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Thanks for your feedback. I’m glad you like the intellectual challenge and people around you. That said, we should address some things.
Joining a startup, especially when you are joining from the existing freight industry, is not easy. Our mindset is different, our pace is different and we are building the future rather than celebrating the past. That comes with curiosity, ambiguity, anxiety and for most of us lot of fun and a sense of pride. We are very proud that we’ve hired an extremely talented team that sees that we’re changing the world, following our mission to fix the user experience in global trade.
To respond on some specific comments: “we’re figuring out what logistics means”. There are two answers so that: 1. Yes, we’re figuring out what the future of logistics means. This is an industry that hasn’t fundamentally changed and we are reinventing it. 2. No, our clients reward us with a 75 NPS score, our primary KPI to measure business success. That’s a different league than the old world, which is on average rewarded with a minus 35. It seems that the clients validate that we really know what customer service and logistics means.
The survey: Our KPIs are simple, beyond client happiness (NPS) we spend a lot of time on employee happiness. We use surveys, talk a lot and have weekly all hands where you can submit anonymous questions. These crucial HR functions are facilitated with tools, for instance Culture Amp. Culture Amp is 100% anonymous, you can check their terms here: https://academy.cultureamp.com/hc/en-us/articles/205198325-Survey-Formats.
Work-Life balance: this is a sensitive topic, because you are right. We work too hard. And we try everything to make that more balanced. If the company grows by 25% per month, it’s just hard to keep up. We hire people and invest in technology. That said, it could be better. We are transforming an industry, that doesn’t happen overnight and without effort. Hence the employee survey to monitor happiness.
Stay away from crossing the COO, he wants puppets: Wow, please come talk to me (although I’m afraid you left us a couple of months ago). For others, please step up to me. We are a group of insanely smart people that should share all insights. We have a culture of innovation, where we empower our employees to prototype, challenge the status quo and ask the question why. Why? Because it makes us better. Read more about our philosophy in The Maverick, a book by Ricardo Semler, also great on TED. Or find copies on my desk.
On firing: we hate firing, especially when we just spent months of training in this highly regulated and super complex industry. That is not rational. But we let people go, just like any other company: the performance is not there, the drive lacks or we can’t make it work together. Fortunately our attrition is very low.
On stabbing: we have a strong values based system that has been designed with all our employees: 1) empower the client, 2) practice candor, 3) fill the gap and 4) play the long game. Stabbing is not part of that. Talking about dissatisfaction is part of that, because it makes us stronger.
Upper management has a high level of distrust in their employees: This one is funny, especially combined with the frustration about internal silos. We don’t have functions (silos), because we work in a modern customer facing organization. This model has a couple of goals: 1) be customer facing, 2) reduce transaction costs between functional roles, 3) empower to contribute meaningfully, instead of being layered in a functional org and 4) treat you all like business owners and adults.
Industry with many regulations: 100%, this is a highly regulated industry. We spent 5 years on getting all the licenses. We invest in compliance, simply because we value border protection and safety on planes and ships. We’ve also grown our compliance team by 300% in the last months. All government audits, and we’ve gotten many more as a new entrant, we have passed easily. Our customs brokers are licensed and work under supervision of the Chairman of the Board of Northern Californian Customs Brokers.
Politics: We aim to create a culture of meritocracy where we reward people based on their merits and they achievements. We are launching a quarterly calibration process, empowering managers to make promotion decisions since they have context into an individual’s performance. On top of that we are rewarding our employees with opportunities to rotate globally and functionally.
We hope everybody feels comfortable to share feedback with us, preferably in a way we can directly address it. Practice candor and avoid politics. We are just under 200 employees, so there is always somebody from the leadership or HR team around to discuss. Email me [first name]@flexport.com, Sanne (the evil COO :)
