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Company culture and values for startup entrepreneurs
- 1. “Culture eats strategy for breakfast!”
- 2. What constitutes a ‘good’ company culture?
- 3. Why are values important?
- 4. Why are values important? 1. Help you make better decisions
- 5. Mission / Revenue Axis When evaluating a new project or direction… 1. Does it align with your mission? 2. What revenue does it bring?
- 6. Mission / Financial Axis
- 7. Why are values important? 1. Help you make better decisions 2. Keep entrepreneurship alive
- 8. Why are values important? 1. Help you make better decisions 2. Keep entrepreneurship alive 3. Create unique branding
- 9. Why are values important? 1. Help you make better decisions 2. Keep entrepreneurship alive 3. Create unique branding 4. Help you hire the right people
- 10. Zappos - Tony Hsieh “Basically what we're looking for are peoples whose personal values match our corporate values. They're just naturally living the brand. Wherever they are whether they're in the office or off the clock."
- 11. Company values start with the Founder(s)
- 12. Remember: 1. Ideally, no more than five values 2. Avoid generalisms 3. Keep them short: ‘Craft, Surplus, Happiness’ 4. Keep them alive! 5. Embed them into everything you do / say / produce
- 13. Defining your company values 1. What are the values that are most important to you in life? 2. Of these, which ones are most important in your company? 3. Who do you enjoy working with? What are their values? 4. Who do you actively avoid working with? What values do they have or lack?
- 14. Run a litmus test... 1. Is this aspect of the company important to long-term success? 2. Does this aspect need to be maintained forever and is it sustainable? 3. Does this aspect apply to all areas of the company and to all employees? 4. Will establishing this aspect help us make important decisions in the future?
Editor's Notes
- Peter Drucker - ‘the founder of modern management’, developed management by objectives. The way you run your startup in the early days sets the stage for what is acceptable and what’s not in your organisation as you grow. Culture develops out of the way that early startup founders choose to do things.
- Doesn’t come down to a ping pong table and some bean bags!! It sounds fluffy and unimportant, but actually, having a strong and well defined company culture is the backbone of any organisation. having perks does not create a strong, unified, and unique company culture. Decide how you want your company to be, and reverse engineer it to be that way. If you start up as a hectic company then it’s hard to change that further down the line. Build in systems and processes that reflect and strengthen your company culture. Counter example: introducing time sheets at Awamaki - totally against our culture, but necessary as part of Peruvian law. So we build int Time Off in Lieu and kept it super flexible. Company Culture is when your employees’ personal values are aligned with your core company values.
- Values establish your company’s view of the world and determine how you treat others, how you operate on a daily basis, and how you make decisions
- If you think about a decision that you make in your own life, you will find that you are always guided by your own personal values. The same applies for your company – having a set of values will make decision-making so much easier. When faced with a potential business opportunity (or threat), determining whether it aligns or conflicts with your company’s values gives you an insight that numbers alone can’t necessarily provide. Having a strong set of company values that everyone adheres to means that you are more open to making decisions that might be tough in the short term, but that ultimately will help you build a better business in the long term.
- It’s all about TRUST. Acting independently and entrepreneurially, rather than following top-down rules and regulations. Trusting your gut instinct and trusting your co-founders and employees. You escaped your corporate life in part to get away from a top-down, systems-heavy way of working. Having a strong company culture means that you don’t risk bringing those old ways of working into your brand new shiny startup. With an explicit mutual understanding over values, the more engrained the trust is between team members, and the more likely it is that people can act independently and entrepreneurially rather than simply following rules and regulations. Entrepreneurship isn’t just the impetus to begin a startup, it is also the key to all further innovation and creative problem-solving within your company as it scales.
- This is a by-product - can’t be manufactured! Company culture becomes part of your branding. This results in consumer loyalty. Think of Ben & Jerry’s, Innocent Smoothies. Your company’s values are unique to you and impossible to replicate - so you are warding off the competition as well as differentiating your brand.
- Two interviews: one for ability and one for cultural fit. Grant Tree does this, we did this at Awamaki, and at Founder Centric (sorta).
- Tony Hsieh (Shay) Would rather pay people to leave if they don’t fit the company culture than have them stay on.
- The values represent the shared beliefs and attitudes of the founding team and this should be reflected in the brand. Each person within the team will have their own unique personalities and styles, but any experience that anyone has with FC (Communication, workshops, client management) should be uniform in the sense that it exudes the same shared values ‘platform’. Tacit assumptions needs to be made explicit
- Need to be memorable. Three to five is ideal. Make them specific to your company. Avoid generalities like ‘integrity’ Again, need to be memorable Craft: valuing good work, always improving, helping each other to get better, freedom to try new things Surplus: knowing when we have enough, open sourcing our materials, doing the right thing, pursuing individual goals Happiness: working remotely, flexible time, working with people we like, doing work that matters Publish them, make them public, keep them at the top of your mind in meetings etc. And be prepared to be called out on them by others.
- If you have a co-founder, do this independently and together.