From culture fluff to important stuff
This post shares some of the experiences we (Unloc), as an early-stage company, have had from building our company culture, and dives into a few of the concepts that have helped shape our ways of working. If anyone outside of the company finds this interesting and perhaps has some insights or learnings to share, that is appreciated (please comment below👇). To a large extent though, this post is written for ourselves as yet another way for us to communicate how we think about our company culture and why it matters (they say writing is a great tool for sharpening your thoughts and ideas, right?✍️ )
It is worth mentioning that our approach will likely not suit every company out there, but it is proving very successful for us; we have managed to attract and retain top talent and we constantly get top scores on employee engagement surveys.
Content of this post:
- A personal note
- How we look at culture and why it is important
- Our journey with values and company culture
- Examples of what we do to live by our values
- 1️⃣ Presentation of the concepts that help shape our culture and values
- 2️⃣ Ways of working
- 3️⃣ Development sessions
- 4️⃣ Value interviews
- 5️⃣ Onboarding of new employees
- Learnings
A personal note
My background is in management consulting and startup investing, so up until I started in Unloc, most of my career focused on viewing companies from the ‘outside’. Looking in, and not being part of the daily operations, also meant that I was much more interested in the companies’ numbers and stats rather than their culture and values. To be honest, all the talk about the importance of culture seemed quite fluffy to me.
Then I got on the ‘inside’ when I started working as COO in Unloc late summer 2020. By chance really, we started reading about Netflix, which led us to start studying and discussing their culture. There is plenty of material about the impressive Netflix culture, but if you don’t have time to read all of it, we would recommend this HBR article and the book No Rules Rules by Reid Hastings.
Inspired by Netflix, we started discussing if people in our company really knew what our culture was and whether our values were just nice branding or if they actually played a role in the day-to-day operations of the company. What we found was that as the company had grown, things had changed, and many employees found it hard to understand what our values meant to them day-to-day. Not good.
It might seem obvious that you should care about nurturing your company culture, especially in the early days of building your company where you experience so much change. The reality is though; you have a million things to think (and worry) about all the time. When do we need to raise money? What if we don’t sign this customer? What if we don’t hire this great candidate? And so on. With all the challenges constantly being thrown at you, it is not always easy to prioritize culture, which often doesn’t have a visible short-term effect on performance. I like to describe a strong company culture as a “long-term asset” that requires continuous investments (time, joint focus and commitment) in order to become increasingly valuable. So that’s what we do.
Before we start, let’s have a quick intro to how we look at culture and why it is important
What is company culture?
If you start googling the definition of company culture, you quickly find that there are many different takes on this, though many of them are quite similar. In the ocean of definitions we have found two that we think provide the best descriptions. We boil these down to a short and sweet definition of culture that we use in Unloc:
Setting a strong company culture requires saying no ⛔
Culture and values can inflict pain. It can make some employees feel like outcasts. It can limit an organization’s strategic and operational freedom and constrain the behavior of its people.
It sounds tough and counterintuitive, but if your culture is for everyone, then it is really for no one. You need to define which company you desire to be and that entails saying no to actions, behaviors or people who do not share the company’s values — this is easier said than done.
Why is company culture important?
The numbers speak for themselves.
Ok, we can agree it is important, but how do you go about creating a strong company culture? 🤔
I have mapped out our culture journey below, provided some examples of how we go about living our values and lastly, listed some of our learnings from this process.
Our journey with values and company culture
To give some context to where we are today and how we got there, I have written up a simple timeline from the company’s inception until the time of writing this post (winter of 2022).
Fall, 2017 — The foundation
Employees: 2
Unloc was founded by Kris Riise and August Flatby. The two agreed on a list of principles upon which they wanted to build their company:
- Trust in each other’s capabilities to make the right decisions
- Creative use of technology to solve real problems
- Freedom to work how and from where we want
Spring, 2020 — Defining our values
Employees: 15
The management team and a group of selected employees conducted a number of workshops, facilitated by an external agency, with the purpose of translating the company’s underlying philosophy into a list of values. In groups, the team had to answer questions like:
What characterizes us as a company?
What makes us unique?
What motivates our target group?
Based on the answers, the agency helped us identify and refine our values. The first draft was presented to the entire Unloc team, who were asked to provide input and feedback. After several iterations, we finally landed on the values that reflect the company culture we want to build.
Fall, 2020 — Figuring out how to live our values
Employees: 25
We quickly realized that just listing a set of values wouldn’t do much for Unloc. In a startup environment, where dynamics are constantly changing and the rate of new hires is high, you can easily find yourself drifting away from your original company values, unless these have been ‘brought to life’ across the company — established as an underlying philosophy that guides the behavior and decision making of all employees in their everyday work life. We asked ourselves:
“Are all Unloc employees familiar with our values? Do these values play a role in their everyday work life?’’
The answer was no.
Most people were familiar with the values, but many struggled to see how they played a role in the day-to-day business of running the company. Since our cultural ambitions went beyond just making a cool value poster for the office wall, we started brainstorming how we could ensure that our values actually serve their purpose.
The first thing we did was to revisit our values (Freedom, Creativity and Collaboration) and reword them into statements that better reflect the mentality and behavior that characterize an Unlocer. After several iterations internally, and a lot of (!) input from our fellow team members, we signed off on our new and more actionable values that everyone could relate to. We also added a bit of personal edge and playfulness to the values by formulating them in true Unloc spirit (‘’you have the key’’, ‘’open doors’’ etc., see below), and by making a suitable illustration to symbolize each value (which btw is a great way to help people refer to the values, e.g. through using them as emojis in Slack)
The value of Freedom became 👉 “You have the key”:
The value of Creativity became 👉 “Open new doors”:
The value of Collaboration became 👉 “Better together”:
In addition to this, we established a dedicated “culture squad”; a team of employees responsible for 1) ensuring that everyone knows our values and understands how to practice these on a day-to-day basis, and 2) taking initiative to build a stronger and more sustainable culture at Unloc — with a lot of creative freedom! The culture squad consists of 4–6 Unlocers, who are selected for a period of 4 months on a rotating basis, to ensure that most Unlocers get the opportunity to contribute to developing our culture. The work of the culture squad comes in addition to their regular tasks and responsibilities — still, the culture squad concept has been greatly appreciated by our team.
Winter, 2022 — Living our values
Employees: 40
Now, approximately one year after establishing the culture squad, we are extremely happy with the results. One simple thing that has proven very valuable has been the rotation of employees in and out of the squad. By including people from across the whole organization, our cultural agenda is enriched by the views and creativity of a diverse group of people with different backgrounds, experiences and ways of thinking. Another benefit to rotating employees is that people take more ownership of our culture and values once they have been working autonomously and hands-on with the topic. This makes it our culture, and not “the management’s” culture. Every time we discuss changes that could affect our current values, the culture squad is involved and has to give their view before any action is taken.
Below, I have summarized a short status on where we are now in terms of how we work with our company values and culture.
Five examples of what we do to live by our values
- 1️⃣ Presentation of the concepts that help shape our culture and values
- 2️⃣ Ways of working
- 3️⃣ Development sessions
- 4️⃣ Value interviews
- 5️⃣ Onboarding of new employees
1️⃣Presentation of the concepts that help shape our culture and values
We believe that the best way for people to acknowledge and adopt a new concept is to provide them with a good understanding of the fundamentals of, and rationale behind, the given concept. Therefore, we ask all employees to read some of the most relevant content that has shaped our thinking about culture.
Don’t fuck up the culture (Airbnb)
Does corporate culture drive financial performance?
Below we go through 3 of the most important concepts 👇
Concept I: Psychological safety
Source: Building a psychologically safe workplace, Amy Edmondson (LINK)
Definition 📍
It means that you are not hindered or held back by interpersonal fear. It is a belief that one will not be punished or humiliated for speaking up with ideas, questions, concerns, or mistakes.
Psychological safety is however not immunity to bad performance or bad behavior. It is not about being nice. It is about candor and making it possible to have productive disagreement.
The goal is to open the door for employees, colleagues, and stakeholders to raise concerns or voice ideas in a safe, open environment.
Why it matters 💪
Cultures with higher levels of psychological safety are associated with higher levels of team performance. This makes intuitive sense. If you don’t feel safe around your colleagues to ask questions, make mistakes and learn from them, then you’ll almost certainly waste time and energy trying to act like everything is fine.
Psychological safety supports a team or organizational culture so that people can:
- share information and knowledge
- suggest organizational improvements
- take initiative to develop new products and services
- learn from their mistakes and those of others
Concept II: Accountability
Definition 📍
Accountability at work refers to the idea that every employee should take ownership of the work they have been given. An employee who is accountable will always take responsibility for his or her actions and their outcomes.
Accountability is all about setting and holding people to a common expectation by clearly defining the company’s mission, values, and goals.
While accountability at work is critically important, it also needs to be balanced with the need to give employees autonomy in their roles. They must feel empowered to do their jobs so they can take ownership of their work and strive for excellence.
Why it matters 💪
Accountable employees take psychological ownership for seeking out solutions that will promote a company’s goals, which naturally promotes engagement in the workplace.
Accountability empowers employees to not only recognize the critical gaps between current and desired results and take ownership for closing those gaps, but also to employ creative troubleshooting in order to develop and implement effective, innovative solutions to existing problems.
When you hold all employees accountable for doing what they are supposed to do, it breeds trust among individuals and teams. It allows people to count on each other, whether that means meeting deadlines, fulfilling duties, or feeling comfortable enough to approach a co-worker or manager for help.
Combining these two concepts you get ‘The matrix of psychological safety and accountability’
Striving for the ‘Learning zone’
The team leader creates stretch goals and challenges direct reports to improve and strongly believes they can achieve. A leader in this zone treats employees like athletes pushing them to continually improve — breaking their best records, not by a few degrees but through dramatic improvement. Employees work in a supportive environment where they work together to break their records every day. This only works when the leader leads by example, works hard to ensure they are trusted by the team and encourages team members to trust one another.
Concept III: Feedback
Why it matters 💪
You need feedback to reach your full potential. Imagine being an athlete; how would you improve your performance without feedback?
All people have blind spots, and most likely more than they are aware of themselves. You need feedback and perspectives from others to help you uncover your blind spots and areas of improvement.
Feedback promotes honesty and trust and can help to avoid major mistakes.
Giving feedback 📢
Prepare your feedback and make it specific. Think about key information to share, how to deliver the feedback and have clear examples to share.
Focus on your tone, i.e. how we say it. Focus on being informal, approachable and empathetic. Help the other person find solutions. Create a comfortable environment
Listen. Allow for processing time for the other person. Ask the other person for their perspective.
Create a forward focus and frame feedback constructively. Focus on future opportunities. Explore how the person can use this information to help them improve.
Receiving feedback 👂
Ask for feedback in a specific area, e.g. rather “did I come across as an expert on our product in my latest customer presentation?” vs “how am I as an employee?”
Be grateful for receiving feedback even if you don’t agree with it. It is up to you what you do with the feedback.
Take a step back and be as objective as possible. Remember that we all see things differently and that perspective is just an opinion.
Try to get a rounded perspective (ask more than one person for feedback).
2️⃣ Ways of working
Based on our values, we have defined our “ways of working” which help provide a better understanding of what the values mean day-to-day (you will notice that many of these are closely connected with the concepts we went through above)
Our ways of working:
- 📢 We empower and encourage everyone to voice their opinion and share even their wildest ideas.
- 🥇 We embrace the challenge and dare to be first-movers. We either win or learn.
- 🗻We don’t restrict how, when or where we work, as long as the outcome is awesome.
- 🪴 We ask for and give the gift of candid feedback to help each other grow.
- 🤩 We obsess over our customers and users, and love to exceed expectations.
- 💡 We are driven by curiosity and committed to lifelong learning.
3️⃣ Development sessions
Every sixth month we arrange development sessions for all employees, where they receive feedback on their strengths and development areas from their peers and other people they have been working closely with. As part of this process, each employee is scored based on how true he or she is to our ways of working in their everyday work life. This practice is greatly inspired by Airbnb, and how they work to live their values.
4️⃣ Value interviews
All new potential hires at Unloc must go through a value interview hosted by the culture squad before getting a potential job offer. In these interviews the culture squad asks the candidates a range of questions to check whether their values align with those of the company. E.g., for our value “Better Together”, we will ask questions to understand if the candidate enjoys working with others and whether they are in fact a true team player.
Examples:
Q: Tell me about a time when someone else helped you work better?
Q: What about a time when you helped someone else work better?
The value interviews ensure that we hire people that share our common ground in terms of mindset, relations and work ethics, which we consider essential to maintaining — and further building — our strong company culture.
5️⃣ Onboarding of new employees
The famous venture capital investor, Ben Horowitz, once said:
“One of the ways the culture moves and gets set, is when new people are coming into the organization, it’s what they see on their first day”.
Furthermore, there is plenty of research to suggest that a well-structured onboarding process has a positive effect on employee retention and effectiveness. Thus, it makes a lot of sense, from a business perspective, to invest in the onboarding process for new employees 👇
Each new employee gets their own onboarding page with a personalized message from their buddy.
A plan for the coming months.
And links to where the new employee can find relevant material and information that he/she needs to get started.
So, what have we learned?
Three key learnings💡
- Building and maintaining a strong company culture is hard work and doesn’t happen by itself. My friend once described a relationship as something that slowly depreciates over time if you don’t keep reinvesting. I believe the same applies to company culture.
- A strong company culture is a moving target. The world changes, we change, the business changes and thus, we constantly need to evaluate whether our values and ways of working are still right for us or whether they should be revised.
- Company culture is often quite intangible, which is why many find it to be fluffy and struggle to see its value. Thus, a lot of time and effort is needed to communicate and explain why we care so much about our culture. One way we do this is by presenting various research on the topic and explain the concepts that have inspired us.
Anything to share?️🙋♀️🙋♂️
We are always ready to learn from others, so if you have any great ideas or input, don’t hold back → write me directly (esben@unloc.app) or share your thoughts in the comments section below.
In case you want to know more about us👉 Unloc website
