The Truth About Startup Culture
You, The Culture
Close your eyes and meditate for a minute on the word, ‘Startup’.
What do you see? A large, open floor office space that’s littered with unconventional furniture and young tech geniuses wearing hoodies? Or, maybe you see a nap room, a ping-pong table, a kegerator and a calendar item titled, ‘Beer o’clock Fridays’?
Oh, wait! Did the CEO and the Co-founder just have a meeting riding bicycles, while expertly weaving their way through comfortably-messy workstations? In other words, did something like the set of ‘The Internship’ or ‘Silicon Valley’ just pop up in your head? If it did, you’re not alone.
Fluff and Fun
Founders across the world are increasingly influenced by the way pop culture portrays “ideal” startup work culture. This perceived sense of loose standards and unprecedented workplace freedoms has captured the imagination of young, Millennial CEOs and founders. Many of them are convinced that creating such a culture is key to success.
What they wind up creating, however, are startups with hardly disguised ‘bro-cultures’. The socially awkward tech wizards of the past have been replaced by their ‘frat-boy’ counterparts. In the name of handpicking a workforce that’s “culturally in sync”, more and more startups are becoming environments that value social prowess and competitiveness over essential skill sets.
Besides doggedly basing hiring decisions on charisma and “culture fit”, many young entrepreneurs throw away good money on creating workspaces that leave great first impressions on new clients and recruits — after all pool tables, DIY cereal bars and vegan food aren’t free. In fact, modelling your startup’s culture on pop culture stereotypes can end with you making emotional decisions, being at a loss for leadership when crisis hits and losing track of your bottomline.
No Holds Barred
Adopting the stereotypical startup culture can turn your beloved venture into a discriminatory place where toe-stepping and open harassment thrive. Uber is a good case in point. It’s rapid rise to success has been built on an uncontrolled and combative work culture. This past February, Susan Fowler, a former Uber engineer, let the cat out of the bag: In her blog post, she made open accusations of discrimination and sexual harassment by her managers at Uber.
Her revelations have spurred more employees to leave the ride-hail giant. However, many claim that they’ve had to convince hiring managers that they didn’t fare well within Uber’s work culture.
Sadly, Uber isn’t the only startup that’s morphed into something ugly. Tinder, RapGenius ZocDoc and Snapchat have all come under fire for casual misogyny, double standards and sexual harassment of women employees.
In her famous rant on cookie cutter startup culture, Shanley Kane, a product manager, says culture isn’t about superficial privileges like catered food, furniture or fancy team outings. It goes much deeper than that.
Startup Culture 101
In this interview, Kane says startup culture is about picking one good plan of action from a pool of multiple good ideas. It’s about recognizing that a workplace without conventional power structures actually requires more attention. And, it’s about leaving enough room for critiques on your workplace culture by employees.
Other successful entrepreneurs define workplace culture here.
The overriding themes in all their definitions are the emphasis on the bigger picture and the way a company responds to crisis. Molly Graham, who helped refine Facebook’s workplace culture, has three lessons for young startups looking to define who they are.
She suggests that founders and CEOs look within themselves to find the culture that fits their venture perfectly. Startups tend to be almost entirely influenced by the basic traits of their founders. Your personal makeup decides whether your work culture thrives on competitiveness, analytical decision-making or is led by a sense of design. Your startup is almost you.
The second lesson is on converting that personality (yours and your company’s) into a narrative that reflects your company’s mission. And while you’re at it, throw out the cliches and prepare to get controversial.
A cultural narrative that’s built honestly will attract the right kind of talent, who absolutely need to be working with you. It should be an outline to all new and prospective employees about what it means to be “one of you”.
Finally, convert that story into a conversation — one that you repeatedly have with all your stakeholders. However, for it to have a ripple effect, it must be you who spearheads all cultural transformations within your startup. It’s not a job you can assign to someone else. Your message will stick fastest if you’re the one to deliver it and meetings and emails are great spaces to repeat your message for heightened engagement. Be open to letting your company’s culture evolve organically and revisit it every once in awhile to make sure it’s still relevant.
Build Trust Now
Startups should decide early on what kind of company they want to grow into. But most importantly, they need to define how team members treat each other and build trust.
People-centric organizations invariably make for great workplace cultures and have focused trust-building initiatives. It might be a long process, but it’s worth it. Here are four ways you can begin building trust right now.
Cloning another successful company’s workplace culture or building it from what you’ve seen on movies and TV shows isn’t going to work on the long run. Think about everything that went into the creation of your startup, latch onto something that’s unique in that story and build your culture from the ground up. It needs to match your vision for work culture. Nobody else’s matters.
If you’re interested in learning more about how to successfully create a culture that truly reflects your company values, check out the LeadWise Academy.
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