What do you need to build a thriving company culture in today’s business landscape? How can leaders adapt their cultural approach as their organization evolves?
According to Steven Bartlett, company culture should fit the particular stage of growth your business is in. In The Diary of a CEO, he lays out the distinct approaches to team dynamics and organizational values that are required at each phase.
Keep reading to discover organizational culture strategies that can transform your business from a startup to a sustainable enterprise.
Steven Bartlett on Company Culture
According to Steven Bartlett, company culture—the collective working habits and underlying philosophy of your team—determines the quality of your team’s work and, ultimately, your business’s success or failure. However, the ideal culture differs depending on what stage in its lifespan your business is in.
When launching a new business, encourage your core team to fanatically prioritize the company’s success above all else. Intense devotion and single-minded focus are required to get a new business up and running. In this stage, treat your company like a cult: Make your employees feel like they’re all a part of the same special group that’s going to change the world. Position yourself as a visionary leader for whom failure is impossible so they can get excited to follow you.
(Shortform note: In Built to Last, Jim Collins and Jerry I. Porras also recommend establishing a “cult-like” company culture—not just at the beginning of a company’s lifespan, but in perpetuity. To make employees feel more like they’re a part of an exclusive, important group, create a unique vocabulary that only your company’s insiders understand. Additionally, Collins and Porras contend that you shouldn’t channel workers’ excitement toward yourself as a visionary leader. Rather, build up their passion for the company itself, and what it stands for. One way to do this is to highlight the importance of your company’s history and traditions when training new employees.)
Bartlett warns that, although this kind of fanatical culture is effective at building momentum quickly, it’s impossible to maintain forever. People can only wholly devote their lives to a mission for so long before they get burnt out. For this reason, once your company is well-established, allow your culture to mature into one that’s more supportive of employees’ long-term well-being and loyalty. Keep your team motivated and engaged over the course of years by giving them autonomy over their work and protecting them from excessive emotional stress—while ensuring that they’re still doing work they can be proud of.
| Counterpoint: Prioritize Employee Well-Being From the Beginning In It Doesn’t Have to Be Crazy at Work, business owners Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson contend that it’s crucial to establish a work culture that prioritizes employees’ long-term well-being from the beginning—and they’d likely argue that this is true even in the early stages of a startup. They assert that most companies set ever-increasing revenue targets with the goal of achieving maximum growth at all costs. As a part of this process, companies accept investments and take out loans in an attempt to accelerate their growth as quickly as possible. However, this strategy puts unnecessary pressure on the team—if the company doesn’t hit its growth targets, it goes bankrupt. This pressure can cause employees to quickly burn out. Fried and Hansson argue that instead, companies should pursue humbler goals: Be financially sustainable, deliver a great product or service, and gradually improve your business over time. Although your startup might not become the biggest company in the world, it can still become a great success—employees who aren’t overwhelmed can even be more productive. Fried and Hansson’s strategy for supporting employees’ long-term well-being differs from Bartlett’s, too. Rather than emphasizing personal autonomy, they recommend providing generous benefits that directly support employees’ lives outside of work. For instance, they pay for their employees to take three weeks of vacation every year and subsidize personal education that has nothing to do with work, like cooking classes. Fried and Hansson state that when employees cultivate a fulfilling personal life, their overall quality of life improves, making them less likely to burn out on the job. |
How to Shape Your Company’s Culture
Bartlett explains how to nurture your desired company culture: Articulate the fundamental values that define your organization (at this stage), and ensure that they’re woven into every one of its operational protocols and routines. For instance, the CEO of a tech startup might adopt the mantra of “victory requires speed” and center the organization on rapid innovation. The company requires all meetings to be held standing up to ensure they’re as short and efficient as possible, and it crowns one employee every day as the “Momentum Maker” to recognize those who make the most rapid progress in a single day.
(Shortform note: In Excellence Wins, Horst Schulze contends that once you’ve articulated the values that define your organization and codified them into a set of protocols, you should require all teams to briefly meet and discuss one of them at the start of every work shift. This way, you ensure that employees understand the cultural values behind your rules and have them at the front of their minds every day.)
According to Steven Bartlett, company culture can be shaped also by identifying employees who epitomize the culture you want to see and promoting them to managerial positions so they can exert a stronger positive influence on other team members.
(Shortform note: In Radical Candor, Kim Scott agrees that managers have a strong influence over the culture of their team, and she adds that they need to be fully aware of what kind of influence they have. To learn this, managers can build open, honest relationships with their team members so those employees are unafraid to share candid feedback.)
Bartlett also recommends firing employees who are consistently unwilling to adapt to your desired culture. Although firing people is unpleasant, it’s necessary: Negative attitudes and habits spread easily, and if you don’t remove them, it’ll prevent many of your other employees from reaching their full potential.
(Shortform note: In No Rules Rules, Reed Hastings explains how Netflix takes a more proactive approach to maintaining an elite workplace culture. Netflix encourages managers to regularly assess whether they’d fight to keep an employee—and fire that employee if they wouldn’t. This does more than ensure that no negative attitudes or habits are poisoning the culture: It also ensures that there are only productive attitudes and habits, thus inspiring every employee to meet this high standard.)
