Act Like a Startup: How to Thrive in Change and Scale Sustainably

# Three Approaches for Managing Change and Scaling Effectively

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# 1. Build an Enduring Culture

It’s important, in the very early stages of a company, to focus on culture early and often. By making foundational decisions early, organizations build resilience to adapt quickly to change and scale rapidly. The foundational culture serves as a guide to rapid decision-making in volatile markets.

These are Propeller’s eight foundational principles – and how any organization can apply them to adapt to change and generate momentum.

1. Commit to People. Start by committing to people (employees, clients, and community) and the rest will follow.
2. Serve Exceptionally: Create clarity in whom you serve and do it well.
3. Do Good Work. Exceptional service requires remarkable work.
4. Be Humble Yet Smart Enough to Have an Ego. It is important to be confident, but confidence with humility creates openness and the courage to try new things and make mistakes.
5. Harness Grit: Sometimes, no matter what you do, the work is hard. Organizations that move fast and act small harness the persistence and determination of their people.
6. Uplift Communities. Organizations benefit from being part of a local community. Investing time volunteering and participating in the local ecosystem creates momentum.
7. Embrace Differences. Building momentum requires input from as many different perspectives as possible. Intentionally embrace different viewpoints for the best results.
8. Drive Forward: Always be thinking: What's next? How can we get better? How can we grow?

These core principles are the things that we leverage internally and with clients. Our Culture Manifesto has helped us maintain focus and serves as a guide when changes are happening fast.

Allison shares how our foundational principles grounded and enabled quick pandemic decision-making that resulted in happy, whole employees and a healthy business that was continuing to drive forward.

# 2. Develop an Abundance Mindset

It’s natural in times of rapid change to be guarded and try to conserve resources. Trying new things or changing ways of working can be risky when the future is uncertain. However, survival is no longer good enough. Organizations that thrive learn to transform every limitation into a competitive advantage.

A real-world example of shifting to an abundance mindset:

Four Ways to Develop an Abundance Mindset with Your Team

1. View Everything as an Opportunity: In any situation, think about every single thing as an opportunity. Try to rethink what's going on. How can we solve this problem better?
2. Create a Blank Slate. Take a step back and find a blank space such as a whiteboard. Fill the space with ideas without judgment. Eliminate the scarcity mindset by excluding any discussion of constraints or “the way things are.” Try it in a little bit different way.
3. Reimagine What’s Possible. Start over. Rewrite the story with your team’s preferred ending. Create “what if” scenarios that envision a better future. Instead of saying, “We have never done that before,” say “We just haven’t done it, YET.”
4. Build Momentum. Start small. Sit down with the team, partners, and stakeholders to agree on experiments that “could” work. Try it out, adjust, and then build on the momentum.

How Propeller encouraged an abundance mindset shift in a growing healthcare company:

# 3. Become a Learning Organization

How do you take a team with an enduring culture that has fostered a strong abundance mindset, and level them up to become nimbler and continue iterating and growing sustainably? By becoming a learning organization.

What it Takes to Become a Learning Organization

1. Ruthlessly Prioritize. There will always be too much work to do. Ask yourself and your team: What is good enough? How can we achieve good enough right now? Something that was a priority last week, may not be a priority this week.

1. Take Calculated Risk. Start small but start. It’s important to try new things, experiment, and test to see what works. And don't be afraid to fail.
2. Fail Fast. Make a mistake and then learn from it. There is nothing wrong with failing. What matters is what you learn and what you do after your failure.
3. Incorporate Feedback Loops. All of this is a cycle. Prioritize and make sure you're working on the most important thing. Risk allows you to fail early, listen, and learn. Be confident in your decision to try something new, then be humble enough to try again if it doesn’t lead to your desired outcome. Now, you can prioritize better and continue the cycle.

Allison on the importance of becoming a learning organization to adapt to change and how we helped guide a client through a large, successful business transformation (which they had failed at four times previously).

# How to Keep Pace with Constant Change

The size of the organization or business is irrelevant. From individuals to small startups to multinational corporations, all of us are trying to figure out how to manage accelerating change. It's continually coming at us. The principles of managing change can be applied at any level. Find an approach that works not only for your organization or team — but for you.

Start first with building an enduring culture: Ask, “Who do we want to be?” and “What decisions do we need to make now to make future decisions easier and faster?” When things start moving fast, you can keep up because your foundation is secure.

Next, shift your thinking to an abundance mindset and turn your limitations into leverage.

Finally, becoming more of a learning organization is really the natural outcome of building an enduring culture and developing an abundance mindset. It becomes a positive cycle that builds momentum every time it comes around: if you establish a foundation of an enduring culture, it encourages more abundance thinking.

With some effort and intention, you can create an organization that learns and encourages curiosity. It’s like a flywheel starting to move forward. It takes a little bit to get going, but once it starts going you can build momentum and keep moving forward.