If you want to know a company's values, look at who gets promoted, how people get paid, and what behavior gets tolerated. That's the real values...
You hire the VP from the company a hundred times your size, and for a few weeks everyone feels a little safer. There's a grown-up in the room now.
You can double headcount in a year. You can't double the people who understand your company, or the leaders capable of deciding in the same year.
That's the moment to worry about your process, not because it's too slow, but because it has started doing your people's thinking for them.
Then you grow. And the exact instinct that made the company work begins holding it back — quietly, without anyone noticing the moment it flipped.
