A mild case of culture

Culture as DNA

Rollo Wenlock, the Founder of Wipster, once said to me: “All startups are like babies; they all look the same when they are born but grow up to be very different from each other.” I think this is true.

The DNA of a company is its culture. And just like in mammalian reproduction, the future behaviour of a company gets set at conception (or thereabouts) and is stubbornly hard to shift over time.

The sooner founders and leaders in startups realise this, the better.

I don’t want to spend too much of my preciously assigned column word limits defining what culture is or is not, but for my purposes, it is the agreed-upon collection of expectations, practices, and values that are understood by the team in your startup and inform the choices and behaviours of its members. As the saying goes, you know it when you see it.

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The Why

There are some really good reasons to pay attention to your company’s culture right from the start.

• A clearly defined culture helps you make decisions faster. As I have stated time and again, the ONLY competitive advantage of a startup in a market is its ability to go faster than incumbents and would-be competitors. The biggest enabler of your acceleration – alongside talent – is the clarity of your culture.
• It helps you stand out and resonate in your market. Customers – particularly in the B2B markets within which I work – are sensitive to the kind of companies they want to do business with. They will pay more and fight harder to do business with a company whose culture they can understand and one that appeals to them.
• You attract people who will better fit your organisation and mission. Yes, employees care about the nature of their work, their pay, and their functional responsibilities, but what keeps them on course is culture. The other side of this coin is that much management time is distracted by dealing with people who “don’t fit in.” Wearing your culture on your sleeve gives you plenty of time back.
• Similarly, culture is well demonstrated to increase engagement (which, in turn, increases staff retention) and “discretionary effort”; going above and beyond for teammates and customers alike. This increases the yield you get from your few precious startup peeps, which will usually be your biggest expense line.

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How to Make a Baby

To most action-minded entrepreneurs, culture feels like an ethereal thing to implement. It does not feel solid, or real-world enough, or something that should be prioritised. To some extent, that is true, but here are some suggestions on how to bring your startup culture to life:

• Agree your values (obviously!) And if they are to be useful, make sure that each has a ‘shadow’. For example, ‘excellence’ as a value is a little predictable but made more concrete with the defined shadow; e.g. “we are prepared to go slower to get to something resembling perfection”. Once defined, publish these widely and visibly.
• Define the behaviours associated with your values and the conduct you expect from your people every day in lucid terms. And when you have done so, embed these into job descriptions, feedback cycles, etc. Be specific. If your kids or parents don’t understand them, you are likely waffling.
• Celebrate manifestations of culture. Don’t have an ‘Employee of the Month’; have ‘Excellent Employee of the Month’. Similarly with punishment – if people breach the norms and expectations of the company and its culture, you can and should punish them. For some reason, this feels taboo in work environments these days, but in a way that is not true in sports teams or peer groups. 
• Create unique rituals and habits that perpetuate these daily. Yes, they can get repetitive and tedious, but you should spend time figuring out how to make them less so. Be brave and interesting – and experiment – to bring your unique and meaningful rituals to life.
• Visual motifs matter, too. They always have. Think of the religions that have endured so well. Recently, the leadership team at Tapi all got identical tattoos (see picture below). What do you think this did for their ability to make difficult decisions together? Your motifs will be unique to your business. In Vend’s case, one of them was smashing / killing cash registers. Again, take risks and break rules.

A frequent objection I often hear at this point is that in the name of “diversity”, a startup should encourage all types of distinct values and behaviours. Bullshit! It’s your company; build the culture you think will best help you succeed. Haters can go elsewhere.

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The Bestest Culture Ever

There isn’t a right culture for startups. No set of DNA best predicts the success of your startup. 

I am lucky to be working with over ten startups at any one time, and I can tell you that none of the cultures I work with are remotely similar (they are indeed diverse). Nor do I want them to be. And nor are they perfect cultures for me personally. They reflect the mission of the founders, and the kind of company they think will best help them win over their customers.

Yes, we know some cultural elements will be unhelpful to your success, like ignoring customer feedback, or always debating decisions until you have universal consensus. But the cultural elements that will work for you, your team and your market, are something you will have to figure out.

Best you spend some of your early energy doing that. If you don’t, chances are that you will get eaten for breakfast by someone who did.