Masterful scaling: the 10 Rockefeller Habits

When I grew Glasnost from five to fifteen colleagues, I thought scaling was mostly a matter of working harder. More pitches, more people, more revenue. Until I hit that inevitable wall: the company still revolved around me. If I was away for a week, everything stalled.

Then I came across the Rockefeller Habits, a list of ten checks that Verne Harnish distilled from how John D. Rockefeller ran his empire. No flashy method, no revolutionary framework. Just ten things that make sure your business can keep running without you.

I implemented them retroactively at Glasnost and used them from day one at Fitzgerald. They work. And the most important lesson sits in a quote I still use in every growth session:

“You don't build the company, you build the team that builds the company for you.”

Here are the ten habits, in order of priority.

1. The leadership team is in sync

I have seen so many leadership teams that are only a team on paper. Everyone has different information, decisions get reversed in the hallway by founders, and there is no fixed rhythm. That is not a team; that is an accidental collection of people with the same title.

A leadership team is the parents of the organisation. If they are not aligned, your colleagues feel it down to the roots. Most important mindset shift: the leadership team works for the business, not the other way around. Especially if you want to keep Gen Z and millennials engaged. By the way, do not call them employees — no one likes that.

2. The whole team is aligned on this quarter's priority

Work falls into three categories: sand, stones and rocks. Sand is your inbox. Stones are deliverables that have to ship — evaluations, reports, weekly output. Rocks are the things that actually move your business forward.

The problem? Sand feels urgent. Rocks feel optional. So everyone goes back to email. A good quarterly priority makes sure the whole team knows which rock will be moved these three months, and that everyone knows their role in it.

3. There is rhythm in internal communication

When you grow and it gets busy, internal communication always slips. Logical, you are plugging holes. But that is precisely when you need the rhythm.

At our place this became the basis: a daily team kick-off of fifteen minutes where everyone visibly checks in. And a monthly update where the leadership team strategically takes the team through where the business stands. That monthly is sacred. It always happens. Bonus when other colleagues also get space to share what they are building.

4. Roles and responsibilities are crystal clear

Founders are jacks of all trades and love making decisions. Which is exactly why other people stop doing it. You suck the sense of responsibility out of your organisation without noticing.

Step one: sharpen on paper where responsibilities begin and end. Step two, and this is where it really starts to chafe: define your core processes. How does order to cash run? How does sales run? Who sits at the table in which phase? When you map this, you are often shocked at who is unnecessarily involved.

5. The leadership team gathers feedback themselves

Power creates distance. No matter how hard you try as founder or leadership team member, you do not hear the real challenges on the floor by trying to catch them ad hoc in passing. People tell you what they think you want to hear.

My approach: a weekly walk with someone from the team, every time someone different. An hour, no agenda, in a private setting where they can prepare the conversation. The findings you then discuss in the leadership team. Two birds with one stone: people feel heard, and you tackle issues before they become problems.

6. Clients give structural feedback

Client feedback is a goldmine most companies leave untouched. Not because they do not want to, but because it never gets done. So build a structure, like an NPS, a customer satisfaction survey or a fixed moment per quarter. And actually do something with it.

Sometimes you discover a client is on the verge of leaving. And sometimes you discover it is time for you to part ways yourself.

7. Core values and mission really live in the organisation

In the beginning you hire on gut. Then you fire on gut too. That works, until you can no longer do all the hiring conversations yourself.

At that moment core values have to take over. Not as a poster on the wall, but as a daily yardstick: how we make decisions, how we give feedback, who we keep and who we let go. That is what truly creates a culture.

8. Everyone knows the bigger picture

Your BHAG, or Big Hairy Audacious Goal, is not a marketing quote. It is a long-term goal that is ambitious, inspiring and slightly intimidating. At Tesla that was: help the world transition to sustainable energy. When they had not yet sold a car.

Hang the BHAG up. Literally. With sub-goals beneath it like a kind of totem pole. And come back to it in every meeting. In addition, everyone should know who the ideal client is, what makes you distinctive and how to explain the business in one sentence. That is not marketing work; that is fundamental work.

9. Everyone can say whether they had a good week

In Dutch companies there is often still a taboo on KPIs. Being held accountable feels scary. It takes nerve and time to implement this well. But once it is in place, everyone suddenly has insight into their own performance and into what is needed to improve.

A colleague who does not know whether their week was good or bad is a colleague who cannot grow.

10. Plans and progress are visible to everyone

The first time I suggested putting revenue and profit on a screen in the office, everyone was sceptical. What if clients see that? As if healthy company management is something dirty.

Clients responded enthusiastically. A company that communicates openly and transparently is appreciated; we won pitches on it. And colleagues started to think along much more actively about the numbers, because they suddenly became part of the story.

Case study: Glasnost and Fitzgerald, side by side

Glasnost and Fitzgerald gave me a natural comparison. At Glasnost I implemented the ten habits retroactively, after hitting the wall where the company stopped moving the moment I stepped away. At Fitzgerald I started them from day one, before the pressure of growth made structure feel optional.

The difference was visible within two quarters. At Glasnost, the daily fifteen-minute kick-off and the monthly update gave the team a rhythm that no longer depended on me being in every conversation. At Fitzgerald, hiring on core values from the first hire meant we never had to unlearn a gut-based culture. The clearest signal came from habit 10: when we put revenue and key metrics on a screen in the office, clients responded positively and colleagues started engaging with the numbers — at both companies.

The lesson I keep repeating in growth sessions: the habits that feel optional (rocks, rhythm, feedback) are the ones that make the business run without you, and the habits that feel urgent (sand, ad-hoc decisions) are the ones that keep it dependent on you.

Where I start now

People often ask me which habit they should start with. My answer has changed since Glasnost, and not because of a book.

In 2017, Glasnost was five years old and had thirteen people. That year I joined a growth program based on Scaling Up for the first time, while also sending an anonymous survey through my own company with one essential question: how do I score on our core values? I received a six on several of them. I can still quote one response from memory: "You are also at the table with Vodafone as the strategist, the creative and the account manager. I need to be able to do my thing too." It kept me awake for a few nights. It became the most valuable feedback of my career.

That is why I now start with habit 5 and habit 3, in that order. First, actively ask for feedback, because without those sixes I would never have taken the second seat. Then rhythm: a weekly leadership meeting with the same agenda every week, a monthly update for the whole company, even during the busiest week of the quarter, and rotating roles so the founder is not automatically always the chair. A rhythm that gives way as soon as things get busy is not a rhythm but a good intention. See what happens after it has run for a few years: the meeting starts on Monday morning, whether you are there or not.

I only proved it was not a Glasnost trick at someone else's company. In September 2022, I became managing director of Blauw Gras, an agency within the group that had bought Glasnost. I did nothing remarkable. Calm, cleanliness and regularity: the same rhythm, the same division of roles, the same conversations. In nine months, the EBITDA margin rose from 6% to 30% of revenue, and the team's confidence in the leadership team increased by 60%, measured with a baseline just before I arrived and another measurement nine months later. It was not personal charm. It was a method, and it was transferable. That is how I started Go Delphi.

To close

Ten habits sounds like a lot. And it is not a weekend project either. At Glasnost it took several quarters to get them all properly in place. But the effect is fundamental: you go from working in the business to working on the business. And that is ultimately what scaling is about.