We were an e-commerce company, and we had a live ticker on everyone’s computer showing sales numbers throughout the day.

Everyone.

You'd see the screen and know whether we were having a good day. People watched the number move. They talked about it. There was something energizing about having the pulse of the business right there on your desktop.

That kind of transparency was part of how we operated.

Then we went public.

The ticker disappeared overnight.

Once we were a public company, sharing sales data in real time created a completely different problem. Information that had been harmless inside a private company could now become material nonpublic information. Employees owned stock. People could trade. We couldn't keep putting numbers on the wall just because that was how we'd always done it.

So one day the ticker was there. The next day it wasn't.

For the first few days, people kept looking for it anyway. Habit, I guess. A few asked when it was coming back.

It wasn't.

That was one of the first moments I understood that going public was going to change more than our capital structure.

We'd spent years building a company where people knew what was going on. Now one of the biggest successes in the company's history meant there were suddenly things we couldn't tell them.

I wasn't prepared for how different that would feel.

The conversations changed too. Before, we could spend a lot of time talking about where the company might be in three years. Once we were public, every ninety days there was another quarter to explain.

You still talked about the future. You just felt the quarter sitting in the room with you.

And the people around the table started changing.

It Starts Before You Think It Does

Founders tend to think about a major transition as a singular event. You prepare, announce, close, and now you're a different company.

In my experience, the company starts changing well before any of that happens.

I've been through this several times now, and the details were different every time. The weirdness was pretty consistent.

You start bringing in executives who have done this before. People who understand the requirements, controls, governance, systems, and all the things the rest of you are learning in real time.

They're usually good hires. You need them.

They also don't always look much like the people who built the company.

The person who was perfect when there were fifty employees and everybody sat within shouting distance may not be the person you need when there are five hundred employees, a board committee for everything, and an earnings call every ninety days.

Some people grow into that version of the company. Some decide they don't particularly like it. Others stay and spend a long time wondering why the place suddenly feels different.

Usually, it's because it is different.

Transparency Gets More Complicated

The ticker was a simple example of a much bigger problem.

Before we went public, transparency was mostly a cultural decision. How much did we want people to know? How open did we want to be?

Afterward, some of those decisions had legal consequences.

There were things we genuinely couldn't share anymore, or could only share at certain times. Employees who had gotten used to hearing everything could suddenly feel like leadership had gone quiet.

From their side, it can look like trust disappeared.

From the leadership side, you may be sitting there thinking, I would love to tell you. I legally can't.

Those two experiences can coexist for a long time if nobody acknowledges what's happening.

Looking back, I think I underestimated how personally people could interpret that silence. To me, the rules had changed. To them, leadership had changed.

That's why I spend so much time with leaders on communication before a major transition.

You may not be able to tell people what's happening yet. You can still acknowledge that they're noticing something.

Trust Has to Exist Before You Need It

Over time I got much more deliberate about three things during transitions like this: communication, clarity, and consistency.

Consistency matters a lot because there will be stretches when you can't communicate with the openness people are used to. That's a terrible time to start trying to build trust.

If you've been accessible and straightforward for years, people usually give you some room when suddenly you're distracted or can't answer something.

They know you.

They have enough history with you to think, Mike is acting weird, and there's probably a reason.

Without that history, the same behavior lands differently. People start wondering whether something is wrong with the company, whether their job is safe, whether leadership knows something they don't.

And of course, leadership probably does know something they don't.

You just may not be allowed to talk about it yet.

That's why the work starts earlier.

The Work Starts Before the News Does

The operational work around a major transition is enormous. Lawyers, bankers, advisors, financial controls, governance. Plenty of people will make sure those things happen.

Someone also has to prepare the organization for what the company is about to feel like.

I learned to start talking about transition before I could necessarily talk about the transaction. Not the confidential details. The changes people should expect as the company grows.

There will be more process. Some information will become more controlled. Decisions that once happened in a hallway may need documentation or approval. New leaders will come in with experience we didn't have before.

People will notice all of that whether you explain it or not.

The point is to help them understand that a changing practice doesn't mean a changing value.

That distinction would have helped with the ticker.

We didn't take it down because we suddenly wanted employees to know less. We took it down because the company had crossed into a world where the same behavior carried a different consequence.

The value underneath it was still transparency. We just had to find different ways to practice it.

The Company Changes Either Way

Going public changes a company.

There's no version where you preserve every part of the startup culture exactly as it was and simply add a stock symbol.

Some of the change is healthy. Some of it is required. Some of it will make the people who've been there the longest uncomfortable.

The leadership job is helping people understand which parts have to change and which parts you're determined to protect.

I still think about that ticker.

For years it was this little piece of the company everybody could look at and understand immediately.

How are we doing today?

There was the answer.

Then one day the screen went dark.

We couldn't keep the ticker. We still had to find ways to give people that same sense that they knew what was happening and where we were going.

That was the harder part.

Organizational Dev

You Can't Scale the Company Without Scaling the Culture

Founders tend to think about a major transition as a singular event. You prepare, announce, close, and now you're a different company. In my experience, the company starts changing well before any of that happens. I've been through this several times now, and the details were different every time. The weirdness was pretty consistent.

Growth Strategies, Leadership

Not Every Idea Deserves to Be Fully Baked

Sometimes exploration is worth it. Sometimes you just spent a week of the team’s attention answering a question the founder could have tested in an afternoon. That is the part I think leaders underestimate. Ideas do not only cost money. They cost time, focus, and brainpower long before anyone approves a budget. The question I’d want answered is: how much of the organization does this idea deserve yet?

If Everyone Is Playing Defense with their Goals, Nobody Is Trying to Win

Ask a room of leaders why they set goals and most will say accountability. That answer creates the problem. Goals exist for alignment. The company needs to reach a number, so this group does this, that group does that, and together the math works. Everyone is pointed in the same direction. Focus comes second. A good goal tells you what to say no to.

Leadership, Organizational Dev

If Ten People on Your Team Agree, Nine of Them Are Unnecessary

The instinct to build a team that moved in the same direction, at the same pace, with the same set of perspectives is limiting. Consistency is created at the expense of range. The goal isn't alignment of strengths. It's coverage. The most dangerous teams I've seen weren't the ones with conflict. hey were the ones with none. Where every conversation ends in agreement. Where nothing gets surfaced. Where the people who see things differently may have learned to stop saying so.

Leadership

Shiny Object Syndrome Will Break Your Company. It's Also What Built It.

The same restlessness that makes it hard to stay on plan is what made them start the company in the first place. The wandering mind, the refusal to be satisfied with what already exists, the ability to see something before it exists: that's not a disorder. That's the source.

The Bridge to the Moon

If you're building a company, knowing your role isn't optional. The visionary needs someone who will build what they see without getting in the way of the seeing. The integrator needs someone who will point at the moon and mean it and keep pointing at the same moon long enough for the bridge to get built. The mistake I see most often: trying to be both or hiring someone who mirrors you when you need someone who complements you.

The Problems You Haven't Earned Yet

The fear of success doesn't usually announce itself as fear. It sounds like planning. It sounds like due diligence. It sounds like being responsible.

What it actually is: A limiting belief. It’s spending today's energy on problems you'll only face if you win

Right Person. Promoted to the Wrong Seat.

Right people, right seats doesn't mean everyone eventually moves into a leadership role. It means finding the seat where each person does their best work and building a structure that makes those seats worth staying in. Create a path for people who want to grow as individual contributors. Create a separate path for people who want to lead. Reward both. Respect both. Pay both.

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