Ask someone what they value about working at a company, and they might tell you about a colleague who helped them through their first weeks, a manager who trusted them with a new responsibility or a team that came together to solve a difficult problem. Those experiences give people a sense of what it means to work there, and as more colleagues join, they become the examples through which a culture grows.

They also influence what people feel able to do: make a decision, challenge an established approach or suggest something the company has not tried before. As Holafly grows, leaders have a responsibility to make those experiences possible across teams, creating the conditions for people to act with agility and continue to innovate.

Our Senior Leadership Team meeting in Lisbon gave us two days to consider that responsibility alongside the company’s direction. We discussed how each area contributes to the company’s objectives and how we lead an organisation that is growing and changing quickly. Aligning as leaders gives us a shared understanding to bring back to our teams, so that people across the organisation understand how their work contributes.

“We need to be deliberate about building a company that can grow and remain agile. That means helping teams make decisions and adapt, while giving them room to imagine and test what we could do differently. Innovation needs to be part of how every area works,” says Javier Cabrerizo, CEO.

That shared direction becomes valuable through the decisions it helps people make. When colleagues understand what we are trying to achieve and why it matters, they can recognise when a task is no longer helping, suggest a better approach or pursue an opportunity that brings us closer to the goal. Leaders then need to ensure they can act on that understanding.

Agility depends on how we lead

A team’s ability to move forward is tested when something changes: a plan no longer fits, a new opportunity emerges or a problem involves several areas. As the company grows, more of those decisions depend on people working together across teams and locations, making clear communication and responsibility essential to our agility.

In a remote organisation, leaders need to make sure information reaches the people who need it and that teams know which decisions they can own and when to involve others. That clarity helps colleagues resolve challenges together without every decision having to travel back through their managers.

When an unfamiliar challenge does require guidance, people look to their manager for expertise and an example of how to approach it. By explaining their thinking, inviting questions and being willing to adjust their own approach, managers help colleagues develop the judgement to handle the next challenge with greater confidence. Over time, that gives teams more ability to respond and adapt as circumstances change.

Making innovation part of how we grow

That same confidence should give people room to ask what we could do differently before a problem forces us to change. Teams often see opportunities through their everyday work, and leaders need to help them explore those ideas alongside the demands that already fill their time.

For Holafly, innovation is essential because the industry itself is still taking shape. There is no established model we can simply copy to build what comes next, so we need people across every area to imagine new possibilities, whether they are developing a product, finding a better way to support travellers or rethinking how teams work together.

“We need innovation to imagine the future and adaptation to respond to the reality we encounter. Our responsibility as leaders is to build an organisation where teams can do both as we grow,” says Javier Cabrerizo, CEO.

An ambitious vision encourages people to look beyond what already works, while clear objectives help them decide which ideas to test and what they need to learn. Leaders must also be willing to reconsider their own assumptions and respond thoughtfully when an idea falls short, because what happens in those moments influences whether people feel confident enough to try again.

As Holafly grows, every new colleague will discover its culture through their own experiences. They will notice whether they have the context to make a decision, whether their ideas receive thoughtful consideration and whether they are supported when trying something unfamiliar. Holafly’s leaders have a responsibility to make those experiences consistent across teams, so that growth brings more people into a company where they can act with confidence and help shape what comes next.

That is why Senior Leadership meetings matter: they give leaders a shared direction and the opportunity to agree on what it means for their areas. Their responsibility is then to bring that understanding to their teams through clear priorities, conversations and decisions, so that alignment reaches across the organisation and gives people the focus to act with agility and the space to innovate.