{"id":3777,"date":"2018-05-08T05:57:14","date_gmt":"2018-05-08T05:57:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.culturesummit.co\/?p=3777"},"modified":"2022-04-20T09:27:48","modified_gmt":"2022-04-20T13:27:48","slug":"how-we-culture-jack-altman-lattice","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.culturesummit.co\/how-we-culture-jack-altman-lattice\/","title":{"rendered":"\u201cHow We Culture\u201d With Jack Altman, Co-Founder and CEO at Lattice"},"content":{"rendered":"
Are you gearing up for the no-fluff, all-strategy <\/span><\/i>2018 Culture Summit<\/span><\/i><\/a>? Let us help you get in the mood by introducing you to one of year\u2019s speakers, Jack Altman, Co-Founder and CEO at <\/span><\/i>Lattice<\/span><\/i><\/a>. <\/span><\/i><\/span><\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n Name: <\/b><\/span>Jack Altman<\/span><\/p>\n Location: <\/b><\/span>San Francisco, CA<\/span><\/p>\n Position: <\/b><\/span>Co-Founder and CEO at Lattice<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Eric and I were working together in a fast-growing company called Teespring. I was head of business and corporate development and he was the head of engineering. When we got there we had about 200 employees and we grew to 400 over the course of 2 years and we realized we were feeling a lot of the same problems as the company grew. We felt all the pain of getting more humans to work together harmoniously: communication breakdowns, unclear responsibilities, people not knowing what was expected of them, and a lack of transparency throughout the rest of company. We realized, wow, as you grow, people management becomes this difficult thing. <\/span><\/p>\n That was the \u201cproblem\u201d we wanted to solve. And what inspired me was seeing how quickly and immediately my happiness and my situation got better with a manager \u2013 Robert Chatwani, the former Chief Revenue Officer of Teespring and current Chief Marketing Officer at Atlassian. I realized that building companies is hard, but a great manager has so much power over making employees lives better. <\/span><\/p>\n When we left Teespring, we were looking to solve this problem of how companies can do management better.More specifically, how to build a goal-setting tool managers can use to set and align goals throughout company. Over time, we developed a product for performance reviews that really clicked with our clients and that\u2019s become our central offering. <\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n For me it was the realization that HR isn\u2019t this boring compliance world. It obviously has that, but software has gotten so good at automating payroll and benefits and core HR systems so that now, instead of spending time on those kinds of problems, you get to work on strategic things: people. Are we motivating and growing the right person for the right role? When I reframed for myself that HR isn\u2019t this cost center, boring function but a function whose job is to make people really successful, I became passionate about it.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n I’ve come to believe that, despite how obviously important the role is to companies and the people that work for them, HR teams are still undervalued by their companies. Over the last 2.5 years at Lattice, I\u2019ve gotten to work closely with extremely talented and caring people. I\u2019ve learned that HR is made up of a great group of humans who choose to spend their career on other humans, and they need more championing in the world and general corporate environments. <\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Besides people management, I get a lot of enjoyment out of company building in the general sense: I love the process of creating a new product and talking to customers and building a complicated company. <\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Factfulness: Ten Reasons We’re Wrong About the World–and Why Things Are Better Than You Think<\/span><\/a> by Hans Rosling<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n Never Split the Difference: Negotiating As If Your Life Depended On It<\/span><\/a> by Chris Voss<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n Only the Paranoid Survive: How to Exploit the Crisis Points That Challenge Every Company,<\/span><\/a> by Andrew S. Groves<\/span><\/span><\/p>\nWhat problem were you looking to solve when you founded Lattice with your co-founder Eric Koslow?<\/h3>\n
What initially attracted you to the HR space?<\/h3>\n
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How has that attraction evolved throughout your career?<\/h3>\n
If you couldn’t work in the HR space, what would you be doing?<\/h3>\n
What are you reading, online or off, that you recommend?<\/h3>\n