Building a culture that can weather the storms

Kristine Ashcraft, CEO shares tips for creating a mission-driven culture that can survive and thrive in even the toughest of storms.

I was interviewed for a podcast a few months ago, and was asked, “I hear from other leaders that it can be a challenge to get team members engaged. Tell me your thoughts.” I replied, “I have been lucky to have always worked with teams that were mission-driven. I think that when you create a culture of people similarly committed to making a difference that it is far easier to keep them engaged. That being said, people are human. You need to give them room to take time off as needed if things are going on in their personal lives that are keeping them from being engaged. I think that too many people still focus on hours per day or week worked rather than overall productivity and accomplishments.”

I’ve had a little more time to reflect on that answer and although substantively I still agree, I now realize how the luck was created.

After four years of start-up grind and seemingly constant fundraising and development, YouScript was acquired in April 2020 by a larger mission-aligned organization. Our team stuck through cuts in pay, invested their own money in the friends and family round and reached out to others in their network to do the same. We worked long hours well below market salary, accomplishing more than much larger teams, meeting strict deadlines.

So, how do you create a mission-driven culture that weathers these storms?

1. It is vitally important to know the culture you are working to build in advance, and to make that very clear — in every hiring ad, in every interview, in every strategy session, and in the mechanisms you create for prioritization and decision-making. At YouScript, our mission was to save lives, improve patient care and reduce costs by eliminating avoidable adverse drug events that currently claim a life every 2 minutes. When we looked at software design decisions, my often asked question was, “What would you want the healthcare provider to do if they were caring for your loved one?” We had a transparent culture, and like many start-ups, we stared potential death in the face more than once. We did not lose a single team member when this happened. They said they would rather go down fighting than walk away.
2. Do not interview people based on their experience alone — when you limit your search to a preconceived notion that skill and experience = talent, you close the door on amazing candidates who are innovative and invigorated! In some cases, we hired “less experienced” people who came to the interviews energized by our mission. We mapped out what was missing on a particular team as we sourced for new roles, so that we could round out or stabilize skill gaps. Being aware of what those needs are is essential and identifying them can be humbling, but ultimately it allows us to source candidates who could level up our teams and bring new ideas to the table. Diversity matters — make certain your screening and interview processes are not set up to hire people that remind you of yourselves. Anyone involved in hiring should have diversity and inclusion training. Some people are great at communicating, some are detail-oriented and great at planning, some are great with numbers — working with a team enables people to do the work that leverages their strengths. People with a diversity of backgrounds and experiences create teams that enable creation of something better than you ever could on your own. Hiring smart people is the best strategy and sometimes, that means stretching people in the roles they are placed.
3. Get your team aligned around a common mission. Tell them where you need to go, let them figure out how. Let them know you trust and believe in them. Treat them like the smart adults that they are. More than once our employees shared their love of being able to share an idea and see that idea implemented into a workflow, process or our software. Seeing your work come to fruition is extremely motivating! They say it takes a village to raise a child, the same is true of creating something of value as a team.

Kristine Ashcraft, BS, MBA is a molecular biologist by training and is the former CEO and founder of YouScript, recently acquired by Invitae. She has worked in pharmacogenomics since 2000 and was recently named one of the 25 leading voices in precision medicine. Kristine has authored multiple publications on the clinical and economic benefits of pharmacogenomic testing including one lauded as one of the most influential publications at an American Medical Informatics Association meeting. She has been interviewed by numerous media outlets including the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and NBC Nightly News and has spoken at SXSW, American Society of Human Genetics, and numerous precision medicine conferences. She is committed to being a catalyst in the adoption of precision medicine.