Line of Sight: How Transparency in the Workplace Builds Aligned Teams with Martin Gourdeau

Una: Tell me more about 10 months into your new role. What are you focused on at Vacation Tracker?

Martin: Coming up to almost a year now, and the focus is on growth. It's a business that's about 20 people. We're doing pretty well, to be honest, but the reason for me coming on board was really to accelerate growth, which is something I've done a few times in my career.

Today we're approaching like 3 million ARR, about 2,000 paying customers, and customers in just over 100 countries. So it's a super incredible sandbox to play in. But yeah, all focus on growing the business.

Una: Your tagline on LinkedIn says, "Time off is a performance strategy, not a reward." Unpack that for me and for our listeners. What do you mean by that?

Martin: If you look at the product we sell today, it could be interpreted in a very tactical way — we basically simplify leave management for SMBs. But the more aspirational, strategic aspect is that with everything going on in the market and all these new tools coming out, we can all feel this augmented need to perform better and to do more.

Everyone's talking about AI replacing us, but for me, I'm just working more, and people on the team are working more because the bar keeps raising with these tools. That pulls on people's energy, and energy management becomes something very important. SMBs in particular are under tremendous pressure to deliver more with less, and that takes a toll on teams' energy levels. We're at the forefront of helping manage that.

Una: What is the vacation policy at a company that helps others with their leave management? What's your guys' vacation policy at Vacation Tracker?

Martin: I've worked in many companies that had the unlimited-that-are-not-really-unlimited vacations. We basically have a flat policy — everyone has the same number of days. It's quite generous, I think it's 20 days for everyone, plus spent holidays.

We went with a very easy to manage, low overhead policy. You could be straight out of school and you have the same policy as everyone else. It's very fair, and yeah, it's actually pretty great — we're not changing it.

Una: When did transparency become something you believe in — that it's how you want to run businesses?

Martin: I want to be clear about the type of transparency I'm talking about: it's really the business reality — metrics, how the business is run, objectives, and how teams relate to that.

Early in my career I worked at a small service company of about 20 people, and it was basically a complete black box. I had no idea if the business was profitable, who owned it, or what their ambitions were. It's very hard to be aligned when your head's down just doing your day-to-day thing.

Then at Electronic Arts, around 2005, we were creating a new studio in Montreal — I was one of the first 15 or 20 employees and we scaled to about 800 people over five years. We built an awesome, creative, high-performing culture, but there was no financial context to what we were doing.

On one of my first trips to headquarters, maybe a year in, the global CFO asked to have 30 minutes with our team. He walked in and asked what business we were in. Everyone shyly said "video games" or "entertainment," and he shut it down: "We're in the business of making money, and video games is the vehicle we chose to do so." I remember the cold shower that rained over the entire room.

He went around explaining how each studio contributed to that objective, and when he got to Montreal it was something like, "we opened your studio so you can provide 80% of the quality for 60% of the cost." I had never heard that shared in our day-to-day, and it was the moment I saw the disconnect between the corporate financial objective and the culture our general manager was trying to build locally. From that point on, I decided to buy in, and I tried to embrace that transparency from then on.

Una: Some leaders are wary of that kind of transparency — what if it's bad news, or what if people start looking for a new job? What kind of things are you not necessarily excited to share?

Martin: I don't think that message is what the CFO wanted to pass along, but he made the decision to treat us like adults — this is the context of the business, this is the reality we operate in.

If you hear that message and it doesn't resonate, or you're shocked or offended by it, it's actually better that you find another opportunity where you can be fully on board. Staying disconnected from the business reality doesn't change the fact that it's the situation — there will be constant friction points, and it's probably going to lead to a performance conversation. Pretending the business is in a better situation than it is isn't a service to anyone.

Looking back, reactions among my peers were mixed — people closer to headquarters had probably heard that message before, so almost no reaction. The further away geographically, the bigger the shock. But I think almost everyone was on board by the end of that talk. It was an honest, refreshing conversation, even if it landed as a bit of a slap at first.

Una: Since then, you've led teams and companies, and you're running one now. What are the behaviors and practices you use day-to-day to build and maintain that transparency?

Martin: It depends on the business. Right now, with a smaller team, I can over-communicate — almost every week I share core growth metrics like MRR and churn. Every month there's an all-hands where we go a bit more in depth, look at our objectives for the year, and hold a Q&A where anyone can ask anything.

At a bigger business like Workleap, weekly doesn't work — I did monthly town halls with about 450 people, sometimes with a guest team presenting. We'd always end with an open Q&A for the whole company, and I'd actually invite the hard questions, because if you're hesitant to ask something, chances are a bunch of other people have the same question.

I'd answer bluntly — here are the consequences if we don't hit X — but there's a way to be transparent without being doom and gloom. You can be factual, keep your head up, and stay positive and confident in the plan. I always tell people: don't ask the question if you don't want the answer.

Una: What are the things that are off limits? Maybe salaries or bonuses — what do you say, "you know what, this is just private"?

Martin: Anything specific to a person is off limits. If it's someone's performance and its impact on the business, I wouldn't point out a person by name in a town hall — that wouldn't make sense. A team should be accountable in front of the whole company for its performance, but not an individual.

Down to people's salaries, I wouldn't go there. Some companies explore wide-open salary policies — to me, your personal revenue has an impact on you and your family, and that's personal information. Anything other than that is pretty much free game.

Una: What do you think most leaders get wrong about being transparent and building that kind of culture? And if someone has only shared revenue but nothing else, where should they start?

Martin: It's the purpose — why are you sharing this information? I started doing it purely for performance reasons: I don't like having filtered information, and I found that if you hire the right people and give them all the information, they perform better. You have to be careful not to be transparent just to be trendy.

Start small and let people ask questions. Open the floor and ask if there's something they've never asked because they think it's off limits — worst case, you say it's off limits, but it doesn't cost anything to ask. Don't go for a big reveal; if there's an information vacuum, people will fill it in on their own, usually assuming the worst. It's like physics — a vacuum will get filled, so start small and build up.

Una: Do you feel like leading this way — sharing everything — has made you a better leader? You kind of have to have your stuff together to do it.

Martin: For sure, because you can't communicate clearly if it's not clear in your own head first. It forces you to be structured about where the business is at, what the challenges are, and what the priorities are. At Workleap, presenting to 450 people in person, your thoughts better be clear — it's a forcing function for clear thinking.

That said, you don't always need to have the answer. During Q&As, if someone asks a really specific question I don't know, I just say "I don't know, I'll look into it," and I follow up and share the question and answer with the whole company. Part of building trust is admitting when you don't have an answer yet instead of bluffing.

Una: How do you personally get clear on objectives and priorities? Do you write, go for a walk, think in the dark?

Martin: In the day-to-day, it's really about blocking time to actually work — it's easy to have a fully-booked calendar and lose context on why you decided something, and stop seeing the forest for the trees.

Having rituals matters too. Knowing there's a monthly all-hands forces you to take a step back: what were our objectives, where do we stand at the halfway mark of the year, what are the priorities. That ritual forces clarity on where the business is at and how it's running.

Una: How does sharing this kind of information land across different cultures, working with people all over the world?

Martin: The end result is usually the same — once people understand the "why," they buy in, especially if you've hired for good culture fit. But some cultures react differently to knowing the numbers. In some European cultures in particular, the bottom line isn't shared as often, so you get first-reaction questions like, "where does this money go, is that profit, is that dividends?"

I'll explain that we choose to reinvest in growth, and if they have ideas for growth levers, we have the money to invest. It varies by culture, but it's usually just refreshing for people to know.

Una: What are you focused on next at Vacation Tracker? What does the next six or seven months look like strategically?

Martin: We're a profitable, bootstrapped business focused on finding growth levers, and we're playing around quite a bit with integrating AI into our workflows. We built an entity server that tools like Claude can connect to, so you can work with your Vacation Tracker data right from your workspace — this morning it went through my week's meetings, flagged who was out, and checked for national holidays in countries where we operate. This whole headless-software movement has very high potential and I don't think many people have adopted it yet.

We're also building tools for better energy management — next week we're launching team lead views for energy trends, so if you have an important project coming up and a key person hasn't taken vacation in nine months, there's a flag. We're trying to get closer to the flow of work and provide more value for our customers.

Una: We always end the podcast the same way — in HeyTaco, everyone has five tacos to give to someone every day to say thank you and appreciate them. So, who would you like to give your tacos to today, and why?

Martin: I have to give my first taco to my wife — she works in HR and was a performance coach for executives, and she's basically provided free service to me as my own performance coach while I've been managing people and growing a business.

I'd give a taco to our salesperson Daniela, who absolutely exploded last month in terms of her sales figures — full of energy and drive. I'd give a taco each to the two co-founders of the business, Lav and Slobodan — they're incredible to work with and ready to do anything to take the business to the next level.

And my last taco goes to the whole team. We have people in seven countries, fully distributed, and even with that setup we have a pretty cool culture and a great place to work. That one's a shared taco.