A Year at Syskit

This is a personal view. All I can write about is what I find to be a great culture, and I know others will have a very different point of view.

And I definitely have it in my employer, Syskit. I have been lucky to work at some great companies (and some not so great companies…). But for some very specific reasons I believe Syskit to be at the top of that group. I have now been there for a full year so I wanted to do a quick review of why it’s so good, in no particular order.

Fewer meetings

As a company grows it gets more and more difficult to keep to a common path and collaborate effectively across so many different people.

The answer to this problem is most definitely not having more meetings though. At first look, this seems like a good response. We all want to keep in sync with each other we’re struggling working remotely (if this is the case). Why not put in some regular weekly meetings or “catch-ups” to achieve that?

From my experience, a great company culture needs as little time as possible in meetings. Why? First of all the obvious – nobody likes meetings! But there is something more subtle. There are some very important meetings that are needed for a company to run and those should be kept. What I believe should be lost, and what I see in great companies is the removal of “catch-ups” and other weekly meetings. My starting point with all of my colleagues is that I trust them all and know that they know their jobs. Why then do I need a meeting to check in? What information is actually being communicated, that couldn’t be sent in an email?

At Syskit, I have now managed to get my weekly meetings down to about 4 or 5 per week. Most days, I have days with absolutely no meetings at all. Crucial to a well run company because it frees up your time for more impactful deep work. Looking back at the times when I have made big strategic changes or fixed really knotty problems they are always on days which are completely free. This is why I protect them so closely.

Crucially, this is the culture at Syskit and it fits me very well 😊

Informality

It is hard to explain why this is so important to me and it’s not just a “work thing”. It is important to have structures and models in the workplace, but that doesn’t mean to say we need a culture of formality. I can genuinely say that I enjoy the company of my colleagues, that we chat about things other than work, and that we “get on”.

My test for this is always:

“If you were told that you were going to be stuck on a three hour train journey with a colleague with no books or phones, how would you feel about that?”.

I believe this tells you a lot about whether you are on the same wavelength as your colleagues and for me informality is very important. We are not doing God’s work here (as an old boss put it), and I believe informality is a crucial part of any culture of smart people.

A great product

Why should this matter when we are talking about culture? Surely a great product is just about your company’s commercial viability?

I think it is a lot more than that. You want to believe that you are genuinely creating something great. You might not be saving the world with your product, but you should be proud of it and for me, that is a really important part of company culture.

Again, I have a test for this:

“Would I recommend this product to a friend? I mean, a “non-work” friend?”

I have worked at places where I wouldn’t recommend the company’s product to my friends, and that is fine. But I would recommend Syskit’s product to friends (who happen to be Microsoft 365 administrators! – that’s not all of them 😊), and that means that there is an honesty about the work which I think is important.

This is strongly related to another point which is a focus on the numbers. Is the company hitting its targets?

Again, why does this matter when we are talking about culture? Personally, I much prefer conversations in the workplace which are about customers, the product and whether the company is doing well. I find this more interesting than conversations about HR policy, organisation, and holiday entitlement.

So what I like in a workplace is spending time talking about the commercials and driving the success of the company. It is only the numbers that show whether you are succeeding in your role and again, that is part of the culture.

Expertise

Again, a strange one perhaps. But I would argue in marketing in particular, that there is a very wide range in expertise in the market. Marketing well is very difficult. It is subtle, complex, often unintuitive and I would argue that B2B are marketing is just a completely different field to B2C. Budget allocation is difficult; explaining what you are doing to non marketers is difficult; getting alignment between marketing and other areas is difficult; focusing on three things instead of 30 is difficult. And getting into the minds of customers is the most difficult thing of all.

Working with other experts and experienced people is crucial for me and I believe crucial for the success of any company. If you are working with people who think that marketing is just about optimising some Google ads then I believe you might struggle to grow in that environment.

All of this is why I think expertise in a company is crucial to the culture. You need to be having intelligent conversations with people about tricky problems and personally, that is what I enjoy most about it.

If any of this sounds even remotely interesting and you are looking for a new role in any field – marketing, development, product, sales – then reach out to me through LinkedIn and let’s talk.