I live and work in Silicon Valley, in the US, where I see widely different styles of leadership work well for entrepreneurs and CEOs. Some are democratic and others autocratic, some charismatic and others hyper technical. But I have found that nearly all successful leaders here are clear, consistent, and communicative.

In my own business, Reputation.com, I have learned first-hand the importance of those three qualities. When we were a raw startup, with all of our employees fitting into one room, ideas flowed virtually instantly. We could react swiftly and in unison to new information arising from customer interaction, product developments, and competitive intelligence. I did not have to make any special plans or accommodations to clarity, consistency, or communication in order to ensure that everyone in the company was on the same page.  Since we were all in one space, the data flowed almost by itself.

All of that changed as soon as we grew to need several rooms down the hall from one another. I was struck by how much information friction arises from even a 20-foot physical separation. Within months, it became clear that the engineers in Room One weren’t talking hourly–or even having lunch–with the group in Room Two. 

So I started the practice of daily standups and weekly all-hands meetings (i.e. attended by all employees) to keep the information flowing about our customers, our products, and our business.

The next milestone in our growth was when we reached roughly 80 employees. Though we were still all in one location and able to move to a larger office that was mostly in one large room, both the speed of daily work and perhaps natural shyness of individuals on our team conspired to decrease natural information flow yet again. 

At roughly 80 people, fewer and fewer of us (myself included) knew the full names of our colleagues, their families, their background, etc. And that’s when I began to hear rumours–from our own team–of what was going on at the company. Some of the rumours were true enough that they sounded like something I might have said or did, but they were just untrue enough to warrant correction. For example, I remember hearing that the company was preparing to be acquired, when in fact, we were preparing to take a round of funding. But correcting that rumour openly became an important part of my role.

Though Reputation.com began as a consumer-product company, a few years ago, we built and deployed products to serve the reputation needs of Global 2000 enterprises, especially in understanding and collecting online reviews. Yet consumer and enterprise technology companies can have different cultures. I saw a risk to our team’s cohesion from that possible absence of clarity about our core mission. Even if it was clear in my own mind, I needed to explain it to my colleagues. As we added and grew the enterprise business, I consulted with more experienced CEOs who emphasised the importance of over-communicating internally the reasons for serving enterprises, the value in integrating consumer and enterprise data and technology, and the consistency of that message. 

Now that we are nearly 250 people in more than half a dozen offices in three countries, it has never been more important to be communicative, clear, and consistent.

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