A Startups Passion to hang on to its Corporate Culture
In a previous post I spoke a little about how I came to join a fintech hub; now more than 7 months into my co-working experience I feel like I have an interesting insight to share.
I am someone trying to live a purposeful life, one that is not always easy to uphold, but who said life is meant to be easy. Now 44 yrs into my journey of discovering what I believe to be important I have started to draw a pretty clear picture of the person I am and the company I wish to run. Probably the best way to describe the corporate culture I strive for is in the negative, it is the absence of EGO after which I pursue. Don’t for one second picture a meek and mild corporate culture of people scared of their own shadow. On the contrary we are a company of excellence, each and everyone being a superstar seeking to achieve the very best out of each other for the purpose of a better product with as little ego involvement as possible. We want to be brilliant for the sake of our users experience — period.
If an ego free work environment is what I pursue then plugging into an existing ecosystem (corporate culture) of our hub host is likely to add to the challenge, and therefore needs careful consideration. Let me share what I have come to observe:
A hub is a work space where independent companies come together and enjoy the perks the hub creator offers. One of the key selling points apart from the obvious such as a desk and a coffee machine 😉, is placing like minded people together in an environment where they can benefit from the members collective experience and contacts. This can be highly valuable, the problem I have observed is that placing many independent innovative people in the same room, can also amplify the need for people to present a persona that will get them noticed and feed their ego needs. So what I am starting to observe as I notice our hub mature is that we may be a group of independent companies, but we are also a part of a larger whole which worries me.
As a parent we expose our children to things we believe will benefit them and we try and avoid exposing them to negative influences. However, there is a limit to how much we can shield our children from because at the end of the day they need to be part of a productive society and make their contribution. It is with the same mindset I contemplate our companies corporate culture.
One could argue with me and say Michael you are a startup running remotely, what are you wasting time and energy contemplating such intangible things like culture. My argument is that ones core values are not negotiable and cannot be compromised — ever, therefore fighting to maintain ones culture shouldn’t be under-estimated or minimized in anyway.
I end this note by saying that it is indeed early days and I love the fintech hub I operate out of on so many levels, but I also want to be true to myself and bring to consciousness that our corporate culture should never become diluted or secondary to our host ecosystem and that it is never too early to establish a companies corporate culture, even with one employee 😉.
