the business and I think there's some general sort of lessons here that you can apply to just about any, uh, culture, any, any startup, whether it's security, whether it's privacy, whether it's just something else entirely. Um, so, really looking forward to this conversation actually. So welcome Pip. Great to have you on the show.

Speaker A: Thanks, Phil. I think it was also nice with we caught up and we've both been kicking around the startup world and um, just seeing the similarities that happen on the people and culture side that I'm working in and the uh, site cyber security and risk side that you're working in. Just the challenges that the businesses we work with face seem to be very, very similar and aligned and there was just heaps of fun. So I think this will be a bit of fun too.

Speaker B: Yeah, we probably all think our challenges are unique and special and, but they're probably not, to be honest. You know, I think, you know, you see, I'm sure you see this Pip, and we'll get into this in a second where you see the same problems just kind of happen over and over again. Uh, and so that's a really interesting point to dwell on. Because it means that we can probably solve them in a somewhat, uh, specific and intentional way as well. Which hopefully gives you out there some hope if you're struggling with some of these things that we identify, um, today as well. Well look, if you're listening to this on LinkedIn, then welcome. Uh, we're also on YouTube and podcast platforms as well. Please leave a comment or question for either of us as we go through and we'd love to hear from you and get back to you. So Pip, why don't you tell us a little bit about sort of who you are, what your background is and what exactly Sprout in ZSAT to these days.

Speaker A: Cool. Yeah. So, um, me, my background, working wise. Um, I did sort of 10 years in data and analytics consultancy which was awesome. So learned a lot about security and risk, um, from the sidelines I guess, and how it applied to the work we were doing with all of our customers and just loved it. Love consulting and seeing how you get 10 years experience in two years because you're working with so many clients. Um, and then made kind of an intentional move into startups and venture backed businesses to see what that world was like, just wanting to discover. And so worked at Channel, which was a, um, mental health tech startup. I learned a lot there as well. And, and now it's Sprout, whose sole purpose is to help, um, startups grow. So it's kind of been a natural evolution, I think, towards this space and learning more and more about people has led me, I think, to the work that we do with Sprout. It was interesting you just talked about similar problems and how they, um, every. No one's problems are really unique, even though we think they are, because we're having a bad day and we want to stomp our feet a little bit. I know I do sometimes. Um, but yeah, for Sprout. Sprout's been around five years and it is people culture and recruitment for high growth and early stage businesses. And one of the things in our infancy for the first few years we were scared to say that we solved problems in this space because it felt like saying that you were solving people and that's not a thing. I think you would know. Founded a company.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: Um, but what we realized over time is starting to gather. Ah, the three key problems that every single one of our customers was facing. And that was attracting and hiring the right people for the right stage of growth. And then also, um, designing a culture, a meaningful work culture that will evolve with you as you grow. So not looking for cultural fit, looking for kind of cultural evolution and then also growing the leaders that you need to scale, whether you need to hire them in or grow the ones that you have. So we started to realize, oh, we uh, actually have frameworks underneath each of these and we ah, are helping companies move through and solve these problems. So I think a bit of our sprout evolution is to just build that confidence and go. We have had all these conversations with all these startups and helped them grow. We do now know this stuff and we can help solve these problems by being proactive instead of ambulance at the bottom of the cliff stuff.

Speaker B: Yeah. And look, Lord knows there's a lot of ambulances at the bottom of startup cliffs out there. Uh, yeah, they're often, just to be brutally honest, they're often a bit of a mess and, and uh, stuff is kind of hard to get right and there's a lot of scar tissue. So it's nice to know that there are some repeatable perhaps frameworks that we can apply to thinking about this. Uh, and people, some of people just worked that out the hard way over many years and I figured that other people uh, you know, can help others and I'm a big believer in you know, getting help from people that have done this sort of thing before. Um, because it's really hard to figure out by yourself. And I think startups, from my view, startups have made uh, are made one, one person at a time, uh, from, from a collection of people that generally understand and can guide and help this sort of thing.

Speaker A: I actually think startups are probably better at that than established businesses in terms of looking at the network of help that they have and leaning on support. And I feel like they're not afraid to put their hand up and say they don't know something because there's sort of so much to gain for them

Speaker B: because it's because no one knows what they're doing.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: And that there's a general, a general collective imposter syndrome. I think across just about every startup where people are just waiting to be discovered that you know, uh, that you know, they're, they don't know what they're doing. And I think that's just the nature of the, of the beast, is that you're being pushed and you're growing personally and you're growing this, this company and you're trying to hire people, just trying to figure it out. Uh, and maybe you've done it once, maybe you've done it twice, but it's really, really hard. And so it's nice that we can put our hand up and say help, uh, and there's people out there that can, that can do that. Uh, so, so let's talk a little bit about growth, uh, because that's often where the sort of wheels really sort of start to fall off. Many startups face challenges when it comes to scaling their operations while maintaining a culture of ownership. Uh, how can leaders foster a sense of ownership and accountability? As startups grow, it's easy to sort of, um, just everyone are putting in a best effort. But how do we really get ownership and accountability, particularly as we really start to grow beyond just the initial collection of people?

Speaker A: Yeah, I think one of the things that's interesting is it doesn't happen by accident. And sometimes that's one of the biggest things that we see. And one of the things we ask our, our partners that we're working with is you, uh, know, where is your culture and you have to design for it. And so I think setting aside that time to actually design what you want the future to look like, what you want the culture to be, but not being too fixed, it needs to be a culture of ownership. As an example, what does that mean to all the different people in the room? Because often, um, I know in my experience with working in data and analytics consultancy, you have to be very exact with what you're doing. And that's really helped me, I think in the people in culture space is just if one person's saying culture of ownership and another one saying accountability or trust or what are they both meaning and what does it boil down to? So I think really defining that culture and how that looks in your business really upfront is a good place to start. Um, and then from there, ah, you'll know being the leader of your business, it has to start with the leaders. So hiring the right ones, but setting the expectations and setting rewards that align with the culture that you want to create.

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, that's really interesting. Uh, I, I like that idea around really being specific about what we mean when we say this, you know, when we say this because words are, words are kind of cheap, aren't they? In the sense that we, it's easy to throw around core values and put posters on the wall and talk about all these things.

Speaker A: High performance is one of those, is

Speaker B: a big one to actually really what does this really mean for us and how do we live that out? Uh, and how do we, we grow that and what, you know, can you do this at any size? Is this, is this something you can do with two people. Is this something you can do it 20 people and beyond?

Speaker A: I think it, how you do it has to change. You have to do it at every stage. But as you move from sort of your seed business, you're really comfortable with chaos and you need people that are going to be comfortable with chaos in that stage. As you move through the stages into kind of startup or you're getting into Series A and you're really going big, you need to be taking a, uh, closer look at it. It's actually really easy to do at a seed stage because this is two of you and you can just shoot shit and kind of decide what you want. But, um, as you build more and more people, you have to be more deliberate about it. And so I think it's something that you need to revisit over and over again as your company is evolving.

Speaker B: What current sort of, uh, sorry, what breakage points do you see in this, in the growth evolution of companies? I hear often certain sizes, things start to kind of wheel start to fall off. Is there any, is there any particular inflection points that you see over and over again, uh, in the life of a startup where it's really important in particular to pay attention to this stuff?

Speaker A: Yeah. Over and over again we see this 15 to 25 tipping point. And there's even been like, I think Harvard Business Review articles written about why does everything break when you hit 20 employees. And, um, part of it comes down to those lines of communication. So if you have three people in your business, that's three lines of communication, but it doesn't grow from four to four. So when you have 10 people, that's 45 lines of communication. So if you're just letting things naturally evolve, there's just so much room for error in 45 lines of communication. And so it's. That tipping point is knowing that it's coming and knowing that you can actually operate in chaos for a little while. But when you're starting to bring in those people who are bringing a bit more structure to your business, there can be a bit of a friction. And so you need to reassess what, what got you here may not get you there and just actually take time again to design.

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. There's a, you know, the, if you become, if you've ever gone into management at any point in your career, you realize, you know, there's some sort of a common, commonly accepted maximum direct reports of around seven or something like that.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: And so sometimes I think of that in terms of like, well, okay, As a, as a founder, I can manage maybe seven people or maybe 10, you know, something like that. But then if I go to like 15 or 20, I suddenly need someone else helping do that. Yeah, or a couple of people doing that. So now I have a management team, now I'm starting to manage managers. And that, that in itself is hard, uh, and has a whole sort of another kind of layer of, um, I guess, you know, complication, um, that you have to, have to deal with. And how do you, do you think about that in terms of startups as well?

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. Um, so seven is sort of the magic number I think, around direct reports. And even seven can feel quite a lot. And so one of the things that we see a lot with, um, startups is because you are closing these funding rounds where things do quite rapidly change, you go from one state to the sudden other state, is taking time to look at the organizational structure because, you know, when you're pitching and you might sit, we're going to hit these milestones, we're going to have this many people, but taking the time to design the organ, what your organizational structure would look like in order to deliver $10 million versus where it is now, $1 million, what are the roles that would exist and then working backwards to go, what's our stepping stone structure to get us there? So a lot of the time that's where we find, um, we're helping people in that stage of really going what needs to be in place there and avoiding some of those mistakes, um, early, hopefully.

Speaker B: Yeah, indeed, indeed. And so as, as, you know, as you start to get a significant number of people and then in a startup as well, you get, you know, teams of people and you get sort of areas of the business and sometimes silos conform. Sometimes, you know, you have a team in the US and a team in New Zealand and you have the US office and the New Zealand office and things like that. Uh, how do you build collaboration across those. Because it's really easy to kind of, you know, almost have two companies in one sometimes, um, if left, you know, unintentional, uh, how do you, how do you sort of break down those silos, I guess, and foster collaboration, uh, for building ownership, you know, within, within the company. Um, and, you know, what can we do? What can we do to help that?

Speaker A: I see this in three ways. I think there's operationally what you can do, there's what leadership can do, and there's like, culturally what you can do. And so from an operational part, I think you spoke about, make it easy and it has to be easy. So that's where I'm talking about tools. Are you set up, are your rhythms set up for your time zones? How are you connecting people across time zones? Are you using technology to do that? You know, do you have. I think there's a company called Octopus and they do donut time and they'll set people up on slack, randomly peer them and they have to hang out and they're not allowed to talk about work. But it has to be easy because anything that requires a heavy lift that's outside of someone's job, it's just not going to be sustainable. And so I think that's then where it comes from. The leadership side is just bringing clarity around. What is the overall goal that everyone is aiming towards? Because then everybody has a common thing that they're all aiming for. And you may not know them that well but you do have this bond that is driving you. Um, and culturally I think there's things you can do to support like those real tactical things like all hands. Most companies have an all hands or a team meeting but having different areas of the business present about what they're doing. Not always the leadership. I think how many times we've gone to company all hands for some of our clients and it's just the leaders talking and the leaders don't make the whole culture. And so I think it's things like that or even buddies from different areas when you're new to a business. Cross functional mentoring. I know in my career I got massive value from mentoring from technical people. I'm not a coder, but just the thought process, what annoyed them when someone was consulting and bringing in a project. Just learn so much from someone with a different way of thinking and having regular towels across, across the business as well.

Speaker B: I ah, love that, you know it's, it's often just you know, out of sight, out of mind. If you don't know what other people are working on, just, you know, you just have no idea. And sometimes the different narrative forms in the company and so I love that idea around sharing across, you know, really promoting that and just getting people involved that aren't just the same old executive standing up and giving their little spiel as well. That's really nice.

Speaker A: Yeah, it's really hard to get mad at someone who you know as well. You can just understand what it's like to do their job. You see a lot of like friction between sales and maybe cyber security teams for sure. And then um, like technical analysts or coders or Software developers. And often it's because you don't understand what pressures they're under and what it's like to do their job. And so anything you can do as a company to build that understanding of them as human beings and also what they do at work, it really helps.

Speaker B: Yeah. And you know, with the security folks and privacy folks, probably to that same degree, it is a, it is often a sort of company wide job of influence, you know, and so if you can get some airtime, if you can, you know, come across kind of more human, you're likely to win people over to thinking around, you know, wanting to help instead of uh, you know, instead of becoming the kind of no person in that sense. Um, so all hands are sometimes quite good for that. And one thing we did um, kind of in the pushpay years quite well is we, we gave, you know, we sort of recognized certain individuals quite deliberately, uh, in the kind of, I think it was like the monthly or weekly um, stand ups and so you know, would really call people out, you know, whether it was in the US or whether it was in New Zealand for, for going, you know, above and beyond. And that sort of gave you a sense of oh, this person's working really hard in their area of the world. And, and it's nice to kind of recognize that, you know, it might be customer success and it might be uh, that Woody. Howdy man.

Speaker A: Was it like peer to peer? So I nominate you because I saw you do something really awesome on a project or was it more coming from the leaders?

Speaker B: I think it was nominated. I think they were nominated. Uh, it was a little bit of both I think, I think they were nominated generally by other people in the company and the leaders got a sense of like who was really putting in the mahi that particular month. And it's often it might be project based, it might be this really tough time of year where people have just got to get something over the line. Uh, and some people have really displayed a kind of a value of really going, going above and beyond or just you know, doing a really good job or just aligning themselves really, really deliberately with the company values and that was rewarded. So uh, you know we, I think we had five different company values and so uh, that was really nice to see. It was just a small gesture but it was often quite powerful I think. And uh, to receive those. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It was usually, it was usually know it wasn't too many managers didn't get them. You know, it wasn't like the executives just giving themselves A good pat on the back. It was, it was folks that kind of, you know, should be a bit tragic really. Uh, it was, it was the, uh, it was, it was all of, you know, it was really, really individual contributors, you know, that were doing just fantastic work.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: So really cool. Um, I like that. Uh, so when it comes to building a culture of ownership in startups, how can leaders ensure that individuals from all areas of the business feel empowered to contribute ideas regardless of their technical expertise? And this is a big one in security and privacy because, you know, you might see something looks a bit suspicious, but there's that sometimes that fear of, like, what if I say something and it's not well received? Or what if I cause, you know, just dramas? Or who am I, um, you know, to say something? How do we establish a culture where people actually want to contribute and feel safe doing so?

Speaker A: Yeah, I mean there's a really, it's. I'm glad this term is gaining heaps attraction of psychological safety, which is exactly what you're talking about. It's the belief that you won't be punished or humiliated for speaking up with ideas, questions, concerns, but also mistakes. Um, and what it means that work is, it does foster an environment where people can brainstorm out loud. I think is the way people describe it, just that they can say what they're thinking and give their ideas because it feels very safe. Um, and again, that doesn't happen by accident. You can't sort of force people and say, we are psychologically safe. Tell us your ideas and then punish the behaviors. I think it does, it does come back to.

Speaker B: I think that's called gaslighting.

Speaker A: I think people sometimes want to skip a step. They sometimes want to tick the box and say, we're doing this thing without doing the hard yards and actually defining their whole culture around it. Because if you're going to have that kind of safety, your culture needs to have that as well. So coming back to that ownership, what does that mean? What does that mean in your kind of operational rhythms? What are the, what are the tools so being. It needs to be equal for everyone. So how are you facilitating everyone speaking up? Not everyone is now the in is going to want to put their hand up in a meeting. Um, are there ways that you can report things directly to a trusted person or is there a system or tool that you're using? Are you going with anonymous, um, or non anonymous? Very big debates in that, um, field. But I think that again, comes back to the culture you're creating. If you're Creating high trust cultures. Then you really want people to stand by their ideas, um, personality styles as well. How like are you catering for people who, who do want to speak up or who maybe feel a bit quiet but have the same thoughts? Um, and I think again you need to. The leaders have to model. Putting a lot on leaders in this. I think leaders need some support. They need some mentors from outside to really. It's hard. Yeah because they do carry a lot of this weight and like you said, they're not giving themselves awards. So they really need to kind of bond as a team. But if they can share, be really vulnerable and share learnings, uh, and mistakes. Um, what I remember at an all hands we had a really fun activity was we went around and all had to share one of our biggest like one of those things. We went home and thought it's over for me, I've really failed. Um, and then what you, how people responded to it, what you learned from it. And we started off with the leaders sharing theirs. Um, and it just became really funny and everyone was just laughing and talking about it and it made you feel like there's nothing you couldn't do because everyone's already there and done it.

Speaker B: Yeah, I love that. I love that. I mean I love an environment where you feel safe to speak and it's not that you just can have license to say anything obviously, but you don't feel like there's going to be some sort of career limiting repercussions for, for sharing some feedback, you know, uh, uh, or speaking up if you see something wrong. Like you know, it's some cultures inside companies where there's, you just don't put your neck above the, you know, neck in the firing line. Even if it's legitimate. It uh, might be that you see something suspicious and insecurity. So you want people to say hey, this looks a bit dodgy. Is this okay? Uh, you know one common thing is having just a sort of public reporting channel. It might be a Slack channel, might be email address to say hey, something looks a bit weird. You know, the site doesn't seem to be behaving properly or there's a strange person just wandering around in someone's office or like, you know, uh, who's that guy fixing the something or other in the kitchen? Like you know, like you know these. It's good to have a culture where you, you just, people are just aware. Otherwise you know, what's the opposite? The opposite, you just let those things through and that's how, how things can kind of happen. So I really like that idea about

Speaker A: it being a Slack channel. It's immediately more digestible than a reporting portal. Like it just. Reporting portal feels like a council or something. But a Slack channel is just, oh, I don't know if this is a problem, but I can just bring it here. It's easy for me.

Speaker B: Well, you don't know if it's an incident until it's investigated. Right. So the key thing is to alert and say, hey, something doesn't seem right most of the time. Oh, no, it's fine. You know, we, in previous companies we used to have a channel, I think it was called like suspicious Activity. And uh, you know, most like a good chunk of the company, like a good swath of company would be in there and people would be like, hey, there's something's a bit weird just looking, you know, just doing right. And most of the time people will be like, no, that's fine. Something's just working, doing this, or we're deploying some code or something like that. But occasionally it's like, oh, okay, that's not right. And then it sort of escalates and becomes, okay, now we need to kind of investigate this a bit further and it becomes an incident, uh, which is the right thing to do. But we want to know, we want to know what's going on. Um, so having those channels and slacks great for that. Uh, there might be other ways you can do that as well. Uh, it's really useful and it's low. Anyone can just jump in and do it. And generally people were not lashed for saying something in there. They were kind of encouraged. And so I guess part of the culture is saying, please speak up if you see something.

Speaker A: Yeah, it's just reducing the barriers because I think like Slack, everyone feel. Well, not everyone, but most startup people feel comfortable with a Slack channel. Even, uh, like incident reporting or pinging that same thing. Through Jira, you can get customer success or sales teams that are like, oh, that step too far like this. That, that seems a bit complex or serious or a bit too hard. Um, and whereas Slack's just very. Everyone can kind of ping in there.

Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. It's sort of a low, low risk way to do that. Um, how do you, you know, in terms of terms of the ownership thing overall? I guess, you know, we've got psychological safety. Is there anything else you thought of Pip did in terms of helping people? You know, that kind of go from this is not my problem to how do I, you know, oh, uh, I want to I want to. I want to speak up or I want to own this in a sense that I care about it.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: Because they've definitely. We've all seen cultures where people are just like, it's not my problem. Don't say anything I don't need to hear. Which is obviously the opposite of ownership. Uh, uh, you know, is there any other sort of thoughts on that particular.

Speaker A: Yeah, like a massive one, which I think most companies have. These is your company values. And I think to your point earlier, it's not enough to have them and to slap them on the wall, but how do they dictate the behaviors, uh, within the company? And so that needs to flow through everything from your job ads that you put out to attract people, the way that you interview, the way that you reference check, the way that you actually, you might have an awesome person, and that's just not the way that they want to work. And that's okay. They might. You might recommend them to another company. So I think it's. Everyone can interpret values, what they mean, what they mean to them. So we have one that's called create space. And it's creating space to build, to think, and to be yourself. Everybody has their own version of themselves, so they can still bring that. But what that means to us is to be myself is I do speak up when I have ideas. That's me being me. And I will run away and sometimes go too fast on something. And so really understanding that and having it walk the walk, see other people do it, um, and have it come through. And that those. When you came earlier to say at, um, one of the companies, you giving people awards for doing the mahi. I think what we see as almost equally beneficial is rewards for how someone has lived, your company values and how they really showed up. If you had a value of like, we show up for each other sort of thing.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: How did someone show up for you? And then you do reward that behavior as equal to closing a deal and making revenue that comes from one person in the business or a team of people in the business. So I think values are really, really important. Um, but there's so much talk about values, so I think most people kind of get it. It's just how you, how you go after the fact. Once you've got values, what are you doing to make sure that you're actually living to those and they don't feel disingenuous?

Speaker B: Yeah, I think people will spot that disingenuous. You know, we, uh, way off, like, we're pretty perceptive. Creatures, I think. And, and uh, we can, I think people can tell if they're not genuine. Uh, it's pretty easy to tell. I like that idea of rewarding them, you know, and little things as well. Like we at the kit pushbay, we did a little, we made little slack reaction emojis, like little custom custom reaction emojis for our values, for our five values. And so people, you know, people would sort of share successes or things like that and people would respond with like little, you know, one of, one of the values is like a little slack emoji. Just little tool and things like that that became part of the culture. And it's really nice to see, you know, in all sense, kind of throughout the, throughout the, the whole company.

Speaker A: Yeah, that's awesome. That's a great idea.

Speaker B: Just little things like that. Yeah, it's cool. And actually reward them. Visibly reward them. Um, was a huge. Yeah, it's a huge thing, for sure.

Speaker A: Yeah. I think it's that visibility. They're visibly rewarding, not secret.

Speaker B: Yeah, indeed, Indeed. Absolutely. And I think sometimes it's visible, sometimes it's just like, do you promote people based on those values or do you promote them or something else? Like some of those sometimes little indirectly visible things that send a message as well. Um, I think that's always important to take into account. Well, look, this is awesome. Um, I love this. We are coming in for a landing. I think in terms of time we're heading sort of 30 minutes. So I could talk all day about this. Pip, I really uh, love what you have to say. So many stories uh, we could share. Uh, but I really have loved this and hopefully you listening out there have got some value out of it too. Uh, if you want to get hold of Pip, she's easy to find, uh, uh, on LinkedIn and so am I. Uh, that's probably the best way to find you, isn't it?

Speaker A: Yep, yep. LinkedIn's good. Or it's pipetroutnz. That's very the beauty of startups, you just get your first name in the email.

Speaker B: Yep. You're on a first name basis. That's right. It's very easy for, uh, unsolicited email to guests as well, uh, which we all love. So thanks again Pip, for your time.

Speaker A: Awesome, thanks for having me.

Speaker B: Thanks everyone. This is Upwards, the podcast for security and tech leaders brought to you by Elmwoodly. Don't forget to rate and review wherever you get your podcast. And join us again next time for more on security startups and leadership.