It’s time to kickstart developing your company culture
One ‘must do’ activity that I’ve seen founders often put on the back burner is developing their company culture. That is, the formation of the company’s personality and ultimately what drives the behaviour of its eventual employees.
Its important to note that when I define and talk about corporate culture, I don’t include employee benefits such as free meals, regular parties and other employee ‘perks’ in its definition. These should be considered ‘perks’ and don’t define how an organisation works or what drives the behaviour of its employees.
But why should founders care about developing a company culture?
Most companies whatever the age and size have a personality, but those founders that do not prioritize the need to clearly articulate what working for their company is like, will not truly understand what drives their employees, partners and customers to work with them.
As companies like Volkswagen and Uber have found out in the last 2 years, it doesn’t take too much for a company’s brand to get damaged by not managing the detail in how the company is behaving.
It is never too early to start thinking about company culture. Brian Chesky Airbnb clearly understood the culture of Airbnb and the people he wanted to hire even before he hired his first employee. Whilst this culture definition likely changed over time, the early versions very likely helped in attracting the first (and most critical) employees at the company.
Whilst well funded companies can (mostly) afford to focus time and resources on developing and establishing a company culture, this is by no means the end of your ‘culture development’ journey. Once the early versions of your corporate personality are drafted, its time to put those into practice but keep iterating over time. Cultures require cultivating over time because companies and the markets they operate in change over time too.
Isn’t company culture a myth?
There are folks who believe company culture is a complete waste of time, but I call BS on that. In fast growth environments where ambiguity of role and responsibility is evident every day, culture helps guide employees behaviour in your desired direction, particularly when everyone is simply to busy to manage what you do on a regular basis.
Bootstrapped startups don’t generally get the luxury of time to think about this, I get that. The focus is always on closing the next deal, the next round of funding or getting the next version of the product out the door. So if you havn’t already, take the time to think about what kind of company you want to build, how you want your employees to behave and how you want your customers to think about your business. You will be pleasantly surprised how clearly articulating and communicating your culture can help you hiring the right people and help to manage your employees behaviour as you scale the business.
Here are my 4 questions you should ask yourself to help you kickstart the development of your company culture. This will help to understand your values and what makes you tick:
What motivates you? e.g. I’m motivated by learning and trying new things. I like to be inspired by the people around me. Im motivated by the variety in my work.
What do you value as important in your life? e.g. I value the flexibility of working from home as well as in an office environment to support a solid work/life balance (more here).
What kind of people do you like to work with in general? e.g I like to work with smart self starters, those that put customers first and deliver impactful results to them and the business.
NOTE: If you are like me and find it challenging to think like this, I recommend doing this on your own and with no interruption (phone off and laptops down). Then get together collaboratively with your co-founder(s) over a weekend (or on a national holiday or when you are less likely to be disturbed) and share your notes.
So finally ask yourself:
What inspired you to work together so closely? e.g. I trust xxx implicitly and he always delivers on his promises. He really motivates me to dive in to the data to understand what is really going on.
As there are probably many reasons why you and your co-founder work so well together, explore and discuss those traits, find the synergies and document. If you have all worked really smart on this, you will have a set of really great values that can describe the guiding principles which drive behaviour in your company. These will work to help kick start your culture journey.
Here are some great examples of the kind of output you are looking for (bearing in mind that these examples have evolved considerably over time so are very polished, but hopefully you get the idea)
Good luck!
