Culture : “Your beliefs become your thoughts, your thoughts become your words, your our words become your actions, your actions become your habits, your habits become your values and your values become your destiny.” — Gandhi
When you start a business, the primary phase is about building the product. The second is about making the company, which will commercialize the product. It doesn’t matter if your product is excellent, if you can’t build an excellent company, it’ll fail. As your startup grows, you’ll have to scale your team. Culture is how you become involved in every decision when your startup becomes too big to actually be involved in every decision. it’s the overall path you would like to follow, the frame of a painting. Culture aligns people and stabilizes the company. It also provides the extent of trust necessary to have debates and exchange opinions.
As a leader, you have to ask yourself these questions: what personal values are most vital to you? What sort of people you’d wish to work with, and what are their benefits? What could never be tolerated? What’r the foremost important values for the business?
You would like to think harder, deeper, and longer about your mission statement and values, than what you thought you needed. Honesty: everybody wants honesty. Teamwork? What level of teamwork? What does it mean in terms of communication (company-wise, at the department and team level, etc.)? How does one make it happen? You’ve got to settle on what to celebrate as a corporation (instead of what you punish, which is more negative). You would like to gauge performance on culture to make sure it becomes a daily habit!
When you hire your first employees, you’re not just hiring them, you’re also bringing in DNA. You would like to take some time to seek out people that strongly match your core values. It is not about hiring someone for the subsequent 3 or 4 features. It’s far more than that. It’s hiring their network and your next ten employees. you would like diversity in background, experience etc., but you would like homogeneity of beliefs! You would like folks that are here to champion the mission — which should be the sole thing that never changes.
Culture may be a silent asset: there are plenty of books about the way to build an excellent product, etc., but only a few about culture. Things that are hard to live are always discounted, but it doesn’t mean they’re worthless. Developing a robust culture is adding to the portfolio of investments.
Brand and culture are two sides of an equivalent coin. A brand is the set of promises that everybody outside the corporate identifies with. Culture is the set of beliefs that you want people inside the corporate to be aligned on. Having a transparent mission is the neatest thing you’ll do for both culture and branding. After all, your employees are making your brand, and your brand builds the reference to your customers.
Companies that are around for an extended time have something in common: a transparent mission and a shared way of doing something really special. The culture got to be designed. you would like to spot and maximize what makes you… well, you!
What is the right growth rate for your startup
What is the fastest way to build a customer centric product ?