Multinationals are great at some things; scaling businesses, winning clients and expanding across a range of countries. Startups are great at hiring the smartest and most able bodies, looking past the politics and the length of someones CV, but focusing more on merits: skills based and character based. Startups also place an utmost emphasis on a cultural fit, and keeping people engaged with the ethos and vision of the startup. Despite these differences, it isn’t the most crucial one. When it comes to the culture of working, where is the difference?

Cyclical processes — by Tambako

The obvious

Bigger companies can seem a bit like oil tankers; they can take a long time to course-correct, and to do a 3 point turn can take years. Inevitably though, the variables of the product-market fit are constantly changing. Being able to adapt to that is key. Startups instead, are like little nippy sailboats. They angle and pivot around, to make sure they catch the strongest winds. Why is it that startups are able to act, react and proact like that?

Sincerity

The underlying difference between startups and big corporations is a simple one — and a very human one. For a startup, anything and everything is a hypothesis until proven. Startups are more sincere by nature as they lack the ego that a big organization almost implies by its mere existence. Startups accept that they do not know the answer to every question. By nature they are analytical and result-oriented — they depend on it for their survival, even in the short term. Whilst it isn’t tacitly expressed, the mantra of the scientific research method is embedded in these successful startups. With movements such as Lean startup this is gaining a more formal framework to run under, but in essence all boils down to the quick and iterative build-measure-learn cycles. The quicker you can launch, the sooner you can measure if it worked, the quicker you can learn and adapt. How do large corporations differ from this approach? I would propose that with the size of company, comes a certain implied degree of ego, and thereby arrogance.

What does this mean?

The culture of big companies is such that they can’t possibly tell their clients that they don’t know the answer to a problem. If they suggested running experiments to test several options, this means admitting they don’t know. When a company sells itself based on the principle of being an expert, and having the answers, it seems the culture of saving face dominates these organisations. The reality is, that if life was simple enough to have pre-defined answers for complex business problems, there wouldn’t be a need for consultancies, or better yet, we wouldn’t need the questions in the first place — they would answer themselves.

The sooner companies learn to embrace the fact that we need to interpret data in order to provide insight. In order to interpret data, we need to capture data first. In order to capture data, we need to embrace the fact that we don’t have the answers from the get go. For big companies that breed a culture where things aren’t said openly, this is problematic. Consequently, firms that accept that they don’t know everything, and are consciously aware, and breed an open culture — are the ones that ultimately will be successful.