Company Culture: Ensuring Workplace Happiness

Lee Jones, the University of Minnesota’s Entrepreneur of the Year, shares tips for creating and setting a strong company culture.

Photo by Steijn Leijzer on Unsplash

It has been a wild few months as I have found myself leading my company through the maze created as a result of COVID-19 and now navigating the complex realities of our city in the wake of George Floyd’s murder by the police. Rebiotix is located in Minnesota just north of the Twin Cities. It was wild before that too; with having finished enrollment in our pivotal Phase 3 clinical trial, striving towards being the first company in the world to have an FDA approved therapy based on the human microbiome, and experiencing phenomenal growth in the number of employees, while running out of space to seat them. It has been exhausting and exhilarating and very much in line with the company culture I envisioned: bold, decisive, flexible, honest and fun.

So how does a culture get created and maintained? Here are my three takeaways:

1. One person, generally at a high level can, and does, make a difference. As the founder and CEO, it was my opportunity to create the culture I wanted. I decided a long time ago that I wanted to be the CEO because I could create a workplace and work environment where I wanted to work. (As I tell my team — it is all about me!) I wanted to wake up every day and look forward to going to work. I wanted to get there and be happy I was there. I wanted to work with people I enjoyed working with, and I got to choose those people.
2. Company culture can, and should, be deliberate. A leader’s actions, more than what they say, model what the company culture is. I started small — I was the only employee for some time, so it was easy. I had to make decisions on my own every day. I had to make honest commitments and follow through. I had to be flexible; with no office, sometimes I met in a restaurant on the East side of the city, sometimes on the West, depending on who my customer was that day. And I had to keep telling my story; my bold vision. It was fun! (Are you beginning to see the relationship between what I wanted the company culture to be and my actions?)
3. To maintain a culture, hire employees who fit the culture. As the company grew, I had the luxury of choosing people who I believed would fit with the company culture I wanted to create. Sometimes I was successful, sometimes not, but the more people I hired the better at choosing them I became. I have found that having an employee fit with the company culture is more important than their technical skills. If they are not a good fit, they will not be successful no matter how hard they try. Now, I have the job of interviewing new employees for cultural fit and I leave the technical discussions for others to have. Move out those people who don’t fit just as you would someone who is not performing their job function

Interestingly enough, there are some employees I like, some I don’t, some I disagree with because I wouldn’t have done things the way they did, and some I hardly see because they keep odd hours. They don’t look like me, they don’t always agree with me, and sometimes they don’t like me. But the one overarching thing I know is that I can trust them to do their jobs and deliver for the company to the best of their ability, and have some fun doing it.

What has evolved is exactly the culture I envisioned it would be and I am happy to go to work.

Lee Jones is the founder, president, and chief executive officer of Rebiotix, a results-oriented biotechnology company. Lee has over 30 years of experience as a medical technology executive and entrepreneur in large and small companies and academia. Before joining Rebiotix, Lee was the chief administrative officer of the Schulze Diabetes Institute at the University of Minnesota. She is also the former president and chief executive officer of Inlet Medical. Prior to Inlet, she spent 14 years at Medtronic where she developed and commercialized several innovative products. Lee has served on several public and private boards, is a member of the Sofia Angel Investment Fund and is an advisor to several small companies. She has a BS in Chemical Engineering from the University of Minnesota and an Executive Management degree from the Carlson School of Management at the University of Minnesota.