We’re at an interesting point at FreshBooks. We’ve grown out of my parents basement, into our third office where we’re expanding our footprint. From Joe and I in 2003 we’ve grown to 40+ people cranking away. Along the way we’ve blown through many stages, and now we’ve come to another one.

While we don’t have a strict top down culture, one of the things I’m finding is we have more of a top down than I ever imagined or ever intended. The solution? My new mantra: “beg for forgiveness, don’t ask for permission”. I don’t want people asking me, “here’s what we are going to do, what do you think?” I want to shift the conversations to “here’s what we did”, so I can ask, “what did you learn?”.

Obviously judgement is needed as there are some things the CEO should be notified in advance, and the truth is I still wear a couple hats. That said, I trust my team to make those calls.

So…we’ll see how it goes. But if you are building a business and find yourself here, ask your team stop asking for permission; ask them to beg for forgiveness.