Susan Burton is founder and CEO at Classlist. Previously, she worked as CFO for Pets on the Brain and co-founded Flocktree. Here, she reflects on building and embedding resilience within an organisation and shares tips on how to empower entire teams and whole organisations to think and act like entrepreneurs.
Looking back on your career, what are the defining moments that stand out to you?
Several stand out. The first was when I was studying economics at university and felt motivated to prove my teachers wrong when they thought that girls couldn’t do numbers — this inspired me to become a chartered accountant at PWC. However, I soon realised that my creative side wasn’t being utilised to its fullest potential, so I transitioned to the consultancy side of the business.
The most significant transition in my career was moving from Australia to London; although I was brought up in the US and came from an expat background it was still a major move, and it allowed me to work with clients on a global scale and take on a high-risk threshold. As a consultant, I had the opportunity to work with interesting clients like the World Bank, IMF, and the BBC. I worked in a whole host of countries: Lebanon, Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda, Ethiopia, Mexico, and the US to name a few. Taking risks and being willing to embark on new adventures are essential traits for an entrepreneur, and the opportunity to try that was an invaluable experience.
How can we help whole teams or organisations to make faster and better decisions and think like entrepreneurs?
For any entrepreneur, the biggest enemy is time. You need to secure results before the money runs out or a competitor steps in ahead of you. Although the freedom to make decisions can be daunting, I think it’s the best part about being an entrepreneur, and imbuing this sense throughout the organisation is key to ensuring that people think and act like entrepreneurs.
“For any entrepreneur, the biggest enemy is time.”
In order to do this, you first need to create a sense of urgency; this can be with deadlines, an incumbent competitor you’d like to unseat, etc. — whatever it is, that sense of urgency is key as it heightens the need to act quickly and decisively.
Also, ensure that team members are assigned outcomes and not tasks. We use something called Objectives and Key Results (OKR), which is a Google-based methodology for ensuring accountability and aligning individual and team goals with the organisation’s vision and mission. This methodology allows us to be more flexible and agile with our goals, and it encourages teams to experiment with new ideas and approaches — thereby contributing to an innovative culture that reflects the entrepreneurial spirit by providing the space for them to think and act like owners.
How do you ensure that successful applicants are the right fit at Classlist? And what are your most effective levers for maintaining the business’s culture as it grows?
There are three parts to our recruitment process — a technical test (writing code, data analysis, etc) is the first element. Following this, we do a technical interview with the person they will be working under. Finally, we carry out an interview assessing cultural fit, which I like to do myself. This interview comprises a set of questions that probe candidates on our cultural values — which are a growth mindset, rigour, integrity, teamwork, tenacity, innovation, and empathy. The most important of these is teamwork — when you’re slack and accept candidates who don’t reach the high bar you’ve set you will inevitably pay for it later, and that works out much worse in the long run. It doesn’t matter if you’re amazing at selling things or a coding prodigy — if you can’t work well in a small, tight-knit team then it will be a disaster in the end.
“If you can’t work well in a small, tight-knit team then it will be a disaster in the end.”
I’m a big believer in rituals as a way to maintain and embed culture — we have a weekly award nominated by team members that recognises those who live and breathe our values; someone may have taught themselves a new skill, had a great customer interaction, or been a great team player. It’s somewhat corny but it does work — and people keep nominating members of the team for it. On a similar note, I also write a newsletter for the team, which also includes examples of people living our cultural values and providing models we can all aspire to.
Why is it so important to build resilience as organisations grow? And how have you gone about doing this at Classlist?
Accept that you will occasionally fail when you’re doing things — and that’s okay, as that helps greatly in building resilience. I tell the team that my only definition of failure is not trying, so if something doesn’t work out, at least we’ve learned something; and those lessons can be invaluable.
Clare Wright, my fellow co-founder, is great at this — when we find a bug, she doesn’t decry the fact it happened or say it’s a disaster. Instead, it gets looked at more positively — here’s a problem we didn’t know we had, and now we can fix it. And once it’s solved then we celebrate the solution rather than pile in on the fact there was a problem in the first place. You’ve got to accept as inevitable that problems will occur — but you need to just grin and bear it, hence resilience being so important.
When a problem occurs, we all come together to work it out and solve it. Crucially, it’s not about chastising people; if it was, then nobody would ever tell you what’s going on, and you could easily veer into a cover-up culture. It's also important for me to set an example here, so when I don’t get it right I share it with the team, in all its gritty glory. We also have robust support networks and mentors who are great at building resilience. It helps people feel that they can talk about issues and creates a culture where we’ve got each others’ back.
“When problems occur, we all come together to work it out and solve it.”
What advice would you give to aspiring female entrepreneurs?
This may seem a bit downbeat, but I’ve recently seen some statistics which aren’t very encouraging. The sad fact is that the investment environment for female entrepreneurs hasn’t really improved at all; male entrepreneurs raise 6.2x more than their female counterparts, for example. If they don’t get the money, how are they meant to grow the business? With this in mind, I’ve got three pieces of advice:
- Focus on making money. You may not grow as fast as other companies, and the road to $1m will likely be long and gruelling, but the closer you get, the more control you have over your own destiny. Instead, talk directly to your potential customers and discover what they need; it’s much easier to deal directly with them rather than with VCs and investors.
- Focus on product-market fit. The CEO of Superhuman wrote an interesting think piece, which basically says that if 40% of your customers would be very disappointed if they couldn’t use your product, then you have market fit and are on the road to organic growth. We send out a quarterly survey that measures that and we look at how to further improve that fit.
- Help other women. We’ve got to break the cycle. Put yourself out there and be willing to help, and it just becomes a positive cycle rather than a negative one.
What book is on your bedside table?
I’m a voracious reader, and usually read a book a week and listen to one as well — of course at 1.6 speed to speed things along. At the moment, I’ve got John Kotter’s Accelerate, which has great advice about creating a sense of urgency and improving decision-making; although it’s more geared to larger organisations, there are some good universally applicable lessons in there. My favourite book, which is always hovering by my bedside table, is Never Split the Difference by Chris Voss. It’s an amazing book, and I recommend it to everyone, whatever it is that you do. Everyone needs to negotiate; whether you’re looking for a promotion, a new job, or you just need to talk your kids into going to bed, it’s a great book that can help you.
