Company Compass
Ever seen a full-blown OKR cascade with 3 goals per team member and still nobody knows where the company is going?
I keep noticing the same inflection point for founders scaling past a few dozen people.
At that size, they can no longer share context with everyone directly. The team gets confused and leaders feel out of control.
⚠️ What happens next shapes the company culture.
Founders can take 2 paths.
1️⃣ Path 1 leads to a culture of micromanagement (and burn-out):
Here, many founders respond instinctively with complex incentives and control systems.
But these push people to optimize for narrow, predefined outcomes, even when it hurts the bigger picture. In a fast-changing environment, any fixed set of KPIs captures what mattered last quarter, not now.
Despite added control, leaders only feel less in control.
2️⃣ Path 2 leads to a culture of autonomy & responsibility:
Build a clear, codified Company Compass and – importantly – make it the ultimate authority.
- Purpose: why you exist
- Mission: what you do
- Values: how you operate
- Vision: where you’re going
- Priorities: what matters now
💪 Then give everyone the authority to make decisions within this compass. No overruling by managers based on their position.
Some people will make bad calls.
That’s why we still need transparency, feedback, accountability, and development.
And why we still need the OKRs and performance metrics, but informing rather than dictating behavior.
🎯 When leaders put the Company Compass first, people also stop optimizing for themselves and start optimizing for the company.
Resist the urge to control.
Focus on sharing context.
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