What is company culture?
Is it something that evolves over time or do we need to work at it from the start? Is there more to it than foosball tables, beer fridges and motivational posters?
When you launch a new product you spend months sketching out concepts, designing, building, researching and testing. There are hundreds of little tasks that need to be completed before the product can come together.
You don’t wait for your product to take shape just because you’ve got an excellent, exceptionally smart team tirelessly working on it.
You plan. Set goals. Make sure you are heading in the right direction.
You allow your team the creative freedom necessary to spark innovation while following an overall plan.
The same applies to company culture.
Culture is something you foster.
Back in school you had a few great teachers. The kind that could bring the room to a silence with a single look. They wielded a unique power that brought the best out of everyone. People who would never speak outside the class would interact and help each other.
Then there were the teachers who let the class take its own shape. They’d sit there and let the loudest students take over to the detriment of everyone else.
Both classrooms created a culture. One was purposeful, the other circumstantial.
Which one do you want to model yourself on?
Values matter
HubSpot co-founder Dharmesh Khan spent over 300 hours designing the HubSpot Culture Code. The code lists HubSpot’s priorities, expectations and values.
Zappos was built around a list of 10 core values that every team member has to have.
Zapier has its own mission and values statement.
What does your company stand for? What are your long term goals? What’s your ideal work environment?
This was an important part of how we approached culture design at Skore.
We wanted to build something that was ours. Something that reflected the unique makeup of the company and went beyond perks like foosball tables and free beer (though those have their place.)
So, we began a company wide conversation using a designated Trello board.
We broke down the discussion into five distinct phases, each with a specific briefing and a completion deadline.
Share the best cultural practices you’ve ever heard of
Like most things at Skore, the first stage was about sharing knowledge.
Every team member shared culture aspects they loved from companies they admired.
This was the brainstorm phase where we began adapting other company’s practices to something that would work for us.
What story would you like to tell one day?
Work isn’t just about the paycheck anymore. Especially among millennials, it’s about finding purpose and fulfillment. It’s about being a part of something bigger.
So, we tackled the big question.
When you picture yourself telling people about your company five, ten, years down the line what kind of story do you want to tell?
The “where do you see yourself in five years” question has become cliched. It’s so overused, most of us laugh awkwardly and change the subject.
But, unless you think about it, you can’t get there. The stars aren’t going to magically align. No one will hand you the future you want.
You have to build it.
So we reflected on what we want Skore to be when it grows up.
What’s our core purpose? What do we want to stand for? Where do we want to go?
What’s standing in the way?
Next, we looked at the roadblocks.
Just because you know where you are going, doesn’t mean getting there will be easy.
Building a company and creating a legacy takes time and thousands of hours of hard work. It doesn’t happen overnight- it never has.
It was time to examine the obstacles that prevent us from building the company we want to create and understand them.
Break it down into manageable chunks
Vague goals lead to vague results.
If you want to drive from Patagonia to Alaska, using a globe to navigate the roads will make the journey incredibly hard. Your estimates will be off and you’ll keep getting lost. To be honest, you’ll probably give up on the whole idea before you reach northern Argentina.
That’s why it’s vital to break down the big dreams into smaller, manageable chunks.
If our goals are too vague we aren’t going to get to where we want to be.
How can we make the dream a reality?
It was time to get super specific.
With our vision in mind, we began setting S.M.A.R.T. goals that could come together to make it a reality.
We looked at all the things we had to do, all the checkpoints we had to reach in order to become the company we want to be.
Creating a legacy document
We built Skore so that teams around the world could capture, store and share knowledge in a simple, accessible way.
The way we share knowledge is evolving. What you know today may no longer hold true tomorrow, especially in rapidly evolving tech-fueled fields. Knowledge is in constant state of flux and technology needs to be able to keep up with it.
While Trello facilitated our discussion on culture, now it was time to create a lasting document. One we can keep updating, referring to and sharing during on-boarding with new hires. One that captured our present ideas but could adapt to include future ones.
To create this living document we used Skore.
We used Skore to create a resource that combined curated articles aligned with our vision and upload the original document we created based on the Trello board.
We divided the document into different sections including feedback, personal productivity and procedures. This made it easier to find exactly what we were looking for.
This is a living document. We regularly add relevant curated content and update the master document with any changes and best practices.
Our procedures, our culture, our products- they are all a work in progress. We are committed to continually develop and update them so that they stay relevant.
Because the second a culture stops striving for innovation, it begins the downward spiral toward stagnation.
Stagnation is not a part of our story and it shouldn’t be a part of yours.
Like designing a product, designing a culture is never finished. It evolves with the needs and goals of the individuals that are a part of it.
Big shout-out to the folks at Target Teal who guided us through the entire process.
What do you think about company culture? Should it be designed, organic or a combination of the two?
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