Stylight handbook

The inner workings of a product company

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Personal growth

Career at Stylight

To make career at Stylight you don’t have to become a manager, if that is not what you want. We equally value you getting better and growing your impact in your domain. We don’t want Stylight to be only ‘up or out’.

Personal development budget

Every employee has a personal development budget. What you do with it is up to you. Go to conferences, buy books, participate in workshops or something entirely different. It’s your pick. You can find all the details in our Development Budget Guidelines [Stylight login required]

Personal Growth Model

To discuss your personal growth you can also use the model below. There are five main characteristics that we find valuable in employees and we measure them in spheres of impact. Meaning, if you consistently demonstrate them on personal, team or company level.

  1. You embody our three core company values Enthusiasm, Appreciation and Responsibility.
  2. You demonstrate mastery of your domain. How good are you in what you do?
  3. You maximize the business impact of your work. How much do your actions influence the performance of the company?
  4. You live leadership. Do you show initiative? Where do others follow your example?
  5. You contribute to and engage with our culture on a wider scope than day-to-day work.

Growth diagram

Reach

  1. Individual You are focused primarily on being a useful contributor, gaining experience and learning how to be effective on your team. At this level, your focus should be on growing so that you can better support your team. This is the only level where there is an expectation that you should move to the next level.

  2. Team You are a valuable contributor to your team, either as a domain specialist or as a generalist. You should be able to lead smaller efforts coordinating with other members of your team and drive them to completion and/or dig into tough problems and solve them independently taking in feedback from your peers and focusing on the outcome.

  3. Company You have impact across teams. You lead cross-team efforts involving many people and drive them to completion and/or you take on large challenges, working with diverse stakeholders in multiple teams to solve a problem that affects the entire company. You are responsible for solving company-wide problems, and/or you are a go-to person across the company to solve very complex problems.

Some questions to dig deeper

  1. Values
    • How could you show our three core values more on a team level?
    • How could you show our three core values more on a company level?
    • Do our company values align with your own?
  2. Mastery
    • What areas in your domain excite you?
    • How could you gain more knowledge in those areas?
    • How are these areas valuable for your team and Stylight as a whole?
    • What skills do you need to build up in order to achieve your personal goals?
  3. Business Impact
    • Are you satisfied with the impact you have in your team and Stylight as a whole?
    • With your abilities, where would you have the most impact for the company?
    • What needs to happen to get there?
  4. Leadership
    • What is your current leadership role within Stylight?
    • What would you want it to be like?
    • How do you get there?
  5. Culture Impact
    • How would you describe Stylight’s culture?
    • Is our culture a good fit for your personality?
    • How could you influence our culture more to be how you would like it to be?

The model is intentionally vague. It is not necessary that your interpretation of it exactly matches everyone else’s. On the contrary, the differences are where the most interesting conversations emerge from. The power of this model comes from tracking your own progress over time and not so much from comparing yourself with others. Different roles have different reach profiles, which makes it especially counter-productive to compare yourself to people in other roles. Even though the goal is to grow, your impact may also shrink at some stage due to changes in your role or other circumstances. And that’s OK.

Example

Growth diagram example

Patterns

There are some interesting patterns to look out for. Often there is a strong correlation between values & culture, mastery & impact or leadership & impact. If you find a big gap while comparing the reach of those areas with each other this might be worth discussing in order to identify areas for potential growth.

  • Major difference in reach in values and culture
  • Major difference in reach in mastery and impact
  • Major difference in reach in leadership and impact

Compensation

Naturally, you want your growth to be reflected in your salary. You may use this model to show your progress and justify a higher salary as part of the salary process [Stylight login required].

Community

There is a vibrant community that will help you along the way of your personal growth. You can use it for feedback, exchange, cooperation, knowledge sharing, career ideas and coaching. The model above can be helpful in any of these contexts to visualize and discuss your personal growth. It was designed to act as conversation guideline for feedback sessions with your peers or manager. The real power comes from you owning and driving your growth.