One of the first key tasks for any startup to do is establish a clear work culture. I’m not talking about coming up with a bunch of idealistic sounding words like integrity or happiness, nor is it just forming a vision and mission statement. I’m talking about a deeply ingrained cyclical process that reinforces itself through actions.
Combining my own experience, research and readings, I feel that the follow definition best encapsulates the definition of culture:
Culture is a set of sustainable beliefs and behaviours that drives the interaction and decision-making process of everyone in the company.
Let’s look at the key focus words here:
Behaviours
While traditional culture setting frameworks talk about values, behaviours are a better way to define culture because they are actionable and specific.
Sustainable
Desired behaviours must be aligned with personal ones. That’s not to say developing cultures around behaviours that are not natural or aligned with your own character is bad, it just takes a lot of effort. Imagine acting as an extrovert when you are an introvert by nature.
Everyone
As sweeping as this word can be, I can’t emphasize it more. A culture works only when it is practiced by everyone. Leaders to team members all have a part to play in ensure a great work culture can exist.
Keeping this in mind, let’s take a different look at culture and what it isn't:
No One Sets of Starting a Bad Culture
The first thing to point out is no one starts off trying to set up a bad culture. Any attempt at defining a culture always comes from a good place. But cultures are a result of time and reinforceable actions, so when you hear of examples of negative or toxic work environments, these happen because over time, certain bad behaviours are tolerated and allowed to percolate throughout the business.
Which brings us to point 2...
A Great Culture isn’t about What You Say or Do, But What You Don’t
In Extreme Ownership by Jocko Willink and Leif Babin, the authors describe that in order for teams to be driven to higher levels of performance, the leader sets standards not by what they preach but what they tolerate.
Essentially, seeing bad behaviour and not doing anything about it, means this behaviour becomes the minimum acceptable standard. This is repeated over and over again until a certain set of standards become the culture. Whether intentionally or not, people will push this boundary. If an employee is caught stealing but nothing is done about it, the rest of the team now learns that stealing is acceptable. Clearly this is an extreme example but you get the drift.
There are 2 dimensions to this, behaviours of leaders and behaviours of team members. A leader is expected to exhibit good behaviours at all times as this sets the gold standard to follow. On the other hand, bad behaviour on the part of the leader will not only be copied and set as the new standard, but will lead to negative consequences for the business. This is especially so in a time where social media presence of the leader is closely associated with the business. A leader's behaviour with have a strong bearing to the reputation of the business.
Team members behaviours have a multiplier effect on other members. Hence, good behaviour must be quickly recognised and acknowledged as this helps to reinforce behaviour with reward, while bad behaviour must be similarly called out or punished else it will be seen by others as tolerated.
Culture Isn’t A One Size Fits All
A set of behaviours doesn’t necessarily work for different businesses. Facebook’s motto in the early days was Move Fast, Break Things. While that sounded inspiring to a young engineer looking to change the world, and change the world they did, imagine what would happen if that same motto applied
to Airbus!
A good culture also incorporates the differences between teams, countries and accommodates diversity.
Lastly, a good culture withstands the test of time, a great one evolves with it. Time introduces 2 aspects - stage of the business and size of the team. A business at ideation st
age looks at the world through different cultural lenses than one in a matured and stable stage. Furthermore, how we communicate between a team of 3 founders versus a team of 1000 can be vastly different and the work culture needs to accommodate such subtle but important differences.
Building a great culture is hard work, harder than executing on your venture idea, which is why I emphasise on culture in every venture execution. To be clear, culture isn’t necessary for success but a great culture is what separates a good company from an incredible one.
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