Culture is the sum of the way we treat each other and make decisions. It’s shaped by the early founding team and eventually by our stated mission, vision, and values.
In the beginning, the founding team makes decisions together and plays a part in hiring every single person. We implicitly set the culture through our actions without much deliberate effort spent on culture. At this stage, our culture is self-regulating since any bad behavior can be noticed and addressed immediately.
As our company gets bigger, and we no longer are working together all of the time, the risk that we develop a bad culture increases. A single bad hire can become toxic and can metastasize into an environment where we are no longer treated the way we want to be treated, or decisions are made based on self-interest, not the company’s best interest.
Put differently, our culture exists whether we choose to talk about it or not. By talking about culture and codifying our mission, vision, and values, we can intentionally shape its direction.
Shaping our culture is important for three primary reasons:
People want to join a team that stands for something and is passionate about who they are. Having a strong and unique company culture helps us stand out from other companies and gives us language to talk about what makes our team unique.
Also, having a strong culture means more of how people should behave is obvious, and therefore we need fewer rules. With fewer rules, people feel more autonomy and ownership. The best people seek out autonomy and ownership, and so the best people thrive in cultures that are strong.
Lastly, people seek authenticity in their leaders. By walking the walk when it comes to culture, we can demonstrate authentic leadership through our actions.
In a strong culture, people will take action to protect the company when they notice bad decisions happening. Armed with a shared understanding of what behavior at our company is acceptable, people will self-regulate. This also helps limit the number of rules and processes we need to implement as we scale, which limits the formation of bureaucracy.
If we have clear and well-understood culture, people will make decisions similarly to the way the founding team would have made it if they were involved. If we have an unhealthy or a weak culture, these things will happen, and no one will do anything about them. Eventually, these problems will get worse and may cause people to be unhappy or to leave. Once big problems happen within our culture, they are very hard to find and fix.
A company that attracts & retains the best people and makes great decisions is more likely to succeed. This might seem like an obvious statement, but it is worth saying explicitly. We are still a small startup, and our success is not guaranteed. We should define our values with this lens, recognizing that we can’t coddle ourselves with extravagant perks or benefits in the name of “culture.” That’s not what culture is all about. We have to earn the right to reward ourselves with these perks by building a successful company first and foremost.