Know Your Cultural Fit
Having a clear company culture is critical. It is important for teams to work in harmony and, as a result, make the company successful. It is also important in attracting new employees as you begin to grow. Google and Zappos are examples of companies that took culture very seriously from the beginning, being explicit about their cultural values. This undoubtedly had significant impact on their brands as they grew from tiny startups to billion dollar publicly traded corporations.
Culture isn’t about perks and fun stuff. They can be manifestations of the culture, but those don’t define culture. For example, Google’s culture doesn’t equate to free food, dogs, and lava lamps. Rather, the culture is about collaboration, openness, and being user-focused at all times. Tony Hsieh wrote an entire book about the culture he cultivated at Zappos. Many startups have a ‘no meeting’ policy as part of an overall company culture that encourages constant team interaction. Whatever they may be, those cultural values should be consistent. It isn’t easy, but it is worth investing the time and energy to define your culture and stick by it. It is way too easy to let it be diluted and when it gets to that point, it is a lot harder to reclaim the original culture.
As valuable as culture and values are for companies, individuals should also know what type of workplace culture works and doesn’t work for them — and, like companies, you should stick by them. It is part of your identity. Don’t take on a role or join a company if you feel like you’re going to have to make major compromises. Flexibility, yes. Compromise, no.
What works for me:
- Trust & respect your colleagues the way you want to be trusted & respected. Let people have true ownership over their work, and praise them for their accomplishments.
- Be open and transparent.
- Be clear, crisp, and straightforward.
- Do a small number of things REALLY, REALLY well vs. a lot of things medium-well.
- Be on time. Respect people’s time by actually being on time for appointments. (I struggle with this, but am trying to get better)
- Collaboration by nature. But making ‘executive decisions’ is ok.
- Meetings are good, as long as they are efficiently run.
- Be responsive by email and IM. (< 12-24 hr maximum)
- An ounce of action is worth a ton of theory. Spend more time actually doing stuff rather than ‘creating strategy’. And in doing stuff, be nimble and move quickly. Failing is ok, as long as you learn from it and move on.
- Have a strong opinion while not being unnecessarily stubborn.
- Have your team’s back. Be loyal and don’t sell them out or throw them under the bus.
- Rarely is feedback or criticism a personal attack on you. So don’t take it that way. Have a thick skin.
- Be positive. I have little patience for Debbie Downers or Moni-can’ts. (only Friends fans will understand the latter ;)
- Don’t waste time on petty things.
Links to past blog posts that also reiterate what’s important to me:
What’s important to you?
