The document outlines the company's culture, defined by its purpose, core values, and daily practices, emphasizing a commitment to empowering and inspiring employees. Key principles include aiming high, being radically truthful, and learning from experiences, fostering an environment of transparency and constructive feedback. The document encourages proactive initiatives, honest communication, and adaptation based on failures, promoting an idea meritocracy where contributions are valued regardless of their source.

1. Our Culture

2. Culture is a company’s character
Our company’s culture is defined by three things:
1. Our purpose: is who we are, why we exist and why the world should care
about us.
2. Our core values: say how we go about fulfilling our purpose, they are the
actions we take so that our purpose can come to life.
3. What we do: we don’t just have a culture, we live our culture. Everything we
do as a company is an embodiment of our purpose through our core values.
Being part of this company means that, in one way or another, this culture
resonates with you.

3. Our Purpose
To Empower and Inspire Others to
Tackle their Challenges Differently

4. Core principles and HOWs
- Aim High, Run Fast
- Set challenges that will defy your skills (inspire)
- Implement the most efficient solution (empower)
- Be radically truthful
- Care deeply and challenge directly (it is their challenges)
- Tell the truth, no matter how hard (empower)
- Learn From Everything
- Always question your current knowledge (differently)

5. Run Fast
Speed is not about pushing harder or working longer hours. Speed is about
efficiency. In many cases the laziest person is also the fastest.
We try to always go for the highest impact with the lowest amount of friction. This
means that the lowest hanging fruit may not be the right ones to pick. Instead, we
look for the highest fruit that we can reach right now.

6. Traits that align with our values
● Aim high, run fast
○ Ambition
○ Initiative
○ Passion
● Be radically truthful
○ Honesty
○ Transparency
○ Inclusion
● Learn from everything
○ Curiosity
○ Introspection
○ Grit

7. 1. Aim High, Run Fast

8. Aim High
We always aim to smash any target that’s put in front of us. This does not mean it
always happens, but it does mean we do everything in our power to make it so.
We have to be proactive to make things happen. This includes taking initiative
even when you think something is “not your job”. If you care about something, it’s
likely that someone else will too. Bring stuff up.
And we never do things one way just because that’s how it’s always been done.
Ambition requires innovation.

9. 2. Be Radically Truthful

10. Be Radically Truthful
A lot of our Radical Truthfulness is based around two frameworks: Radical Candor
(by Kim Scott) and Principles (by Ray Dalio). At the core of these two frameworks
is a simple principle: care deeply and challenge directly. You must do both
those things every time you communicate, or you risk becoming either
obnoxiously aggressive or ruinously empathetic.
Everything starts with listening. If you don’t listen actively you may miss a lot of
feedback that will let you improve, or a signal from someone that may make what
we do much better. Listen, listen, and listen again.

11. Be Radically Truthful
Sometimes we will have to give feedback that might hurt people’s feelings. But because we
care about each other, and want everyone to improve all the time, we do not hold back
that feedback. If we withhold feedback, or information, it creates an environment of
mistrust. It is up to the receiver of radical truthfulness to be radically open minded.
Remember however, that being radically truthful must come from a place of love, so there is
no place for rudeness or arrogance.
We work in a place where ideas matter, and who has them doesn’t. Being radically
truthful and radically open minded creates the environment for ideas to flourish.
It is important that anything that is said under this framework to be objective,
observational, and never meant as a personal attack.

12. Be Radically Truthful
We afford a lot of transparency to everyone in the company. For example,
everyone can join any meeting that they feel they are able to provide a
contribution to, and every two weeks we have a company retrospective where we
openly discuss the events of the last fortnight.
This transparency is a privilege, and is not afforded to everyone. We take it very
seriously and would never divulge any of this information outside of the company.

13. 3. Learn From Everything

14. 3. Learn From Everything
We will all make mistakes. We will all have failures.
What matters is that we learn how to not repeat the same mistakes. This requires
transparency and openness about failure. Without failure, there is no learning and if we
are not failing then we probably are not aiming high enough.
We gather information and find a solution. These are two distinct steps, and should not
be mixed together.
We strive to push ourselves to do things better / faster / more intelligently.
This is also reflected in our company retrospectives, where we often find new improvements
to how the company works.

15. How does this work in practice?

16. We practice Radical Candor
A framework for Radical Truthfulness is Radical Candor, as described in Kim
Scott’s book by the same name. There are copies around the office, so please
grab one and read it. The fundamental components are care personally and
challenge directly.
The most important principle about both Radical Candor and Radical Truthfulness
is that they both start with listening and always keeping an open mind.

17. You don’t have to agree about everything
It is OK, and in fact encouraged, to have thoughtful disagreement. Difference of opinion
creates genuine debate, and when approached with a radical mindset it produces incredible
results and valuable learning. Thoughtful disagreement should always begin with all parties
working to understand the other party’s opinion. Only then a truthful conversation can begin.
However, sometimes people will just “agree to disagree”. In these cases, there needs to be
an agreed process for making decisions when a consensus hasn’t been reached. In an idea
meritocracy, where ideas, not people, win, this means creating a system of weighted
opinions. Whilst we don’t do this formally, it should be followed as a principle to give higher
weight to the opinions of the most believable people on a topic.

18. Don’t make it (or take it) personal(ly)
When being radically truthful or transparent, remember that it’s the ideas, not the
people, who are the object of discussion.
When being on the receiving end of radical truthfulness, remember that everything
that is said is meant in the spirit of improving the company, and use the
observations as a starting point for introspection and learning.

19. Different people have different ways of thinking
One of the principal reasons behind communication problems lies in the fact that
we all have different personalities and intellectual traits. Things like being a “left
brain” or a “right brain” should be taken into account when entering thoughtful
disagreement.
Every individual’s character strengths should be also taken into account when
deciding how to divide work.

20. Recommended materials
- “Radical Candor” by Kim Scott
- “Principles” by Ray Dalio
- “The Trillion Dollar Coach" by Eric Schmidt and Jonathan Rosenberg
- “How Google Works” by Eric Schmidt and Jonathan Rosenberg
- “Start with WHY” by Simon Sinek
- “Leaders Eat Last" by Simon Sinek
- “The Growth Mindset” by Carol S Dweck
- “Blitzscaling” by Reid Hoffman
- “Measure What Matters” by John Doerr
- https://www.radicalcandor.com/radical-candor-not-brutal-honesty/