There are successful companies with good cultures and successful companies with terrible cultures. I've read the excellent Elon Musk and Steve Jobs biographies written by Walter Isaacson.
Some of it is genuinely eye-watering. If you look at Apple under Steve Jobs, many today will argue that the company had a terrible culture.
- When he fired people at Pixar, he made their notice period 'retroactive.'
- In interviews, he'd ask incredibly inappropriate questions like 'How old were you when you lost your virginity?' or 'How many times have you taken LSD?'
- Steve Jobs fired the employee in charge of MobileMe in front of a group of employees.
- He regularly screamed aggressive aphorisms at staff, such as 'We only want 'A' players at Apple. You aren't even good enough to be a 'B' player!'
Similarly, if you look at Elon Musk, he has taken a lot of criticism for axing 6000 employees or 80% of X's workforce. Then he told his advertisers that 'he didn't care what they think'– this is the base that generates Twitter's revenue.
Even personally, I have worked at startups where the founders have exhibited shocking lacks of civility, empathy, and impulse. One of them ended up so out of control, that, sadly, he passed away ten years ago.
I had another boss who used to scream at me and 'dress me down' like a drill sergeant, every morning in front of the team. To give him his due, five years later I bumped into him and he apologised profusely to me, and said that he was under enormous stress at the time and that his marriage was breaking down.
Founders tend to have a set of characteristicsthat can make them unbeatable initially. Still, eventually, thosecharacteristics can hold the company back from growth (think about Apple's new CEO Tim Cook's empathetic management style versus its founder Steve Jobs aggressive and emotionally tone deaf approach).
My wife worked at a leading management consulting company where her manager sexually harassed her (this was before Catherine and I had met), and another, where her boss bullied her, and Catherine won a 'constructive dismissal' case against the company. We both know a lot about toxic cultures!
Of course, a healthy work culture is more likely to foster a sustainable, successful company. There is now complex research to show that companies with happy employees perform, on average, better than those with miserable employees.
And there are plenty of companies out there with good work cultures. I've worked at numerous companies, and most of my time there, I have been given free rein to develop marketing ideas unhindered by micromanagement. Some of those companies are worth billions of dollars now.
My wife, Catherine, worked at Akamai Technologies, and for most of her 12 years there, the culture was exceptional. Akamai treated her with great respect and valued her ideas and contributions.
She developed considerably at this company, starting as a contract recruiter and ending up managing a team of 25 recruiters as head of EMEA Talent Acquisition. So, we both also know about good company cultures!
Values & Culture
- It's not what you put up on your wall, coffee cups, or even what your CEO says at events.
- It's how your employees feel on a Sunday night at the prospect of going to work the next day.
- It's what two employees who are good friends say about your company when they're having a couple of beers at the end of the day or when out for lunch or having a coffee together.
- It's what people start writing on your Glassdoor reviews when your company gets larger (usually, startups at the first phase of growth have glowing reviews. The bad ones only start later....).
- It's how many referrals you get from existing employees.
Culture is a living, breathing entity, an animal spirit. In my experience, it develops top-down. So, no matter what management 'says' are the values, the culture will be how the C level conducts themselves.
If the C level manages by intimidation, bullying, and fear, then that is how everyone in the organization will behave. If the C level is managed by positive affirmation (five times more effective than negative) and creating psychological safety, then that is also how the company will turn out.
When scaling a startup, all of these ideas are even more pertinent. Since you are creating the base of your culture from the first few employees you hire, just adding a few employees will make a big difference to your culture. Say you are a company of twenty employees and hire five new employees from Microsoft; Your culture will shift somewhat to Microsoft's values and culture.
In the last decade, HR departments have moved away from talking about 'culture fit' (very traditionally 'corporate') to 'culture add' (more inclusive and modern), which is critical in startups since you cannot help new employees 'adding' to the culture since your number of employees is initially so small.
Moving to remote work and the increased demand for a values-driven company are other essential aspects of effectively scaling a good culture at your startup.
When I first joined the workforce, we worked five days a week at the company offices. Office life was almost exclusively inside the office building (think the UK or the US show Office). Even six or seven years before the pandemic, others and I started working remotely, albeit usually just one day a week.
But since the pandemic, the world of work has been revolutionized. Many employees are fully remote, and the rest are typically hybrid. Heads of HR and the C level have struggled to maintain a strong culture when employees rarely connect in person.
Secondly, the new generations of workers care much more about the culture. They scour Glassdoor for indications of how a company works. They have become incredibly cynical about corporate life.
For example, 60% of Gen Z's will regularly 'ghost' recruiters since it makes this generation feel 'empowered.' 70% of Gen Zs would only work for a company whose values align with theirs. So you better make sure the culture your company intends to scale with, is appealing.
