In late 2014, I was leading my social media startup, Camerama, to its first 50,000 users on our way to 50 million users. But running on angel fumes, I was focused on beginning to build our war chest because it was certainly going to take 8 - if not 9 - figures to get to scale.

As the universe would have it, one of my early investor conversations turned into a complete change of direction for myself and my company. Lewis D’Vorkin, then Chief Product Officer and Editor in Chief of Forbes Media, had a powerful idea brewing. After several in-depth conversations over a few weeks, I accepted an offer from Forbes to acquire my company to lead their push into community building within their brands (e.g., 30 Under 30) and to help transform Forbes into a modern tech product-driven company.

The Next 100 Years of Forbes

Shortly after joining, I was invited to join a task force whose mandate was to answer the question:

What should the organization look like to carry Forbes into the next 100 years? 

Forbes was coming off a blistering run of growing its audience by 400+% in the previous 5 years. The transition from a print magazine of 8 million readers to a leading digital publisher with over 60 million users is unprecedented. The organization did an amazing job keeping up with the new demands. Such rapid growth requires rapid execution. Naturally, it does not afford the organization time to rethink how it does what it does. 

The answer quickly became clear - we needed to dramatically change the way the company operated. For the past 100 years, Forbes had been driven by its sales team. The digital org was viewed as a back-office cost center. But, in the new world of digital media, that dynamic was obsolete. We needed to become a modern tech product-driven company.

How Do We Get There? 

Becoming a product-driven company is not a technical challenge. It is a people challenge. As one of my business heroes, Danny Meyer, states in his book Setting The Table, "Business, like life, is all about how you make people feel. It's that simple, and it's that hard."

A company's processes are often a result (or cause) of the company's culture. Culture is a collection of individuals' habits. Transforming our culture meant changing many individuals' habits. However, we must also keep in mind that these institutionalized habits have allowed Forbes to reach where it is today. This duality is where the rubber meets the road. Organizational transformation feels like changing the tires at 100mph. We have to move delicately and strategically to ensure that we stay on the track. It also means you can't do it all in one go. Looking back, there were four keys to our success: 

• Taking baby steps (at 100mph, patience is a virtue)

• Deferring to data (minimize opinions and assertions, maximize accountability)

• Adopting the OKR framework (pointing all the ships in the same direction)

• Practicing positive communication (because it's all about how you make people feel)

Baby Steps

That first point cannot be overemphasized. In fact, we took a three-year view on this transformation. In the first year, we focused on restructuring groups and defining roles. In the second year, we focused on re-engineering process and improving our tech stack. In the third year, we brought it all to fruition by redesigning and rebuilding nearly our entire platform, including the web site and CMS. 

Big Data

Data is objective. Data is irrefutable. Data speaks for itself.

Except that rarely turns out to be true. In fact, when I joined Forbes, each team had their own data. Each meeting was BYOD - Bring Your Own Data. The first step was to create a single source of truth when it came to data. We began by establishing a Business Intelligence team that owned this ‘truth’. That team spent a year creating their data lake and integrated self-reporting and dashboard tools. It was a significant investment in time and resources that was worth every bit of it. Without data that everyone on which agreed, the transformation would have been DOA.

OKRs

Anyone who has spent time crafting Objectives and Key Results for their business unit knows that it is much more difficult than it sounds. Furthermore, I am willing to bet that few of us have ever really nailed it. I say that with confidence because the benefits of OKRs comes from the process much more than the outcome. Bringing all team members and stakeholders into conversation about the businesses priorities and teasing our the tough conversations that often live just below the surface strengthens employee engagement and emphasizes performance. That is the true benefit of writing OKRs: a stronger team.

Lead With Compassion

Change is hard. Some people thrive in it. But it makes many people feel anxious. This unease requires genuine compassion from the business leaders and the so-called agents of change. We have to prepare for feathers to get ruffled and patience to grow thin. We have to expect emotions to fly a bit higher and reactions to be a bit stronger. The damage of any emotionally charged disagreement is generally delivered in how an issue is handled, not by the issue itself. With this knowledge in hand, equipping leaders with positive communication skills becomes a priority during change management. Being able to handle the inevitable tough conversations with grace and kindness will pay dividends over the long run.

Note: a version of this article was first published on Forbes.