Dear Founder,
From day one it’s important to pay attention to culture. What is it that you want your company to stand for? What is its purpose? What are its values? How are people treated? What do you think about flexible work hours? Working remotely? How do you address performance issues? I could go on and on…
This may seem overwhelming, but a culture develops whether you design it or not. That’s why it’s essential to:
- Have a point of view on what culture you want to have.
- Live and model what you’ve stated your culture to be.
Step one, in setting your culture:
- Don’t pick up somebody else’s culture and adopt it as your own. Authenticity matters. You have to develop a point of view on what you want this company to be—otherwise it won’t work. Sure, people say imitation is the highest form of flattery, but when it comes to startup culture, following the fad of the day is a recipe for failure. Copycat cultures—whether it be a me-too foosball table or giving everyone weird job titles with the word ninja in them—will never last. The best way to build a strong culture is to start at the beginning, by paying attention to your values and thinking about what types of practices will celebrate and extend them. A strong culture is a genuine culture.
- How do you decide what’s important? It starts with asking a series of questions. These questions all have unique answers that can help identify who you are and what your company cares about. Questions like:
- How frugal are you? (Josh James, the founder of Domo, wrote a great blog post (link: http://www.joshjames.com/2012/04/dont-spend-money/) about why he didn’t replace the stained carpet in his new office, saying it was a great reminder to stay “scrappy.”)
- How do you show you care for and nurture your employees? When I was CEO at LiveOps and the CFO wanted to cut free food, I couldn’t allow that to happen because it would send the wrong signal to employees.
- What does your office space look like? At eBay I was shocked when I found out I’d be working in a cubicle, but then I realized Meg Whitman did too and this arrangement exemplified the open and collaborative style that defined the workplace.
- Do you have a learning environment? What are the opportunities to receive mentorship and personal growth? Facebook has a “hackamonth” where employees take a month off to pursue a project they’re passionate about. Bain allows employees in their third year to take a six-month “externship” where they work in a different office, or for a different organization.
- Do people have to come into the office, or can they work from home? At WIN, we value outcomes over facetime, and allow people to work from wherever they want.
- What working hours are expected? At Salesforce, employees get seven days a year off to volunteer. This reinforces that people are at the company to do more than their jobs—they also spend time engaging with their communities.
- How long are people supposed to stay in the office? (Google’s on-site laundry facility shows that the company encourages employees to spend more time at work than at home.)
- How are deadlines managed? At WIN, deadlines are self-imposed and important; we also have a mandate to be responsive in hours, not days.
- What about pets, are they allowed in the office? I didn’t appreciate getting licked on my head by a Labrador Retriever who found his way to my cubicle when I was CEO at LiveOps, but his owner appreciated having him there.
- How do you welcome new people? At LiveOps, I welcomed every new hire on their first day. We also brought doughnuts in and asked people to come by and say hello to the new folks. Unfortunately this ignited another cultural phenomenon—the startup 20-pound weight gain!
- How do you manage departures? In the early days at eBay, we didn’t spend much time acknowledging exits. However, we eventually became more enlightened about supporting individuals chasing their dreams, and we began to celebrate them on their way out.
- How do you deal with problems? Do you tell people about them early or do you wait? At HP Meg Whitman implemented a “24 hours to resolve or escalate” policy. At eBay and LiveOps, we had post-mortems on each issue encountered. By not making it a blame game, we encouraged people to ask for help early and to learn from their mistakes.
- It is also important to consider how your culture might evolve as the company changes and grows. What works with three founders doesn’t work for 50 people or 5,000. We had to focus on this at eBay. We had to figure out how to stay true to our core values while being open to changing some of our practices. (We never lost the focus that we were a marketplace and making our sellers successful was job #1, but we did change processes. For example, I couldn’t make every final decision on new features or every budget line item when we got bigger.)
- One thing to keep in mind is that a culture gets calcified very quickly. At the same time, the world is constantly changing and evolving and cultures must be fluid enough to keep up. Consider, for example, how command and control, once the management style that defined a generation of companies, has largely been deemed uncool. If your culture is not attractive to the next generation of employees and you don’t change it, you will lose people.
- Founders should do a culture check every six months with the question: Do we still believe in this? What used to work won’t always work, so be ready to change. You have to ask yourself about which elements of your culture you will take with you as you grow, and which you will leave behind.
I believe that authenticity is a crucial element of the strongest cultures, as it provides a solid foundation yet is also flexible and fluid. This type of culture will never come from copying anyone else’s company—it comes from creating something you believe in.
As I said in the beginning, your company will have a culture. You can take overt action to assert and live the culture you want, or it will grow organically. It’s your choice.
All the best,
Maynard
P.S. I’ve included an appendix with this letter, which describes the cultures at various organizations I’ve worked at. I’ve included this to show you that there’s no one formula. Some of these places could not be more different from each other!