Your Company Is Your Most Important Product. Here’s How to Build It.
What if your company treated culture, communication, and operating cadence like a product—with feature requests, a roadmap, and intentional improvements? thoughtbot shows what happens when you do.
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In this edition of Rhythms of Scale, I sat down with Chad Pytel, founder and CEO of thoughtbot, a design and development consultancy renowned for its in-depth product expertise and highly intentional culture. For 22 years, they've treated their company with the same discipline and intentionality they bring to crafting products for their customers.
And it shows. thoughtbot operates with clarity, cadence, and culture that make continuous company improvement not just possible but inevitable.
If this resonates, consider subscribing to Rhythms of Scale for more real-world stories from tech CEOs building with intention.
Running the Company Like a Product Team
thoughtbot doesn't just help companies build better software. It applies those same principles to how it runs itself.
Instead of managing the company through gut feeling and executive decisions alone, thoughtbot built what they call the thoughtbot playbook. This publicly accessible site documents how they hire, build, manage, and grow. However, this isn't a dusty PDF or a static Notion document. It's a living, evolving representation of the company's operating system.
"We don't write things down to never change them," Chad told me. "We write them down because we intend to improve them."
That philosophy drives how the team improves the company. Anyone at thoughtbot can raise a suggestion, add it to the internal idea backlog, and participate in refining it. Topics range from onboarding and benefits to meeting cadence and hiring practices. Once a solution is defined, it's "released" into the company with clear communication, space for feedback, and ongoing iteration.
This process mirrors how they run product sprints with customers. Prioritize issues. Propose improvements. Ship version one. Learn. Improve. Repeat.
While most companies let internal change happen ad hoc—or not at all—thoughtbot treats organizational improvement as a continuous product development cycle; it's not a side project. It's a core function.
Treat Company Improvements Like Product Launches
What happens after an internal improvement is "shipped"?
It gets announced, just like a feature release.
"We treat them like product launches," Chad told me. "When something important changes, we don't just let it live in a doc. We elevate it."
This principle applies across multiple communication channels:
When a process or policy is updated, the change is communicated asynchronously with clear context, next steps, and rationale, just like you announce a new product feature.
Team members trust that if a meaningful change occurs, they'll hear about it outside of the issue or working group it originated from.
This structure creates what Chad calls a "promise to the team"—that no vital decision or shift will happen in a silo. It builds alignment without constant meetings.
Create Time to Work on the Company
It's easy to spend all your time delivering for customers. However, if you don't take the time to improve the company itself, the quality of that delivery will eventually suffer.
thoughtbot knew this early on and designed a culture to address it.
They typically work with customers Monday through Thursday. Fridays are reserved for what they call investment time. Everyone uses that time to contribute to one of three areas: the company, the community, or themselves.
That one day per week fuels much of what makes thoughtbot exceptional. People use Fridays to propose internal improvements, contribute to documentation, lead peer learning, or explore emerging tools.
"We realized we needed to create space," Chad said. "Otherwise, improving the company would always get pushed to nights and weekends—or just never happen."
By concentrating customer work into focused four-day bursts, they maintain sharp delivery while giving every team member permission to improve the company, not just operate within it.
Build Cadence You're Willing to Change
A common pitfall for scaling companies is creating rigid systems that eventually calcify. thoughtbot takes a different approach. They expect even their best systems to get stale.
They've designed their core operating rhythm with that in mind.
Each quarter, the company runs its "State of thoughtbot" session. Every team presents what they've accomplished and what's ahead. Financials are shared. A client project is highlighted via a pre-recorded demo or case study. It's transparent, celebratory, and practical.
The company also holds a quarterly "Coffee Chat with Chad," an anonymous AMA-style forum where Chad answers uncensored questions live. The conversation is recorded and shared company-wide.
But they don't cling to these rituals forever.
"In the past, we've done monthly updates. At some point, people stop paying attention. Even good rituals lose power," Chad said.
Instead of forcing a format to work, they rotate, refresh, and revise. Operating cadence is treated like an internal product, too—one that evolves as the company does.
What You Can Learn from thoughtbot
Here are four ways you can apply thoughtbot's approach to your own company:
Document how your company works. Forcing yourself to write down your company's operating system helps clarify it, socialize it, and provide a foundation for continuous improvement.
Build a backlog for company improvements. Apply the same mechanics you use for product development: a space for ideas, prioritization, and clear ownership for executing improvements.
Make time to work on the business. Protect part of your team's calendar to focus on improving the company, not just executing tasks within it.
Launch internal updates like product releases. Don't bury changes. Communicate them with the same clarity you'd use in a product release—context, motivation, and what's next.
Your Company Deserves a Roadmap
When new hires join thoughtbot, Chad gives them a simple message:
"If you're unsure what to do, just think about how we'd solve this if it were a bug in our product—because our company is our most important product."
That's not a metaphor. It's a principle.
So, what's the next feature your company needs?
If this sparked something, consider subscribing to Rhythms of Scale for more lived stories from leaders scaling with clarity and intention.
Brought to you by:
ExactTempo—The top 1% of leaders send consistent updates that empower their teams. ExactTempo makes it 10x easier, so you can too.