How to scale yourself

How do you scale yourself? How do you succeed in a super high-growth scale-up and turbocharge your growth at the same time?

That’s what me and my former boss (and Deliveroo’s 2nd employee) Leonard Picardo discussed at Learnerbly Live with Rajeeb Dey MBE.

We shared our highs, lows and learnings in this intimate panel. My top takeaways…

🐝 Follow the scent of your strengths and make your spikes spikier 

Figure out the things you enjoy and that motivate you, and then find ways to do those things more (both in and outside work). Keep sniffing out and creating new opportunities to add value by leverage your spikes as much as possible. 

Take initiative to spearhead things you're passionate about - for example, I always admired that Lenny inspired Deliveroo's shared parental leave policy, carving the way for him (and then others) to benefit from it because it was important to him and his family. 

🧐 Avoid analysis paralysis - most decisions are revolving doors

Trust your gut, take risks and try new things - if you're following the scent then the chances are, you're on the right path. But if you go wrong, you can course correct - as Jeff Bezos says, very few decisions are irreversible. 

🤓 Optimise for learnings not earnings 

It's easy (and natural) to get caught up with vanity metrics, like job title or salary, even though we know there are things which are much more important for our happiness, like growth, feeling fulfilled and work/life balance. Catch yourself from falling into prioritising the wrong things. 

🔜. Progress at your own sustainable pace 

For many working in high-growth scale-ups, we want grow at the same rate at them...which can be +150% YoY. We burn ourselves out trying to keep up at this unrealistic rate, and give ourselves a hard time if/when we can't. Ask yourself - "why am I so desperate to progress quickly?" In my experience, it was because I felt I had something to prove and wanted the status, which weren't the right reasons. 

💰 Promote ROI: Return on *INDIVIDUAL* 

If leaders want to get the most out of their team members - both for efficacy and productivity - empower them to lean into their strengths, live their values and promote their passions. Don't pigeon-hole people in a particular job spec/role, evolve what your employees work on aligned with how they can add most value and have most fun...that how you'll get the best out of them!