Us vs. Them = Trouble

I'm in the lovely town of Arcadia, Calif to finish up a closing for a new portfolio company. More about that coming up shortly.

I fly Air Canada from Toronto with a change of planes in Denver to arrive in Burbank.  The Denver flight was on United Airlines. It must have been one of those flights where a bunch of crew were heading in the the LA area with it's zillion airports as almost every seat around me was a United Airlines crew member.

As the plan finished loading and was waiting for gate clearance, I was struck by the conversation happening between the off duty flight attendant and the on duty attendant. They were talking about assignments and some changes to methodologies and who got to do what, etc.

The conversation was dominated with "they did this" and "they did that" and "we should get this" and so forth.  Us vs. them not we change this or the system did that rather 'they' was the operative word.

Do the people who you hire, work with, pay, rely on, etc, think of you as 'they?'  In any large company, at some point, it probably becomes 'they' and the suits in the front office but I wonder when. At what point does we turn into them and us.

In a recent due diligence meeting, I met with a group of employees. The company had 20 people, I met with 6 random folks.  I said, 'tell me about this place' and listened. I listen for 'they treat us well' or 'we get good benefits from them' and such as early indications of the us vs. them thing happening.

Maybe it's impossible to prevent but as you hire and grow the company, watch out for this dynamic.