Leadership
“This stuff makes a nice workplace, but it’s all superficial,” Altman says. “IPA taps and bean bag chairs could be anywhere – at Wonka Candy Company or Walmart. Besides, after the year we’ve all just had, it’s not even an option anymore.” Pleasant as they might be, these offices were designed to give companies competitive advantages over less welcoming workplaces, not over employees’ actual homes. Once people were given the chance to work within their own four walls, Altman says, “they began asking: ‘Do I want to work a soul-destroying job just because they had beer and pizza on Friday afternoons?’ Their answer: probably not.” Lattice’s research suggests employees care more about their company’s purpose than its pizza. Unless the company’s purpose is to make pizza, anyway. Purpose is “the reason we get out of bed every day,” argues Altman. “We find meaning in our careers by aligning our personal purpose with the work we do every day.” Producing food people love to eat is a perfectly valid purpose – a leader who appreciates that and builds a team that feels the same doesn’t need to do much more than get out of its way. “While there’s no one ‘right’ purpose, leaders need to be crystal clear on their company’s,” the CEO adds. “Are you building technology to provide communities with clean drinking water like Charity: Water? Or maybe you’re transforming work communication like Slack? Get specific, sew it into the fabric of your company, and rally your people around it.”
Go forth and multiply Unlike purpose and community, Altman readily admits that “growth is an unusual concept in culture”. Often, the two feel like opposites. It was the pursuit of growth that led Facebook to prioritise negative over positive engagement and emphasising it would also seem to push companies towards using worker surveillance tools to squeeze the most out of every asset. In fact, Altman started Lattice after the growth of his previous company disrupted its culture.
“Most venture-backed companies want to grow,” he explains. “Many need to grow or else they’ll go broke. But growth is important to Lattice for more than necessity.” Rather, it’s how the company keeps its people engaged, and it enables Lattice to incorporate productivity into a more sustainable, employee-centric cultural framework. “If we’re expanding, we’re constantly challenging our employees and providing new career opportunities,” stresses Altman. “They can earn promotions faster and move into management earlier. They can sidestep into new departments and take on roles that didn’t exist before. I want the company to grow all the time – and grow fast – because it’s good for our people.”
Chief Executive Officer /
www.the-chiefexecutive.com
The Lattice platform is a way to ensure the cultural advantages of small start-ups – their clear sense of purpose, their tight-knit communities and their empowering experience of growth – can be maintained and replicated in larger companies. But no business can keep its people forever. “There’s a tension to great culture,” Altman says. “When you give folk the right conditions, they’ll grow into brilliant professionals. A lot of the time, they’ll race ahead of your company’s growth.” That’s when many companies are tempted to get aggressive and take out the golden handcuffs. “But,” argues Altman, “that undoes all the great work done before.”
Companies are under pressure to offer more than just pizza on a Friday afternoon to retain the top talent.
“They began asking: ‘Do I want to work a soul-destroying job just because they had beer and pizza on Friday afternoons?’ Their answer: probably not.”
Instead, Lattice takes completely the opposite approach with its ‘Invest in Your People Fund’. As Altman puts it, “It’s a simple offer: if you’ve been at Lattice for three years and want to start your own company, we’ll back you up to $100,000.” In January 2020, Lattice’s first head of product, Ming Lu, became the first employee backed through the fund. “I said it at the time and I’ll repeat it now,” says her former boss. “We’d be nowhere close to where we are today without Ming…But she wanted to own something of her own. She wanted to build her own business from the ground up. That’s not something she could do as an employee.” More than making culture a competitive advantage, Lattice is finding value in resignations. “We parted on great terms and now we’re invested (literally) in [Lu’s] success,” Altman concludes. “As more people reach the natural end of their tenure, I’m sure she’s the first in a long line of people we actively help to leave.” The great resignation is upon us, then, and the winners will be able to look back and say they embraced it. ●
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A Lot Of People/
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