July was a month of many ‘firsts’ for our team. We celebrated the first work anniversary of our very first full-time employee. We also went through our first firing, and we received our first resignation.  It’s been a looong July.

Not the least because of the crazy growth numbers we continue to see (more on this later). But if I remember this month years into the future, it would be a month where we leveled up as people managers.

It was Eid month , and there were many ups and downs in terms of managing resources while our app launch was in full swing. For most of our team, their first few months at Metric were complete, and we got a better sense of people who are aligned perfectly with our values and cause, while some who might not be a good fit. In a sense I think we were lucky that it was Eid month, as it highlighted more clearly the people who work well when given autonomy, and those that try to exploit the system.

As such, throughout this month we re-emphasized our ‘Values First’ principle. We had sessions with teams and managers about what it means to ensure we live these values in our work every day and create an environment in which any new team member would quickly get galvanized by the culture. I also sat down with individual team members to explain each of our values in more detail and how they can incorporate them in the way they operate at Metric.

This also included highlighting that ‘with great autonomy comes great accountability’. And if people aren’t excited to take bigger responsibility and ownership, we might not be the right fit for them.

Because of all this, July 2022 seemed much longer than just a month, even though it included Eid holidays! There was a lot of brainstorming, a lot of system building, a lot of discussion, huddles and exercises. The result is that we were able to give structure to the ‘Autonomy with Accountability’ principle. 

One can almost feel how everyone, especially the managers, have leveled up and are able to get the best work out of their teams. Still lots to learn and a lot of experiments to run, fail and iterate. But I am glad we were pushed into discomfort so we could accelerate our growth as a company. 

- OpK