Start up life

Working at a high growth startup that is moving at a million miles an hour is a lot of fun. It is also a lot of hard work...

For startups, the 'hard work' bit is rarely a problem. Most people join startups because they are passionate about the mission and are often emboldened by the odds that are stacked against them. Startup people are typically very accountable, positive and predisposed to high levels of ownership. This really helps when you need to get a lot of stuff done.

As a startup begins to scale though, culture becomes increasingly important. With new people joining all of the time and often the new outnumbering the old, it is important to have a strong understanding of the cultural values you want to persist. This is not a trivial thing to achieve. 

How do you establish a benchmark in a sea of rapid change -both in your marketplace and employee base? 

Most company cultures are anchored in something. Most companies either build their identity on past achievements or orientate it around the notable people that started the company or the location from which they are HQ'd. I don't think this is going to work anymore. 

Innovation is so brutal. It doesn't care what you did yesterday, it doesn't care how cool your founders were or where in the world you happened to set up shop. Innovation only cares about what you are going to do next and how you do it. 

Anchoring a culture on 'something' is to set a limit and expiry date on your relevance - no matter how good those 'things' seem now. Instead of anchoring your culture, let it float on the seas of change...

(apologies for the sea analogies, I can't help myself. I was born and raised in Portsmouth - the home of the Royal Navy). 

So what's an alternative? Well, values. Values aren't things, they are not static or retrospective, they are behaviors that we believe will make us successful. 

Most companies establish a set of values at some point, but very few of them are able to actually operate by them. Most default to past behaviours, ignore the values they posted on their website and get back to the standard motion of rewarding 'big achievements' and 'big personalities'. It's easy to see why it happens, as achievement and personality are worthy, immediate and tangible distractions - intoxicating at times. But, it is important to remember that not all achievement is well deserved and more often than not, big personalities reveal themselves as toxic egos over time. It is easy to game a system that rewards the immediate. Values, on the other hand, are difficult to fake but also difficult to reward.

Most companies are too afraid to transition from how they currently recognise their people. It's too much of a departure from familiarity. However, Innovation doesn't care about sentiment, it is only interested in the path ahead. With culture being such a powerful and obvious differentiator, I for one, believe that it is ripe for disruption. 

Culture is an opportunity, not an overhead. 

Thanks for reading,

Chancey