Every time I read the startup news, I find a unicorn popping up or another startup that has outgrown itself in the shortest period. We all become so excited about these new businesses when we read titles like,

N26 reaches 1000 employees in 6 months.

Elemy reaches unicorn status, at 1000 people in 17 months.

New unicorn startup Hopin triples its employees in mere 8 months!

What does this tell you? It tells me that these companies have gone through tremendous growth and are labeled as massive successes to their investors and the public. There is a constant stream of demand for their products. And their capital is secured by growing the teams building these solutions.

There is absolutely no shame in this. However, I find these articles to be incredibly misleading. What we fail to notice is that these companies get a head start with this good publicity. They talk about how much they've grown. Then, we see headlines like “Uber's culture takes a hit as we witness mass exodus this summer.”

Every time I read a piece of news like this; it makes me cringe a little. My skin crawls because I have lived through it. I've experienced this from the inside many times. It feels like this type of evolution is doomed to repeat itself again and again. My usual reflex is to do a little bit more digging. I do this by asking the following questions.

• How many employees left before they hit the first 1000?
• How long did it take them to get to the first 1000?
• How big is their team?
• How long has their people team been there?
• Do they just do recruitment?
• What do their Glassdoor reviews say?

I'm flagging this trend because these are the things that should keep us awake. Especially if we're working for those companies, these are the questions we should be asking ourselves or the company when interviewing with them. Remember, “Rome wasn't built in a day!”

I took the liberty of interviewing their senior recruiter, Martin¹ at Hopin.

How fast are you growing at Hopin? What are the numbers like?

“So, we are almost 1000 people now, and we were maybe 20 or 50 in 2019— (We were) doubling headcount within…four months that's the speed of the number of people that came in. To put it into context, at my last company, we had 10 in (the) recruitment team overall, and the startup went from 50 to 300 in 12 months. I'm now in a team of 40 recruiters.”

Obviously, being internal, you've seen how the targets are being set. What would you say are some of the main reasons recruitment is just driven nonstop?

“To be honest, the headcount is very arbitrary. I always ask whether this is even good or bad hiring or why are we hiring this many people in this period of time? From my experience, you never have concrete hiring plans as much as this at that early stage. It's always been that we have to hire a lot of people because we're scaling, and we're growing at whatever scale, and we just have to do it. Usually, you don't have the sort of strategy that is very well defined for hiring at this stage. I've seen the pattern.

But as a recruiter, I don't think you'd get that context on a wider scale either. I think it's because it is difficult for them to agree on priorities on what we actually need. And I think it's dependent on the leaders whether one will shout louder and get 10 headcounts. Or another one will be considered less of an impact to the business if they get less headcounts.

I was in places where we could see these conversations around prioritization hiring plans and watch that not only was it very difficult to agree, but it is also very difficult to make final plans because, in startups, everything changes, right? And we operate in constant change. But how much of this is healthy, and how much of this is not? From my point of view, as a receiver and recruiter that then gets 20 positions to work on, I tell myself I shouldn't be even analyzing who came up with these decisions. I just needed to deliver.

So sometimes it is hard. Personally, I'm a person who would love to understand. I love a plan. I love a good strategy. But that feels like early on in a startup, it's just not really there and it is acceptable too.”

In a couple of words, how would you describe Hopin's current culture?

“I would say transparent is (a new) kind of buzzword, but we actually do a lot here. We share a lot of information. We share the health of the business, how we're doing in terms of what our customers think, and what our customers' customers, or audiences, think about us and the product. There is a lot of transparency. Every week, you're going to know what's exactly in terms of the business's health.

What I learnt however is that what happened was abnormal for any business. Because Hopin went from a tiny little startup to a product and market fit from heaven. Customers coming to you asking how can you help us with your products, then VCs wake up and want to invest in the COVID kind of tools because the world is changing. It just served the entire planet overnight.

Because the way we live and communicate had suddenly changed, our expectations of who joins the company also slightly differed from what you would hire traditionally into a tech company. Some of the more curious people that I think we attract can adapt easier and also bring in a new way of working together. Linking it to our mission, I'd say we are huge on the emphasis of good communication and shared experiences.

The most distinctive one in our culture I would say is the purpose that initially was there when our CEO started the company, removing barriers to add accessibility to all. We set out to democratize access to everyone when we were all stuck at home. We have the kind of culture aligned around a purpose that is very tangible, easy to understand, and genuine. To me, that's key. Take my past experience for example, I've met a gambling marketing agency company with a purpose to help our users make smarter choices online. It was so blown‐out‐of‐proportion however compared to what we were actually doing. It always felt like there was a disconnect when you're trying to apply this kind of aspirational purpose and mission to something that isn't quite fitting the optics it is showing. At Hopin, it's simple. It's what we all want.”

WHAT IS PERFECT?

When I ask candidates what the “perfect” opportunity looks like for them, I usually get the same response: “I want to work at a growing startup that's doing something disruptive and could be the NEXT BIG THING.”

Another problem that disturbs me is that these stories sell because it announces their enormous numbers, those significant milestones. Instead, we conveniently ignore the journey it took to get there. The teams responsible for successfully delivering these aggressive recruitment targets and the constantly tedious onboarding had to be carried out to ensure people knew on day one how to turn on their laptops.

By now, you must be wondering how this connects to the founder. Everything at this particular stage and everything the teams are doing comes from the founder's demand.

He just walked out of the investors' retreat, telling them that the company will be able to deliver this Rocket at a staggering shorter amount of time than its competitor coupled with a heavily discounted price just to acquire its first million customers. So yes, all of this comes back to who the founder is and what headspace they were in at the time.

The team, on the other hand, is also in an unfavorable state because of this.

If you've known or spoken to any HR people working in these teams in this type of demanding illogical environment, you know they absolutely loathe the experience. They usually come out the other end battered, embarrassed, and more importantly, ultimately defeated. Just try to imagine this weary team going against all they have learned to satisfy the company's demands because, frankly, their rent that month depended on it. I can tell you that it was not what they signed up for when they said yes to the job.

Let me show you the logic (estimated under ideal situations).

1. First, the head of the department joins and takes a minimum of two weeks to get settled.
2. They start hiring the HR team in Week 1.
3. Recruiters are functional in Week 4.
4. HR begins due diligence to find out what the employees need in Week 5.
5. Onboarding program takes priority in Week 6.

From Week 10 onward:

6. Manic begins as recruitment numbers overhaul the capacity of the current team.
7. HR starts panicking if every 100th person in a new country has been hired compliantly.
8. HR starts building development plans for employees under demands; however, the company has yet to determine its objectives.
9. Managers go into duress as performance reviews are up and they are expected to run without much preparation.
10. Recruitment targets increase and continue to take priority over everything else in this team.
11. Steps 6 through 10 go on repeat until the team burns out.

So, unless we're pretending that every step has a turnaround time of a mere one week, we can get all of this done in three months instead of six. Sure, then HR would be one of the most churned teams by choice in all companies. And the HR team is always the one who stuck around even after disasters hit them repeatedly. I am being skeptical here, but you get the gist.

Sadly, I have also been in that exact scenario multiple times. Yet, I still didn't learn what was wrong until I got a glimpse of what good looks like. Thousands of people my team hired thoroughly enjoyed their non‐rushed weeklong onboarding. And we were able to be fully functional for longer than their probation period because of the care and attention we gave them. This longevity was thanks to training, development programs, and just good old effective managers. Imagine my disbelief that this could be achieved in a similar‐sized startup.

When I met Patricia Santos, an HR leader and consultant for tech startups in Los Angeles, we discussed her experience in balancing the hypergrowth needs with sustaining a healthy culture. As she attributed the success to having a “human” founder, she talked to me about one of the best companies she had worked for, Ring. This US‐based tech startup employed her until 2019. Amazon later acquired Ring.

What was the headcount when you left Ring after they were acquired?

“Over 2,000 in four years. We grew really fast, and Ring was just about 2,200 at that time. It (was) fun because Ring's culture was strong before we even hit massive growth spurts, and it was very centered around the mission. We were based in Santa Monica and surrounded by these super thriving startups, but we weren't like any other startups around us. We didn't have the ping pong tables or the team‐building events. We didn't do a lot of celebrations. It was like we were there to keep our neighborhood safe and that was enough for the people. It's the culture that drew out the kind of people who were most proud to say, wow, we work at Ring for this intangible purpose we so strongly believe in, and so we don't need all of the other things.”

It also sounded like there was a great culture. Did Jamie influence much of how it turned out to be a great company to work for?

“We were there because we supported the mission and believed in Jamie. Jamie really showed (us) how good of a leader he was. Jamie was a caring person. And I wasn't the first person to be like, let's not celebrate anything like a Christmas event. I think (that was) the fun part about my time there. Even when it was painful, or (when we were) working as hard as we did because we were still working toward a mission.

So, any growing pains (we had), we got it together, and it never felt like a difference in moments. I never felt like it was us versus management or executives. We were all kind of like that, even (during) the acquisition with Amazon. That meant the culture; it was all Jamie, the founder. (He) cared about it, and it made such a difference compared to what we both had gone through in other companies.

This was his style. He's very hands‐on—every new hire (became) a part of that culture. When there was anything we were unsure of, like during the acquisition, which was super stressful, people would go to him for ease. Or when people were feeling unsure about what was going on, they would turn to Jamie and ask, ‘What do you think?’

He was so strong and reminded us we were there for the neighbors, and that was our mission, regardless of its acquisition. It was really fun. Yes, you grind but everyone around you believed in it.”

Did you think that would have been doable if your team, say, was half the size? Or the time was much shorter?

“Every startup is going to be stressful. Especially the first few years but very quickly, we got bought out by Amazon. Even when we started thinking about going public really fast because of the conversations that Amazon started at such an early stage for us, I think that without Jamie's presence or his leadership style it would have been harder, which is true for all startups, especially in the early days.

His presence was just so (needed). He really tried to be in front of people, and he has a big personality. He was so present, even with our lives like remote teams carrying on past 3,000 people, past acquisition. We grew really fast, but we didn't become all ‘fluffy’ because we were in Santa Monica with other typical startup personalities.

A bunch of ‘regular’ startups were the other way where they're just growing so fast and have really smart people where toxicity or the density of moving fast were really unsustainable. If it wasn't for Jamie's leadership and influence, we probably wouldn't have been as successful. It was definitely uneasy when we first merged into Amazon. He protected our culture so that we didn't need to be like corporate, and he ensured we knew what he thought, and he really kind of reassured us that they bought the product to further our mission. Nothing more.”

Why is this important to the company?

“I mean, we've got a great CEO going to work with. But if the CEO cares about all the people, except for the HR team, it won't work. Jamie was very involved in that way. So, he cared about it, but I think we were like the headcount piece, right? It's about prioritizing the right things. I think that the headcount just doesn't seem as important as getting that engineer to be sure the product ships and getting the head of marketing to know what we're doing on Facebook. I don't think I could have worked as well if Jamie hadn't been as invested in people as in HR. I think we always feel, especially in startups, that we do like small HR teams growing, grinding through it, and maybe it would have been a little more painful but doable. I don't know if the environment was, say the opposite, it would have worked as fast (and) as nicely as it did.”

These are incredibly successful stories, but they are also very rare in the startup world. The success patterns show a reflection of the typology of its founder.

The type is too obsessed with just hiring to “look good” because the higher profile hires they make, the better they look to their competitors. The issue here is that the company's life depended on acquiring the talent until they took it too far. It's an example of a company using its newly acquired talent to win businesses. Otherwise, it won't be scalable.

Their time is mainly spent wooing new, high‐profile talent instead of building a company of choice. They are often caught up debating the analogy of chicken and egg. Which comes first? Without the talent, you don't win clients. Without clients, why is the talent there?

And what if they genuinely don't care about people at all?

Marisa Bryan, a senior Talent Acquisition leader in multiple leading organizations globally, confirmed this assumption based on her revolting experiences in Revolut and a European Credit FinTech (Company K), both high‐profiled unicorns in the European market.

I had an opportunity to sit down with Marisa and ask her some questions.

You must have seen a lot of hyper growth companies that are only focused on hiring. Why do you think they don't pay enough attention at the start about retention of their people?

“If we look at the psychology of human beings, we are naturally predisposed to instant gratification, right? Like the experiment on young children, you can have your sweets now, or you don't have them now. You can get them later instead. The child always chooses now. Same thing, but on a much bigger scale. You can have your people now versus big sorts of future problems. Which do you invest in? So is the current pain point versus a long‐term view of where you need to get to.”

And what if you're on the other side of the coin, as a candidate? How does the experience differ internally? (This is what Marisa had to say about her time at Company K.)

“During this time, I lead a team responsible for hiring their engineers. And this shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone, as they have a widely documented and available Glassdoor showing you their process of doing these logic tests for all employees regardless of their role and level. And (these tests) are essentially psychometric tests, a way to fit the missing tile into the pattern. And if you fail the test, it doesn't matter if you're a Ph.D. student from MIT; you don't get a job at this company.

And the reason the tests are in place is because the CEO (and) founder, has a personal belief that these logic tests act as an identifying factor of great talent.

(He) believed in (these tests) despite the team having presented volumes of data about candidates who had the right skills and experience but failed the logic tests for whatever reason. Or the surmountable candidates withdrawing because they were unwilling to submit themselves to the logic tests.

Countless debates and discussions on repeat, there was just absolutely no movement on removing them. And for me, you may be the most amazing company and have taken the world by storm. That's all good, but realistically part of being a great founder is listening. Being able to take onboard input and feedback from the people around you because it doesn't matter if you're Steve Jobs or Bill Gates, you don't know everything about everything. You know everything about Credit, and you've created this amazing product in Sweden, but I just think the kind of arrogance that I have experienced with this type of founder, believing, and feeling as though they know all aspects of running a company you are just not okay.”

And as she crossed paths with Revolut.

“I went for a Global VP of Talent Acquisition role with them, and I was interviewed but immediately withdrew from the process while realizing a significant drawback from their process. It wasn't that I was being interviewed by an intern, but that there was no effort made whatsoever to get to know me as a person or to get to know my motivations. Like what am I passionate about? Why do I do the job that I do?

In the later stage, it got worse. It was just a series of questions about metrics. How many people do I need to recruit x amount of more people and still just zero interest in me as a person or my fit? To me, it is clear that's a reflection of what the Founder cares about, not you as a person or anyone else for that matter. Maybe he just cares what your outputs are, what you can deliver. And I know at least three people in my immediate network who have worked there and left within 12 months, all very senior, very experienced people. It shows until today there are the same few people who'd been there since day one.

But the biggest problem in this scenario is that we have used up all the time in the early stage, the most prominent stage to shape your culture, your brand and set up all the right foundations. (It) was all wasted because we've ended up creating an environment that isn't sustainable for scaling after. You start wondering what went wrong in the first place.”

Your final piece of advice?

“If done slowly and with respect, you can win. The business is about people.”

BrewDog was an award‐winning UK startup that crafts beer before its employees called it out for creating a toxic working culture. It was a company that grew too fast, sacrificing all the important things they were meant to be building. Because of this, the company had no foundation to fall back on when things started to break, and then disgruntled people left the company.

But let's not forget another important point: the size of the people's team controls the focus of the team, affecting the final output of what their employees will get right. It's basic logic. I am making this point out loud because I've come across far too many startups hiring for their first people manager in the middle of growth. They're even proud of it.

And I've been brought into these startups to “fix” this problem that they first created themselves because it was so underwhelming or unnecessary before. Some startups got it worse when they decided to only bring people in under the “advice” of their investors.

RISE, COMPANY ONE

In the summer of 2020, I met the Founder/CEO of a startup in its second operating year. This was a fast‐growing company at the time, with already close to 200 people. They also had some big names on their board and leadership team.

So, I was under the impression that they knew what they were doing because they hired such fantastic talents. They had an incredibly focused, ambitious founder, and we shared a lot in common. Naturally, the introduction‐turned‐request to help her “improve” her People Function was an invitation I didn't want to decline.

Also, after a few weeks of sharing what we both thought was “good” in startup culture, I set my expectations high in terms of what I'd expect in this company. As I came into the company, I was introduced to the current HR manager. I was immediately met with an overworked, burnt‐out HR person who was already on the verge of resigning.

The COO managing this overwhelmed team of two also clarified from our introductions that she did not know how to handle this, nor did she have any experience developing a good People Function. Before the current HR manager, this small team had already churned another pair of HR and recruiting experts. When I dug a little deeper, it was clear that they paid too much attention to this team for their day‐to‐day. It was a classic case of an undervalued function of the business. Compared to how my discussions with the Founder started, you can only imagine my dismay.

• “How did this happen?” became my opening line to every single meeting I had from that point onward.
• “Where do we store the employee documents and profiles?”
• “How do you know when your employees are happy or not?”
• “Do you know what your culture is like?”
• “Do we have a process for X,Y,Z?”

All of my questions were met with silence. In the meantime, recruitment was an ongoing campaign as they continued to hire close to 30 people every week, yet everything they needed, at the latest, should have been there a year ago.

We were at the point of 200 people with no development plans. We were in the middle of hiring another 50 without any succession planning or an optimized org chart design. This was the state of things. When I asked about the size of the people team, they told me it wasn't the focus. They felt it was more important to hire all these talents because they're the ones who win businesses and hit sales targets. So, there you go, I just walked right into another position as a “blind talent hunter.”

Their Sales director was about to walk out.

Then came the resignation of the head of customer support.

To start, it took a team of three and me to bring all of the needed work together. We had to get them to a steady state because this created another problem I did not expect.

Once HR was formally introduced in the company to help “improve things,” these unattended and uncared‐for employees saw it as a desperate fix more than anything else. Overnight, after my introduction to the company, I got stacks of emails from employees, first welcoming me warmly and then ending their email with cries for help. Suddenly, our wheels were spinning. I saw flight risks (employees who were showing signs of resignations) at every corner.

Things started to calm down three months later, and we achieved it all amid that epic hiring campaign. There was onboarding, a system to record things, a database for employee files on a fully functional HRIS (human resource information system), and people were finally told of their career pathways and had development plans to reach their ambitions. It was a good day when we were able to let out a sigh of relief.

I'm not saying this has to be done by a people team. But at least by someone who knows what they're doing, not winging it by chance day by day. If it is the finance director who is doing this, so be it. But make good and right decisions to build the foundation for the company, please. If you don't know, ask for help as Sandra did.

She didn't do this on purpose, and in the end, it all worked out.

CRITEO, COMPANY TWO

Criteo was a very successful, publicly listed online advertising firm based in France. Before it hit the stock market, the Founder/CEO was quickly replaced by a much more experienced CEO. It started off as a company that scaled too quickly because the CEO only cared about what he thought was right. After a few years, the board decided that he wasn't the right person to lead the company, initially for reasons we weren't aware of. When I finally caught up to the truth a year later from an ex‐employee, this was how Marianne,² their Head of HR described it.

“When it happened, it was just because he pushed his demands too far. First, he wanted to over hire because it meant we were bigger than another French Tech Unicorn. There was no good reason for it. Then, the CEO wanted to have an office in Palo Alto, although we didn't need it. He almost forced it. The leadership team, everyone, told him we couldn't compete in Palo Alto. He must have understood this but chose to ignore that because not only was our attrition insane, the salaries were off the charts. We went out of our way to transfer people from Paris to Palo Alto. But they were sometimes getting three or four times the salary to do precisely the same job. The salary increase was so that they could afford to live in Palo Alto. Because of that, the company lost a lot of money and the board wasn't happy.”

“The team presented a load of data to show that we weren't producing anything in that office. But it was a real ego thing to have a presence in Palo Alto. And he wanted to be able to say, ‘I built the first French Tech unicorn—unicorn. And look, we've got this office in Palo Alto.’ ”

“Then the auditors came in. They recommended that the first thing was to shut Palo Alto because of the amount of money it was costing them. Contrary to some typical patterns of failure, this was simple. It was because the right decisions were completely overruled with no justification other than ‘Well, I'm the founder; therefore, what I say goes.’ ”

“Even the best leaders in the world listen to the people around them, and in a company, they have their board of directors, their trusted advisors around to guide them. I think we got lucky along the way, otherwise I don't think you'd see us today.”

FIN, COMPANY THREE

Let's now talk about a startup who was so obsessed with hiring fantastic talent that they too forgot to look after their people somewhere along the journey. Except this time around, I was the one making this mistake.

Usually, when I'm the head of the people department, I am asked to look after two things: hiring the talent and looking after the talent. What happened here was that because we were still very small, my job only entailed the first part. So, hiring it was. Except this became my only job, for two whole years.

During my interview with the founders, I couldn't believe how lucky I was.

When we first met, Robert, the CEO said, “Forget what did not happen in your last company. From now on, you learn from your mistakes and bring your best version here. We're going to grow this company together.”

Reliving this part of my memories always makes me smile. It was one of the better parts of my career so far.

So, we were only five people at that time, and I was tasked to hire our first 10, then 20, 30 people until we hit that sweet spot of 100 after 12 months. I spent my time with the team making us recognizable in all facets of FinTech. We had the podcasts, and we had the high‐profile leadership team.

We had a bit of everything, and our candidates would jump on board to join us after the first interview. Even when company swag wasn't a default in your welcome pack yet, we had boxes of swag made every other week. Simply put, we were an attractive company.

And quite frankly, until this, I'd never done such easy recruitment. Of course, we enjoyed building this company together so much that we lost sight of what else was necessary, the sheer happiness of our employees.

With success after success, hiring became easy for us. We were almost addicted to the exhilaration of closing an offer and having the candidate say “Yes, I'll join you” with such excitement in their voice. We were on a high to close more candidates, we wanted the power players in the industry, and we wanted them all around the globe. This was also partly driven by the fact that our clients were everywhere from London to Rwanda.

This was when remote working or a hybrid model wasn't an expected thing yet in startups. If you joined a company based in London, you're expected to show up in their London office and possibly entertain several overseas business trips. Of course, you could work from home, but your home would have to be in the same country at the very least.

What we had then set up was something called satellite offices. As the phrase explains, it was an office to “house” our employees based in remote places far away from the headquarters. In HR terms, this meant that it was a shell with nothing but tools for you to do your job and definitely not tools for you to succeed in the long term.

Why was this important?

Because being able to “employ” people compliantly was far more critical than retaining them; it was basic logic for us. If we can hire from all around the world, we are giving them the opportunity of their lives. This was the problem; we thought that we were more important than their careers. Also, the tragic part is that most employees don't realize this until they've been with a company long enough to ask for their next promotion. Like everyone else, they have joined this company based on its shiny offer 12 months ago.

Let's circle back. Where did we go wrong?

We lacked focus on supporting our people. While support comes in all shapes and forms, what employees ultimately want is to grow their careers in the company by having opportunities for advancements, learning platforms to help them hone their current skills, and improve on them until they eventually reach their goals.

One of the main driving forces behind this concept is that millennials also form the largest majority of the startup workforce. Therefore, these are employees who have been subjected to development programs from their early school days. They will always crave more space to sprout their needs in their companies naturally. They joined to throttle their careers because a corporate life won't give them that, so let's not forget this.

What do they want instead of what do we want to give them? Is it a paradox? Employers give them laptops because we want them to be mobile, but we don't ask if they work better with an extended monitor to sit on their permanent home desk. We kept at this for a long time, beyond the time we hit 200. This was also the point when we realized something was breaking. Something was falling apart. The company lost focus, and I lost focus.

First came the disgruntled complaints about no career progression, then came the low‐performing team out of nowhere. Finally, the resignations arrived. We started losing people. These people were so passionate about our dreams together and decided they wanted to dream somewhere else. The same people we depended on for opening up new markets and opportunities with us because they dared to dream. We valued them, we praised them, we gifted them, but we didn't treasure them.

As puzzled as we were, we didn't stop to think about what we could have done to fix the problem. Instead, we quickly moved on from it, focusing on how to replace these leavers, which meant more recruitment coming up. This went on for another few months before we finally paused to re‐evaluate where we went wrong.

Coupled with a few more resignations, this time from our newly hired junior employees, we began to worry. We were losing both our top and bottom, and to be honest, we were already lean to start with.

David announced in a meeting with me, “It's becoming apparent that we need to do more for our people because they are our biggest asset. I think we have lost sight of who we are and why we were winning in the beginning.” He brought us back to our earlier journey. “No more distractions. They come first,” he concluded.

The leadership team huddled together. This was when I, too, recovered my passion―creating an environment for employees to succeed and thrive, not merely survive. Just like any famous life lesson you learn, we picked ourselves up to Reset and Iterate. It was a fruitful time in our startup where we felt we were closer to our employees, and we knew what we needed to do, albeit still being 18 months old.

From learning what our people needed through engagement surveys and focus groups, we launched a series of changes that turned us into one of the top companies to work for that year alone. Yes, it was legit announced by LinkedIn, and there was also a celebratory party.

Employees would say, “Thanks for listening to us. I thought the focus groups were really helpful. A few weeks ago, I didn't think you would ever be able to change my mind about leaving.”

“Don't thank me,” I replied. “I'm sorry we didn't see this sooner. Thank you for holding on to the faith you had in us.”

Since then, Bianca, just like our other employees, new and old, became an integral part of our performance review designs, just to name a few. We recognized that to give people what they want, we must include them. And then we tore down the ivory tower.

I'll be honest; however, it was a lucky turnaround for us because not all companies can turn a large ship around without causing more casualties.