Building Startup Culture: Part 1
Building Startup Culture: Part 1
Startup culture differentiates the great from the mediocre. Let's glance through a few startup stages:
Assuming the startup has achieved a strong product-market fit, culture defines ongoing performance.
How should a founder set, maintain and evolve the culture? One simple way is to use a gardening analogy. Two equations help:
Write it down in simple words. Shorter the better. This is the first draft.
Successful gardening takes constant effort. And it is addictive. Building an impactful startup is similar. No slacking on culture and making it an obsession.
Next Note:
- Solo Founder: This is the simplest case. The solo founder's way of working becomes the startup culture.
- Two or More Founders: Founders who have spent time together before the startup do better. The average of their working style becomes the startup culture.
- Initial and Ongoing Hires: This is when it starts getting complicated. Things break. Divergence creeps in.
Assuming the startup has achieved a strong product-market fit, culture defines ongoing performance.
How should a founder set, maintain and evolve the culture? One simple way is to use a gardening analogy. Two equations help:
- Weeds = Divergence
- Stunted Plant Growth = Mediocre Startup Performance
- First things first. Before starting the startup, picture how you will work:
- Daily Habits
- Methods for Problem-Solving
- Approaches to Scenarios
- Mindset and Thinking
Write it down in simple words. Shorter the better. This is the first draft.
- After a few months, pick a low-stress time. And compare how you worked with the first draft. Recalibrate and re-write. This is the real first draft. What you wrote earlier were your thoughts.
- Out of sight is out of mind. Share the culture with every hire.
- Build all processes keeping culture in mind. This will lead to low execution stress. You won't need to explain "why" before starting any task.
- Weeds deprive surrounding growth by sucking all essential nutrients. A small occurrence of toxic culture is similar. It will affect the performance of all team members who deal with the toxic behavior. Treat it immediately. The more you prolong, the more the roots spread.
- Before planting a new crop, good gardeners test out with one sapling. If it thrives, they plant more. Use the same strategy to improve the existing culture. Hire a new team member with a different way of working. Observe if the new hire works out well and amplifies team performance. If yes, revise the draft.
- In an existing garden, if plants are showing stunted growth, the root cause is the soil. Fixing this is serious work. One needs to dig out pretty much everything and add the good stuff to the soil to spur growth. In the case of a startup, fixing the soil means changing the beliefs and habits. This is hard but doable. Identify the early adopters of change. Everyone else will copy and adapt. Some will leave. Leverage cross-functional movement to reduce attrition.
- Manure and fertilizer help a garden to bloom. Equity and small frequent incentives are the startup equivalents.
- You can't manufacture rain. If the climate is dry, then you need to plant a different set of crops. The same holds for the startup. Not every qualified potential hire will be a cultural fit. Develop a toolkit to identify cultural fit for potential hires.
- Before starting a garden in a new climate, talk to other gardeners in the same climate zone. Get viewpoints from successes and failures. Both are key.
- Throughout this process, reiterate and over-communicate. In today's world of infinite distractions, it takes longer for things to sink in.
Successful gardening takes constant effort. And it is addictive. Building an impactful startup is similar. No slacking on culture and making it an obsession.
Next Note:
- Building Startup Culture: Part 2
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