Building Culture That Scales: Inside the Traffic Squad Leadership Model
Volodymyr Sakharov, co-founder of Traffic Squad, joined 15M Mastery to share his unique approach to organisational design, decision-making, and motivation. With humour as a core value and strategy shaped around team wellbeing, Traffic Squad has built a culture where people, and business, thrive.
Start With Values, Not Policies
“Humour is our first value,” Volodymyr says. “It’s a sign of intellect, and it helps us get through tough times.”
For Traffic Squad, values aren’t just written on a wall, they’re actively defined by the team itself. Volodymyr outlines three foundational principles:
- Humour: keeps morale high, especially in stressful cycles
- Fairness: encourages clear, direct communication
- Responsibility: enables scalable delegation and proactivity
These values aren’t abstract, they’re baked into how teams interact, solve problems, and make decisions.
How R&D Helps You Move Faster
In a fast-changing media buying environment, rigid structures can’t keep up.
Traffic Squad has found success by doubling down on R&D. But not just any kind, Volodymyr splits it into two types:
- Reverse engineering what competitors are doing
- Innovating new approaches, formats, and funnels
“Before, 70% of R&D was reverse engineering. Now, 70% has to go to innovation,” he explains. “Everything is changing, you need to drive the change, not chase it.”
Scaling Without Bureaucracy
As teams grow, structure becomes essential, but so does speed.
Volodymyr uses a lightweight framework inspired by the Gazelles methodology: a one-page strategy broken down into quarterly goals. It’s fast, flexible, and easy to update.
“The priorities, the data, the rhythms, that’s what keeps you agile,” he says. Even at 200+ people, the model holds. Team leads are empowered to run their own playbooks.
And when goals are met? “That’s the moment to run a new strategy session. Sometimes your company is just shaking because you’ve already achieved the old goals, and nobody realised it.”
Compensation is Only Half The Equation
Designing incentive models for senior buyers isn’t just about margins, it’s about value.
“You’re always balancing two forces,” Volodymyr says. “What the market pays, and what value you provide in return.”
At Traffic Squad, that value goes beyond salary. It includes:
- Exclusive deals with advertisers
- Access to capital
- Tech tools that reduce manual work
- Support for personal or family needs
“If a buyer can earn more with us, with less effort, they’ll stay.”
Culture is Built in The Quiet Moments
Retention, according to Volodymyr, is the best metric for cultural health.
“If more people are leaving than you’re firing, that’s a red flag,” he says. “But you can spot it earlier through surveys and feedback loops.”
Traffic Squad uses lightweight pulse checks every quarter, asking just four questions:
- What are we doing well?
- What are we doing poorly?
- What should we start doing?
- What should we stop doing?
But the key isn’t asking, it’s acting. “After every round, we communicate what we heard and what we did about it. That builds trust. And then the feedback gets even better.”
