HubSpot is 9 years old. I consider that we spent our first 6–7 years in “startup” mode, where we got through product/market fit and got our customer economics to work. Over the last few years, we’ve been in “scale-up” mode, where we’re adding fuel into our engine and growing fast in a great market with nice barriers to entry. It turns out that many of the skills I need as the leader of a scale-up are much different than the skills I needed as the leader of a startup. This article attempts to lay out some of the skills and tools I’ve needed to develop in this scale-up phase.

Employee Net Promoter Scores as Manager Thermometer

For several years now, we’ve been giving all of our employees an employee net promoter survey with two standard questions. First question being, “On a scale of 0 to 10, what is the likelihood you’d refer HubSpot as a place of work to a friend?” Second question being, “Why?” The surveys are anonymous and wildly useful for a number of different reasons.

One way we use them is to evaluate the confidence any particular division within HubSpot has in its leader by cutting the data by division. More than once, we’ve had a particular division’s score go down. When that score goes down, we do the logical thing. We gather the historical trend data and commentary from the survey, present it to the leader, and ask them to put a plan together to fix it. Every time this has happened, the manager has put in good programs, but to our surprise, the score drops again the next quarter for that manager. We give them another try, and sure enough, it drops again. Crap! At this point, we usually try find a new role for that manager that is better suited to his or her skills. If the problem is deeper or there’s no role in which the manager would excel, we amicably part ways. Now, this exact pattern has happened to us four or five times, where smart, motivated folks weren’t able to turn their group’s score around.

After we find a new leader for the group in question, what do you think happens to the score? In all cases, it bounced all the way back up to its steady state the very next survey period. Wowsa!

OK, so here are my lessons from going through this cycle four times:

Once a team has lost confidence in its leader, it is nearly impossible to get it back. If you replace the leader with someone capable, the morale rebounds almost right away. Leaders have sweet spots where they thrive and then don’t thrive. There is absolutely nothing wrong with those leaders whose scores went down — they just shouldn’t be managing a giant team inside a scale-up. In fact, I’d be first in line to work with some of those leaders if I started another company. Management experience is something that I totally discounted in the startup phase, but is really important in the scale-up phase.

Questions for you: