The Culture Conundrum

Company Culture. Everybody knows how critically important it is for your company to have a strong culture. Blogs, books, lectures and ‘tweetstorms’ expound with recommendations and advice for creating a world-class company culture.

But what does a successful company culture actually look like? What does it mean to have a strong company culture? Many people would have us believe that the golden ratio for company culture is something along the lines of Perks per Employee. Pinball machines and yoga classes are seemingly the secrets to ever-lasting success. Startups founders seem to be particularly vulnerable to this line of thinking.

However, the very best companies seem to understand that strong culture is based around a set of core values or principles that are communicated and understood throughout the organisation and are the driving force behind long-term success. Companies such as Zappos have built incredibly successful companies by sticking to explicitly-defined core values. The legendary Super Bowl-winning coach Bill Walsh explains, in his classic book The Score Takes Care of Itself, that when he took over the San Francisco 49ers his primary goal was to establish a winning culture. Walsh called this winning culture his Standard of Performance. Walsh wrote:

“I came to the San Francisco 49ers with a specific goal — to implement what I call the Standard of Performance. It was a way of doing things, a leadership philosophy, that has as much to do with core values, principles, and ideals as with blocking, tackling, and passing; more to do with the mental than with the physical.”

While the core values for each company will be hugely different, when you observe the most successful companies, you start to realise how critical culture is to long-term success. What becomes even more evident is that culture needs to start with an organisation’s leader. It is up to CEOs, managers and founders to decide upon a shared set of values and ensure that every member of their organisation has internalised these values. You cannot let your culture define itself, culture needs to come from the top. In short, lead by example.

A Definition of Culture

It seems reasonable to state that the definition of culture is simply, culture = an organisation’s set of core values. While this may be true, it doesn’t seem to truly articulate the importance of company culture and the role it plays in success. Culture is more than a set of statements on the wall of your office. Instead of trying to come up with my own definition of culture, I’m going to share the very best definition of culture I’ve ever heard. This definition, comes from Patrick Collison, CEO of Stripe. While giving a talk for Y Combinator’s How to Start a Startup lecture series, Patrick offered the following definition of culture:

“Culture is the invariance that you want to maintain as you can get specifically involved in fewer and fewer decisions over time”

(This definition and more can be heard in this video. Skip to 3:00 to hear Patrick speak about culture.)

While this may not initially jump out as the most eloquent description of culture, after Googling the meaning of invariance (Properties that remain unchanged regardless of changes to external conditions), I began to realise how spot-on this explanation really is. Once you hear this definition, the importance of culture becomes evident. If you can get involved in less and less decisions over time, the values that you instill in your employees become absolutely critical. When faced with difficult decisions, employees will turn to their leader’s example in the hopes of making the right decision. Therefore, good culture leads to consistently better decisions over time. Better decisions lead to a far higher chance of success. This is so important that I’m going to put it in big quotations for dramatic effect.

“Good culture leads to consistently better decisions over time. Better decisions lead to a far higher chance of success.”

A strong culture literally means that your company will be more likely to succeed. If that isn’t reason to take culture seriously then I don’t know what is. So, ditch the plans for an office bar and instead take inspiration from people such as Bill Walsh and Patrick Collison. Decide upon a set of core values for your company and make sure everyone in your company understands them inside-out. Your company’s future likely depends on it.

Want to speak more about company culture?

Please reach out to me at tadhg@onerocket.io or comment below.