Culture decks, values examples, employee handbooks and articles on Culture
When we started to shape culture at RealtimeBoard, we were inspired by the article about Asana’s approach to it, particularly this part:
“We decided to treat culture as a product,” Rosenstein says.
He explained that instead of looking at culture as something that “just happens,” he and his cofounder realized that culture was actually something that needed to be carefully designed, tested, debugged, and iterated on, like any other product they released.
This simple paragraph has sparked initiative we named HR-sprint and we started to collect ideas and references about shaping and managing organizational culture. This is how my working board looked like during our research phase:
Of course, it took time to find and look through all the examples. It was not just one iteration of a research, this board was updated continuously. We went through the whole product development cycle three times already and I am on a 4th iteration right now. It might sound like a lot of effort, but there is one simple reason behind:
We wanted to approach our culture design consciously and deliberately. To treat it as a product, not as a random experiment.
I liked how Slack and Basecamp folks described this attitude and reason behind it:
I think many startups and young companies could find themselves in a similar situation, so my collection of links could be useful. That’s why I decided to share my list as it is, with no reviews and analysis, giving you freedom to explore the world of culture in your own pace.
Culture decks, values examples and new employee handbooks
A fine collection of company handbooks curated by Bunka
14 employee handbooks collection
(article is in Russian, but most of the handbooks examples in English)
Asana
- https://www.fastcompany.com/3069240/how-asana-built-the-best-company-culture-in-tech
- https://blog.asana.com/category/culture/
Netflix
Patreon
Basecamp Employee Handbook
HubSpot
Atlassian
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zso6jskUaS8&feature=youtu.be
- Company values https://www.atlassian.com/company/values
https://www.evolutionpartners.com.au/atlassian-core-values-example.html - The Atlassian Team Playbook https://www.atlassian.com/team-playbook
Stripe
- A quick guide to Stripe’s culture https://stripe.com/us/jobs/candidate-info?a=1#culture
Buffer
- https://buffer.com/about#buffer-values
- https://www.slideshare.net/Bufferapp/buffer-culture-06-with-a-change-to-be-a-no-ego-doer
- https://buffer.com/transparency
- https://www.officevibe.com/blog/culture-of-transparency-buffer
- https://open.buffer.com/creating-values
- https://open.buffer.com/create-company-values/
Spotify Engineering Culture
- Part 1 https://vimeo.com/85490944
- Part 2 https://vimeo.com/94950270
- What makes a good engineering: Building A Strong Engineering Culture https://www.slideshare.net/kevingoldsmith/building-a-strong-engineering-culture-my-talk-from-bbc-develop-2013
Slack
- https://slackhq.com/building-the-workplace-we-want-31fff8d6ffe0
- Slack’s $2.8 Billion Dollar Secret Sauce https://medium.com/@awilkinson/slack-s-2-8-billion-dollar-secret-sauce-5c5ec7117908
- https://slack.com/jobs
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c1jlmdkApTQ
- https://drive.google.com/file/d/1lAyXOtHoCymK5QwaKxlKLkuqB8slgMq6/view?usp=sharing
PandaDoc
- PandaDoc culture code https://docs.google.com/document/d/1QBQfina8vXi7lYdnts_51c62sKUmi78RQbwkEi_pW2w/edit
- https://dev.by/lenta/main/pandadoc-kulturnyy-kod
Valve
Memoria Visual
Big Spaceship
Mindvalley
The Motley Fool
Articles on Culture
- The Five Elements Of A ‘Simply Irresistible’ Organization
https://www.forbes.com/sites/joshbersin/2014/04/04/the-five-elements-of-a-simply-irresistible-organization/#3b44a451b164 - 3 Reasons Tech Startups Need to Create a Strong Company Culture http://www.rocketspace.com/tech-startups/3-reasons-tech-startups-need-to-create-a-strong-company-culture
- 80% of Your Culture is Your Founder http://firstround.com/review/80-of-Your-Culture-is-Your-Founder/
- Quora https://www.quora.com/What-is-startup-culture-1
- 5 questions that reveal if a company has a healthy workplace culture https://m.signalvnoise.com/5-questions-that-reveal-if-a-company-has-a-healthy-workplace-culture-491db31b2f28
- For an Inclusive Culture, Try Working Less https://hackernoon.com/for-inclusive-culture-maybe-less-is-more-87b663662cea
- How to Create Your Own Core Values List http://www.threadsculture.com/blog/company-culture/how-to-create-your-own-core-values-list/
- A Seven Step Process to Discovering Your Business’ Core Values http://ceosage.com/business-core-values/
- Ethan Kaplan: Culture Is A Product
http://www.hypebot.com/hypebot/2012/02/culture-is-a-product.html - What is Organizational Culture https://www.torbenrick.eu/blog/culture/organizational-culture/
- Organizational Culture Due Diligence https://www.torbenrick.eu/blog/culture/organizational-cultural-due-diligence/
- Book Transforming Organizations: One Process at a Time By Kathryn A. LeRoy https://books.google.nl/books?id=6pY4DwAAQBAJ&pg=PT78&lpg=PT78&dq=That%E2%80%99s+what+culture+does.+It%E2%80%99s+a+disinfectant%E2%80%94it+hurts+a+lot,+but+you+end+up+being+a+lot+stronger&source=bl&ots=IL2yBqPXVl&sig=THc0xNFg1WEqZUkOIP1F5iwpyNI&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwi8tbD6yILZAhWBkiwKHZmSDE8Q6AEIJzAA#v=onepage&q=That%E2%80%99s%20what%20culture%20does.%20It%E2%80%99s%20a%20disinfectant%E2%80%94it%20hurts%20a%20lot%2C%20but%20you%20end%20up%20being%20a%20lot%20stronger&f=false
- Importance of Organization Culture http://www.managementstudyguide.com/importance-of-organization-culture.htm
- Grow your team by focusing on strengths not weaknesses https://blog.intercom.com/grow-your-team-by-focusing-on-strengths-not-weaknesses/
- HBR Selling the Brand Inside https://hbr.org/2002/01/selling-the-brand-inside
My notes and articles:
- https://medium.com/@redhairedAnya/improve-culture-1f703ce44e35
- https://medium.com/@redhairedAnya/culture-for-everyone-b3918a0d478d
- https://huntflow.ru/insight/article/grabli-korporativnoi-kultury
Would you add something to this list?
