By Joshua Silver, founder and CEO
Founders often ask about Rainforest’s operating cadence. How do we keep our hybrid/remote team aligned on objectives when everyone is moving fast, priorities change based on customer needs, and there’s zero room for error?
Annual company goals
For the purpose of goals, our year is July 1st – June 30th. We like this cadence because December is hectic for everyone and we can give our goals a lot more attention in June.
The annual goal should be something that everyone in the company can impact. Our primary goal for July 2024 – June 2025 is a specific annual run rate (ARR).
We also define more specific goals to support the primary goal. For us, this means goals around:
- Card processing volume
- Average sell rate
- Efficiency (for us, this means growing card processing without a proportional increase in headcount)
Now that we have company goals, we set specific goals for each team’s contribution to the company goals.
Annual team goals
Everything tracks back to ARR, card processing volume, sell rate, and efficiency.
The company-level ARR goal is divided between Customer Success and Sales. Each of those teams gets a corresponding card processing volume goal, and Sales has a goal to keep the average sell rate at or above a certain level.
Engineering and Operations are focused on driving efficiency. As they prioritize projects for the year, one factor is the potential for each project to eliminate manual processes and expand self-service.
Engineering also contributes to ARR by building new features that drive sales and revenue. Customer Success works closely with Operations to optimize processes for efficiency.
Every team has goals, and every employee knows how their day-to-day contributes to company performance. Understanding the “why” behind the plan helps everyone prioritize the highest impact work and manage their day-to-day.
Quarterly team goals
When we set our annual company and team goals, we also set quarterly team goals so we can track progress against quarterly goals.
When do we find time to do all this?
Quarterly on-sites
Our whole team comes together at the office for a week every quarter. Smaller groups see each other more frequently – our engineering team is all Atlanta-based and works together in the office 2-3 days per week, and our customer-facing teams see each other at customer site visits or industry events – but the quarterly on-sites are the only time that the whole company gathers to collaborate.
The first day of every on-site we have an all-company meeting. We review progress toward company goals, and departments provide updates on their team goals. The second day we have team meetings, and the third meeting we have cross-functional working groups targeting specific topics.
During the June on-site, our primary focus is setting goals.
At the other on-sites, we use our collaboration time to work on the challenges that pose the most risk to our goals. For example, if one specific internal process is bogging down a team, we’d have a working session to optimize the process and determine if parts of it can be automated. If we noticed that multiple customers are getting stuck at the same point in their onboarding, we’d use a working session to decide what actions we can take to help our customers.
We also do at least one fun team activity at every on-site. Building relationships at on-sites helps collaboration the other 48 weeks of the year. Everyone knows each other, and is comfortable reaching out when they need to work together to get something done.
At the end of the week, everyone is ready for the next three months.
Bi-weekly company meetings
Between quarterly on-sites, we have a bi-weekly all-company meeting where teams share updates and celebrate wins.
We follow the same format week after week, so teams can easily prepare their updates and everyone knows what to expect.
After some iteration, we arrived at this agenda:
The meeting starts with introducing new team members. Then I share a “CEO update”, which varies from week to week. I might dig into key metrics and progress toward goals, share insights from industry events or investors, or highlight a specific company value and recent examples of why it matters. My goal with the CEO update is to connect the day-to-day work with larger themes or trends, so everyone can see their potential impact.
Next, each team presents their updates and employees are encouraged to ask questions. We always save time for Q&A – employees have the option to submit questions anonymously before the meeting or ask during the meeting. We close the meeting with all the celebrations, including praise from our customers, birthdays and anniversaries, and #rainforest-stars, where employees recognize each other for exceptional contributions.
Weekly team meetings, single-subject meetings, and Slack
Beyond this, teams determine their own operating cadence. Most teams have a weekly meeting, engineering teams have a daily stand-up, and everyone schedules single-subject meetings as needed.
Like most tech companies, we use Slack for internal comms and real-time collaboration in Slack reduces our overall need for meetings.
The cadence of quarterly on-sites and bi-weekly company meetings, with everything mapped to annual and quarterly goals, ensures that every employee is aligned on their overall objectives and priorities, while giving teams and individuals flexibility to manage their day.