Company Culture is Defined By You and Your Actions

Culture is an important thing for startups. The best way to attract great talent is having an environment that attracts people to it. Additionally, a strong culture allows your company to retain employees. People like working for a company who’s culture they believe in.

If you don’t define and set culture, one will be created for you. Your companies culture will be defined by the actions you and your initial employees take. Company culture is either defined by the founders or it is created by the people who work for the company.

Define Culture Early

It is easy to ignore culture creation when you are a fledgling company trying to figure out other important things like making sales or identifying product/market fit. It is easy to lose yourself in building the business and ignore building a culture. Not defining culture early will be a huge mistake and one you will regret later.

You should be very clear about what your companies values are. For instance, should a company value:

• Quickness or Personal Interaction?
• “truth and integrity?” or “whatever it takes to get the job done?”

Understand that once a value system has been set it can be challenging to retain the value system. For instance, if you choose truth and integrity, realize you may lose business deals because of it. Are you okay with that?

Quickly draw up what your three most important values are for the company. Your initial gut feeling as to what values you think are important are typically right. Explicitly state them, print them out, and put them up in the office. Seeing them every day will be a reminder to you and your team of what values the company holds above all others.

Live Your Values

In small companies the culture starts with you. At a company of any size you are always being watched. Employees, investors, and share holders all are watching the actions of the executive team. Every thing you and your team do will be scrutinized to see if you are living up to the values you have set. Why would anyone follow a leader who breaks their own companies values?

Your employees will watch how you interact with people. They will watch how you handle yourself during stressful and difficult situations. If you break the values that you have defined the company stands for your employees will identify you as a hypocrite.

When choosing your values be honest with yourself. Personally, do you hold these values above all others? Are these a set of values that you have inherently? If not, can you realistically change yourself and live up to this value system?

Cultural Fit When Hiring

Once you define and explicitly state your values, and employees start living those values, you have a culture. Start talking to people about it. Culture and value systems can be attractors for hiring talent. When interviewing talk about your culture and value systems. You can use your value system to determine whether potential employees are a good culture fit. When determining whether to hire a potential candidate, ask your team, “Does this person support our set of values?”

Have discipline when hiring. You will approach a time when you need someone now. You may have interviewed many candidates all of whom lacked the appropriate skill set. You now find someone who has the right skills for the job, but you feel that they may not have the same value systems as the company. Turning this person away because they don’t have similar values will be incredibly hard. If a good candidate doesn’t fit the culture you have defined, pass on them. If you ignore this advice and hire them anyway, you will regret this decision.

Don’t use culture fit to turn away people who aren’t like you. Cultural fit can be used as an excuse to discriminate against a potential candidate. Don’t do this. In addition to being illegal, what makes working on anything interesting is the diversity of mind people can bring to the table. Just because they are different than you doesn’t mean they aren’t a cultural fit.

An Immune System

Your culture is your companies immune system. Dion Hinchcliffe says that your business is a living organism and has a defense mechanism in place to remove anything that disrupts the status quo. Be selective and hard nosed about your company culture and value system. Once employees begin living and breathing your companies value system, the company culture is set. A company culture is the first thing your employees will use to make decisions. Once the company culture is set it is impossible to change.