Startups For the Rest of Us

In episode 639, Rob Walling chats with Andrew Berkowitz, the co-founder and CEO of Suggestion Ox, about the secret sauce to building happy, high-performing teams and how we as founders need to unlearn some of the strict policies that have been in place for hundreds of years. Suggestion Ox is a feedback platform that helps HR teams build candid communication between leadership and employees. And before that, Andrew co-founded a sports management platform that was acquired in 2021. Episode Sponsor: Find your perfect developer or a team at Lemon.io/startups The competition for incredible engineers and developers has never been more fierce.  Lemon.io helps you cut through the noise and find great talent through its network of engineers in Europe and Latin America. They take care of the vetting, interviewing, and testing of candidates to make sure that you are working with someone who can hit the ground running. When it comes to hiring, the time it takes to write your job description, list the position, review resumes, schedule interviews, and make an offer can take weeks, if not months.  With Lemon.io, you can cut down on a lot of that time by tapping into their wide network of developers who can get started in as early as a week. And for subscribers of Startups For the Rest of Us, you can get 15% off your first 4 week contract with a developer by visiting lemon.io/startups Topics we cover:  2:10 - Why trust is the key ingredient when building high-performing teams 6:56 - Flexible vacation policies 9:17 - Flexible work hours 15:08 - The link between remote work and hiring and retaining great employees 18:14 - Using transparency to build trust with your team 19:43 - How transparent should you be with your team for temporary issues? 21:55 - Does this approach to trust and transparency work at scale? 25:57 - Getting better at giving constructive feedback as a manager 28:20 - Is it possible to hire the best people at scale? 32:08 - Andrew’s approach to dealing with bad apples or people who slack off 36:41 - Building a company culture where employees feel safe to give candid feedback Links from the Show: Andrew Berkowitz I Twitter Suggestion Ox Transcript: Rob Walling: Welcome back to another episode of Startups For the Rest of Us. I'm Rob Walling, here with the cold that I'm getting over. I caught it last week while in Malta. We had an amazing kickoff for our European TinySeed batch followed by MicroConf Europe in Malta. I did not leave unscathed though. For the first time ever, more than 30 in-person events, I missed a day of MicroConf. I was so sick I had to stay in bed. It was absolutely devastating to me. I effectively lost my voice, and it wasn't going to be a good scene if I went and tried to MC it. So mad props and thanks to producer Xander and the rest of the MicroConf team for stepping up and making it happen. Just goes to show you we can't do these things alone. These should be lessons that we all know by now. But at some point, you're going to get sick. At some point, you're not going to be able to show up. And having amazing people that you work with that have your back is what it takes to do this over the long run. Today I'm talking with Andrew Berkowitz, the founder of Suggestion Ox. And we dive in to the secret sauce to building happy, motivated teams. We talk a lot about trust. We talk a lot about not having these strict policies that have been in place for a hundred years because the job market and the way we run companies today is and should be different than the way we ran companies 50 or a hundred years ago. So without further exposition, let's dive into our conversation. I'd like to welcome Andrew Berkowitz to the show. He's the co-founder and CEO of Suggestion Ox, which is a feedback platform that helps HR teams build truly candid communication between leadership and employees. And before that, he co-founded TeamSnap, which was a sports manag