Chapter 8
Create an Inbound Operating System

Inbound organizations need a lean and efficient operating system to function at the highest level, which ensures alignment with the mission and strategies of all groups. An inbound operating system provides tools to support nonhierarchical communication, provides employee feedback, and gives teams the data they need to be successful. An inbound operating system binds everyone together to function as one unit in pursuit of the organization's mission.

An inbound operating system serves as an early warning system for potential problems or bottlenecks. When teams are meeting their goals, leaders don't need to spend much time inspecting their progress. The operating system identifies potential issues, so leaders can get a pulse on how teams are progressing and help keep them in alignment with the organizational mission and strategies.

An inbound operating system is unique to each business, but there are a few consistent components, including open communication tools, employee feedback mechanisms, structured interactions, a culture code, and a regular review of the mission and goals.

J. D. Sherman, COO of HubSpot, describes an inbound operating system this way:

Transparency without context is chaos. I spend most of my time listening and then helping cross-functional teams collaborate. Listening without bias to what people want is what inbound leaders do. Leaders must establish priorities, relentlessly explain the goals, and communicate them to each team and individual. Leaders should work through how teams approach focusing on the overall mission and agreed-upon goals. The leader holds the team accountable, but the team comes up with the plan and executes the work.1

Creating Your Culture Code

Inbound organizations define their culture, then document it. A Culture Code is an outline or slide deck that shows the key aspects of your beliefs, values, and aspirations and the type of environment you want to create. The Culture Code helps prospective applicants, employees, partners, vendors, and even customers understand how you view your business and people.

The HubSpot Culture Code

  1. We are as maniacal about our metrics as our mission.
  2. We obsess over customers, not competitors.
  3. We are radically and uncomfortably transparent.
  4. We give ourselves the autonomy to be awesome.
  5. We are unreasonably selective about our peers.
  6. We invest in individual mastery and market value.
  7. We defy conventional “wisdom” as it's often unwise.
  8. We speak the truth and face the facts.
  9. We believe in work + life, not work vs. life.
  10. We are a perpetual work in progress.2

Documenting your culture will force you to be transparent and to be accountable to live up the promises you make. Documenting the culture signals to everyone that this is a serious subject and worthy of everyone's attention. The Culture Code makes the details of your culture easy to remember and share and rarely changes.

HubSpot uses a shorthand acronym to communicate their culture:

  1. Humble
  2. Empathetic
  3. Adaptable
  4. Remarkable
  5. Transparent

Documenting culture includes creating a common language for all employees. Using the same terms, such as “solving for the customer,” EV, or HEART, provides a common language and is an example of culture providing a framework for connecting.

This simple reminder makes it easy for everyone to frame potential actions and decisions within the guideline of the cultural expectations. As Dharmesh Shah puts it: “Align what you believe with what you say and then do what you say. Grow better.”3

Andrew Mahon, HubSpot marketing fellow, told us a great story that shows this idea of the HubSpot Culture Code in action. An intern posted a letter on an internal Wiki describing a situation where she was not treated with much empathy. She received many positive replies thanking her for speaking up, and the top leaders at HubSpot listened and responded positively, acknowledging her points and outlining ways they would improve the team's understanding of the situation and how they would handle similar opportunities in the future.

This response sent a very strong message to the entire organization. It showed everyone that leaders were paying attention. It showed that this subject was relevant to more than the HR team. It generated a lot of interest from people who had similar issues or concerns, and it moved the conversations from the back halls to the forefront of company priorities. It epitomized a flat organization structure and how everyone has a responsibility to speak their mind.4

Bob Ruffolo of IMPACT talks about their culture code this way:

IMPACT's core values revolve around three key ideas; passion, helpfulness, and dependability. We build our culture by living these values every day.

Everyone that works at IMPACT needs to be a very passionate person about their craft. We only want to surround ourselves with people that strive to be in the elite class of inbound digital marketers, organizational leaders, business growth specialists, design experts, and elite sales professionals. Our people must be completely committed to what we're trying to be as an organization, helping us fulfill our purpose of helping people and organizations, and being a significant contributor to turning our vision into a reality.

To best fulfill our purpose, we can only bring in people that are helpful by nature on to our team and are driven to help clients, members of our audience, and other people of the team. This also extends to helping the community as a whole.

We can count on dependable people. When our people say they're going to do something, we need to rely on the fact that they are going to do it and do it to the best of their abilities. In this business, it's important that we, and the members of our community, can trust the members of our team in any situation.5

Natalie Davis, IMPACT Branding director of talent, says, “When we bring new people in to work at IMPACT we tell them they need to get a PhD in IMPACT. We start even during the interview process sharing our mission, culture, and values with candidates, so they know what we expect and what they bring to our culture.”6

Open Communication Spaces and Tools

J. D. Sherman, COO of HubSpot, talks about communication:

We need great communication systems. Transparency is great—but it is wasted if communication isn't great. So, we use a wiki, we have quarterly company meetings, and we have spotlights meetings where one or several senior-level executives are onstage answering questions. It's also a two-way street. It's everyone's responsibility to participate, and other teams need to hear from you. You need to listen to other teams to make sure goals are aligned, and objectives are clear.7

Inbound organizations create open lines of communication. An inbound operating system includes digital tools that facilitate the rapid sharing of information, concerns, questions, and analysis. One proven way to build open lines of communication for a business is a wiki.

A wiki is an internal digital space, a website, where employees collaborate and contribute their ideas and communicate with everyone else in the organization on any topic they choose to share. A wiki is searchable by topic, department, date, subject matter, and even by contributor's name. Everyone in the organization has access to the wiki and contributes by adding new topics with no restriction. Employees can post a new article or reply to a current article. They can ask questions or request additional information. They can alert other members of the team to view that article. Vital information should be posted on the wiki as a matter of course, and departmental managers should also post information on their agendas, project plans, and progress.

A company wiki reinforces an inbound culture and sends a message to the organization that everyone has a voice in important company decisions. Employees are encouraged to share their ideas, thoughts, and opinions. A wiki gives self-service access to conversations from different parts of the company. Over time, it becomes the central repository of data, history, and debate.

Inbound organizations use a wiki to grow a knowledge base around a particular topic by crowdsourcing the content. There is light moderation of a wiki because the users can decide what content is updated, shared, and highlighted. A wiki is a living, breathing manifestation of the state of your culture, your employees, and your organization.

Inbound leaders are active on the wiki and encourage people to post on subjects that are important to them. Active participation in the wiki builds trust, opens the lines of communication, and demonstrates that leaders are interested in employee feedback.

Wikis consist of categories that match the interests and topics of concern to your employees. Examples of wiki categories include:

Examples of wiki postings might be:

Posting information on the wiki is an important attribute of an inbound culture because it creates legitimacy for ideas generated by anyone in the organization.

A wiki is one way to build an open communication space. Slack and other collaboration tools could also fill this need. It is up to each organization to find the tools that fit their culture because open communication and information sharing is a core requirement of any inbound operating system.

Employee Feedback Mechanisms

Another key communication tool for inbound organizations is the employee net promoter score (eNPS) survey. The net promoter score was originally developed to measure customer loyalty, and inbound organizations use eNPS internally to measure the affinity of employees toward the mission and culture of the company.

eNPS is an effective way to receive an honest assessment of employee attitudes. It is a powerful listening device to understand the general sentiment of the organization and is part of the early warning system when something is not right with employees.

A typical eNPS survey is sent anonymously to each employee each quarter. There are two simple questions:

  1. On a scale of 0 to 10, what is the likelihood you'd refer this organization as a place of work to a friend?
  2. Why?

Finally, there is an open section to comment or ask questions regarding the company direction, culture, or decisions.

The results of the eNPS each quarter provide everyone unfiltered feedback from employees that choose to answer. Leaders segment and organize the results by team and group and then publish to everyone in the company. eNPS feedback is a powerful way to reinforce an inbound culture.

eNPS is also an accountability tool for leaders and managers and their behavior. eNPS provides employees a voice, a chance to be heard. It gives employees a positive outlet if they are struggling with a poor leader or manager. If leaders see a manager or team's eNPS score going down, it becomes an opportunity for action. Managers must absorb the information and create a plan to improve the individual issues.

Once a team leader has lost the confidence of their team, it is very difficult to get it back. eNPS is helpful in identifying leaders and managers who are struggling before their team loses confidence. eNPS is also ideal for identifying mismatched managers and teams as well as surfacing deeper employee concerns. A quarterly eNPS survey is a good way to start building trust in your efforts to build an inbound culture.

Employee surveys and the classic suggestion box do not yield the impact and depth of information received from eNPS surveys. These obsolete methods are not automated and take too long to generate feedback. Employees are notorious for ignoring long surveys and are cynical about the impact even if they do complete one.

eNPS works because employees begin to embrace the tool as a way to judge the impact of projects or initiatives they work on. They begin to take pride in a high eNPS score for their project and their team's work.

Regularly Scheduled and Structured Interactions

Company meetings set the tone for effective communication throughout the organization, promote radical transparency, help people stay informed, and are a critical part of the inbound operating system. Gathering everyone both physically and virtually is preferable because being in the same room has a human impact. It's a powerful method of building a shared sense of culture and mission.

Guidelines for running a good company meeting include posting the agenda in advance, starting with the state-of-the-company overview, covering the important initiatives reflective of your MSPOT, giving team leaders the opportunity to present, and spending at least 25% of the time on audience Q&A where everyone has the freedom to submit anonymous questions. Start on time, keep meetings to less than 90 minutes, include remote employees, and share credit and accolades.

While holding company meetings is not a particularly novel idea, the transparent nature of the content and the depth of the information shared in those meetings is what makes them a critical part of an inbound culture.

Senior executive meetings can be run in this way as well; post the agenda in advance for everyone to review, take prolific notes, and post on the wiki. After the meeting, review decisions with team leaders and employees responsible for updating the status of the projects in their MSPOT.

HubSpot holds what they call a HELM meeting once per month with all executive leadership in attendance. In the agenda, each MSPOT has a color code rating for each key corporate initiative, showing the pulse of how the business is performing. The meeting focuses the executive team on the things most critical to the company. If a team is falling behind on a certain MSPOT play, the team is forced to make corrective decisions. All HELM members post their top monthly priorities to the wiki so that the entire organization sees the alignment of their department or group to the overall company mission.

A similar structure applies to departmental and team meetings. A universal characteristic of an inbound culture is a heavy reliance on data and in-depth analysis to inform all decisions and evaluations. A core inbound idea is that you have the ability to measure everything, giving you the opportunity to improve it. Data relevant to strategies and plays becomes a key part of all inbound meetings and interactions.

An example of a highly innovative departmental meeting is the HubSpot science fair. The science fair is a live monthly presentation by members of the product marketing and development team open to the entire company. This meeting allows technical team members to present their work for review, scrutiny, and feedback. Everyone gets to see new product features explained by the teams that developed them. What makes the science fair a great meeting is that it is cross-functional and helps everyone understand future product direction.

A key goal of inbound interactions is a shared review of progress toward the mission and goals. Mentor programs, frequent one-on-ones with executives and employees, product update reviews, internal trade show–type events, and any other opportunity to share the mission, strategies, and plays are important to building and growing an inbound culture.

Inbound organizations create an operating system to ensure the alignment of everyone with mission and strategies. An inbound operating system provides the framework allowing everyone to work together and to function as one unit in the pursuit of the organization's mission.

Notes