Gregg Dean
CEO, Layla Sleep
FEATURED CASE STUDY
Scaling from 5 to 35 employees and managing a 120% growth rate in annual revenue
We helped Layla Sleep to grow their remote team by 700% and their annual revenue by 120% while building a highly-engaged culture of continuous learning.
Working to stay ahead of rapid growth
In just a few short years, Layla Sleep has risen to become one of the top brands in the direct-to-consumer mattress industry. Their mission to improve the quality of their customers’ daily lives through better sleep, combined with innovative products at affordable prices, led to CEO Gregg Dean suddenly finding himself at the helm of a ship moving faster than he could have ever anticipated.
Facing the challenge of building out a high-performance distributed team while preserving the close-knit, family-like culture he helped build, Gregg reached out to The Continuous Learning Company for support. He understood well the importance of getting the “people” part of the business right if they were to manage the rate of growth they were experiencing, but demands on his time and attention were at an all-time-high.
Building a high-performance distrubuted team in a changing world of work
With Tom’s help, Layla was able to build an innovative system for rapid onboarding as they began to grow their team to keep up with demand for their products. They quickly came to understand why more “traditional” approaches to training wouldn’t work in such a fast-paced environment. They were simply too slow and in many cases, not well aligned with the realities of working on a distributed team.
Team members needed to be supported to grow quickly into new roles as things kept shifting and expanding. Training was just one part of the equation. The other part was helping them build new skills and knowledge on a daily basis, in the flow of work, through their experience and from each other.
Team members were supported with interactive workshops and resources from our Continuous Learner© platform, where they worked to develop the mindsets, skills, and habits of continuous learners. This integrated with a cutting-edge approach to performance management designed to empower individuals to take responsibility for their own development while receiving ongoing coaching and support from the organization.
From being managed by rapid growth to strategically managing it
According to Gregg, one of the biggest benefits of building an empowering culture of continuous learning is that it’s helped him create the space he needs to be more proactive and strategic in his role. Instead of spending his days reactively putting out fires, Gregg has the people and systems in place which allow him to do what he does best.
Their all-star team, as Gregg describes it, is working together better each day as they have developed strong shared values around accountability, transparency, honesty, and “learning over perfection.” He is constantly amazed by how individuals are rising up to the challenge and growing quickly alongside the business. It is one of the most rewarding parts of his job.
The partnership between Layla Sleep and The Continuous Learning Company continues as the organization sustains fast growth. Gregg, with more time for strategy, has big plans for the future. At the heart of his vision is maintaining the strong culture of continuous learning that has emerged and which makes the journey more fulfilling and meaningful with each step forward they take.
"In the last year, our business has grown over 120% and our team expanded from 5 to 35 employees, all working remotely. It has been very challenging to navigate through this explosive growth to say the least. Tom and his team provided invaluable support to help us create an engaging culture of continuous learning with an innovative strategy for talent development and performance management that resulted in minimizing training time and driving performance as we grow."
Gregg Dean
CEO, Layla Sleep