Getting startup culture right
We agree that culture is key, but where to start?
In recent years, company culture has become a key criteria for attracting and retaining the best talent. For early stage startups looking to recruit, often you have little more than a vision, an MVP and your culture to bargain with, so getting the culture piece right becomes ever more important. But culture is a tricky beast to tame — it is born organically but must be shaped with intention. So how do you build a great company culture?
What is culture anyway?
It’s important to establish what culture actually is, and what it isn’t. In startups, your culture is a combination of:
- The personality of your company
- Your values
- Your norms and rituals
- Your mission and long-term vision
Simply put, culture is “the way we do things around here”.
Culture is the glue between all of the things that happen day to day in a startup. It’s the way you interact with each other, the atmosphere in the office on days when things are going well and — when everything is going wrong.
Culture isn’t…
To borrow from Netflix’s famous culture slide deck, culture isn’t a few adjectives on a wall.
Creating culture in startups
Culture is often something that is neglected by first-time founders but it’s crucial for success in early-stage companies when you have nothing else to lean on, no customers, no revenue, no product etc.
For those founders that do consider culture important I often hear them talk about the need to create their culture. They often plan to do this via a team offsite afternoon spent brainstorming —post-its are usually involved.
I don’t think this exercise is the greatest idea for a few reasons:
You already have a culture
First of all, this exercise implies you’re starting from a blank page and can make your culture whatever you want. This isn’t really true. Culture can’t be faked.
Whether you know how to explain it or not, if you have a group of people being and doing things together, you already have a culture.
So how can you figure out what your existing culture is?
Look at the decisions you made in the past where grey area existed. And if you’re still uncertain, look at what recently got rewarded, tolerated and punished.
Descriptive > Aspirational
Many startups fall into the trap of designing an aspirational company culture, based on the best case scenario of who they’d like to be, instead of a descriptive company culture about who they are.
A descriptive culture will beat an aspirational one every time, so you’re far better off defining a culture that is closer to reality. Why?
Imagine you do this exercise and announce to your team that your company culture is “a fun, collaborative place that values transparency, excellence and getting stuff done.”
On paper, it sounds pretty good, but then your team start thinking about the time they asked you to better understand the fundraising process and were told it didn’t concern them, or about the last hire who hasn’t really delivered anything except bad jokes since they started.
When you tell your team that the sky is green but they can clearly see that it’s blue, you undermine the entire system.
I often talk about the ‘gap principle’. If your employer branding is excellent but the actual experience a candidate has during recruitment is only okay, there is a gap. If you treat candidates like royalty but your onboarding is average, there is a gap. In that gap lives disappointment, sometimes regret, and the motivation to respond to that last recruiter’s InMail about another role. The same is true of cultural gaps.
If you claim your culture is A when really it is B, it makes it very hard for employees to trust you, and it makes it even less likely you’ll be able to shift your culture to A. All change starts from the realisation that there is a need to change.
What if you discover that your culture… isn’t great?
What if you go through the process of describing your current culture and realise that you’ve created a cultural monster? You discover you’ve been valuing hours in the office over results, secrecy and individualism over openness and collaboration and *gasp* you’ve hired some brilliant jerks.
Does that mean you’re stuck with that?
Thankfully, no.
How to change culture?
Culture isn’t set in stone, but change requires being intentional about it.
The best way to change culture is to first make the change, then talk about it. Why? Because actions speak much louder than words.
If your goal is to be more transparent but you’re starting from a secretive culture, don’t use the word transparent out loud for at least six months. Just start being increasingly transparent until it’s a habit and then you can say to the team “oh hey, by the way, we wanted to start being more transparent, that’s why we did XYZ — what else can we do?”.
Should you hire for culture fit?
There’s been a lot of debate in recent times about whether you should hire for skills, or for cultural fit. For me, the answer is both, but I don’t love the term cultural fit.
People are pretty flexible and can fit in a range of different cultures, as long as they don’t oppose their core values. And cultural fit is passive. It implies walking in, talking a look around and saying ‘yeah, I can live with this’. Instead, what we like to talk about at Sqreen is hiring people who will actively contribute to and improve our culture.
That’s how you make sure your culture scales as you do.
TL;DR
Culture is key to attracting and retaining great people but it doesn’t happen by accident. A great culture comes from taking an honest look at who you are and how you do things today, then intentionally changing for the better tomorrow. And lastly, hire people who will add something to your culture, rather fit into it.
Want to know more about how we approach culture @ Sqreen? Stay tuned for Part Two, coming soon.
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