What are the most effective ways to measure the impact of your start-up culture and values?

Know yourself, know your people and know how they evolve, learn, change and grow. Get them involved in helping to determine the culture. This will feed into all the next and new people joining your team, organization or community. ??

The definition of a culture and values must be agreed and accepted before its measurable metrics come to play. The mission, purpose, core values, goals, mandate and objectives must be defined on how they resonate with your brand existence and day-day operation. How all of those are communicated to anyone in affiliation with the company. This is very important and can be seen as the first perceived value.

Defining your start-up's culture and values is crucial. Be Clear: Express your culture and values simply. Think of it as your brand's personality. Stay Consistent: Your culture and values should be the same across all platforms, from your website to social media. Engage and Learn: Use social media to discuss your values. This builds connection and offers feedback. Actions Speak Loud: Watch how your values influence decisions and customer interactions. Use Feedback to Improve: Analyze your team's reactions to your brand's values. Adjust based on this data. Your start-up's culture and values are key to your brand's identity and customer relationship.

When asking a member of an organization, what its culture is, in many cases the people do not know how to respond and are even wondering if there exists a culture. But in every organization there exists one, consisting of individual personalities, values. There is not always an awareness of this. Having an exchange on individual views etc. supports a "being to" feeling. Now, these aspects need to be checked regarding customers, partners. Finally it needs to be well understood, agreed and accepted within the organization. Culture and values should definitely be part of the company profiles and website. And they need to be part of the onboarding of new employees and are critical within the application process.

It is imperative that everyone in the organization understands the why. The how-by of being a start-up is trial and error in most respects. As a leader, you establish that failure is not an opportunity to be punitive but to teach. That to err is human, but at the same time, negligence is disrespectful to the self, the team, customers, and the organization and therefore shouldnot be tolerated.

The culture and values communicated to employees and customers have a great impact on how the general public take a brand standard for who they are. And for different individuals will hold up to their conclusion and perspective of how they think about the values and culture, it is important to get FEEDBACK from numerous numbers of people periodically, I do suggest every 90 days to re-evaluate the values and culture of a start-up.

First, you have your set of values and key areas of your culture. This is set by start-ups, organizations, etc. in the beginning. And it is lived by its people/employees. The target is NOT to align the values and culture to your customers and partners but vice versa: see that you find the customers and partners which fit to your values (and do like your culture). This is the basis for successful and sustainable business (and helps to attract people). And of course, values and culture should be frequently be checked versus reality.

In my experience, startups have been better at defining and leading with 'culture' as a mechanism or hook to attract people who want to have more 'impact' and a 'locus of control'. I've worked with dozens, and there is no one way. A good starting point is the 'Fifth P' style pyramid, which stacks vision, mission, goals (financial and non-financial), sustainability, brand values and ethics in one page. Social proof is one of the strongest mechanisms of demonstrating 'what we do' (culture) versus 'what we say we do'. Collecting customer value statements (what we did, how we did it, and how the client, customer felt afterwards) creates compelling stories for the market (anchored to fact-based qualitative and quantitative data.

Tracking your start-up's culture and values is key: Use Metrics: Implement tools like Net Promoter Score (NPS) and Employee Net Promoter Score (eNPS) to gauge customer and employee alignment with your values. Regular Reviews: Consistently assess how these values are reflected in daily operations. This could be through brief surveys or team discussions. Act on Feedback: Analyze the data and feedback for trends or issues. Be ready to adjust if your values aren't being effectively embodied. Remember, it's about making sure your culture and values are more than just words – they should be evident in every aspect of your start-up's functioning.

I get what's being said here. It's a question of timing. You can easily get lost staring at metrics like this too early on. A measure of employee sat is more useful before NPS. And if you're not measuring ESAT ... Well, that speaks volumes don't you think?

Evaluating the culture and values align a start-up in a better position to work and demonstrate strategically in places necessary. The SWOT analysis would be useful here to ensure improvement is the end goal of evaluation and working on such orchestration for improvement leads to innovation, and that is what a start-up needs to be relevant in the heart of customers.

Culture (what we do) is a lever (some might say strategic asset) for building sustainable, profitable growth. Alignment with customers, the market and strategy can be measured directly through sales revenue/ velocity, growth, profitability (ownership/ accountability for inefficiencies), honesty, trust, adaptability, etc. The first measure of a good culture is observable in recruitment/ talent acquisition, then clients. Having to warn clients to stop poaching your talent is a great problem to have. Reid Hoffman's The Alliance offers insights into how great cultures continue beyond a person's tour of duty at a firm. This means they collaborate in ecosystems even after they have left the business, to create and capture value with trust.

Please don't just ask yourself. Make it a part of your wider team and organizational conversations. Even if you're a team of two, culture is going to bind you when events want to divide you

Evaluating your start-up's culture and values is a critical step: Compare Data with Expectations: Look at how your actual culture measures up against what you envisioned. Are there discrepancies? Identify Gaps and Strengths: Understand where you're excelling and where you need to improve. This could be in communication, alignment, or practice. Strategic Alignment Check: Ask how well your culture and values fit with your overall strategy, customer needs, and market trends. Impact Assessment: Consider how your culture and values are influencing growth, innovation, and overall impact. This is a journey to ensure your culture and values are well-defined, effectively implemented, and aligned with your business goals.

But here's a provocative thought: don't just compare with "best practices" because what's best for you might not be best for others. Be a maverick in your evaluation. Ask, "Are our values authentically ours, or are we chasing trends?" Everyone's buzzing about AI, but here's a reality check: simply having an online store doesn't make you a tech company. Amazon might be a tech giant, but not every e-commerce business is. Challenge the status quo and question if your culture aligns with your unique identity. It's not just about checkboxes; it's about crafting your own path to success.

In the outcome of the feedback, if there are gaps noticed from the collated data and feedbacks, it is a good one to identify them. The next line of action is to create workable conditions and achievable measures to critically solve the problems, fill the gaps, enhance usable and adaptive values and culture system that can sustain the start-up and people in affiliation with it.

In my understanding and experience, culture and values need to be checked/re-visited from time to time; this will make visible shared values and core principles. This identity is not made for being constantly aligned to changes in business environment but to check if customers and partners fit to it. Culture and values are usually not so dynamic that there will be much adjustment from year to year. In many cases, changes in company values and culture happen gradually over time. As companies grow, enter new markets, or face new challenges, their values and culture naturally evolve to adapt to these changes. Rapid changes are in most cases driven by a significant change in leadership.

Netflix is a standout example of how a startup can pivot not just in strategy but in culture and values. They began as a DVD rental-by-mail company, focusing on convenient movie access. Yet, with the streaming revolution, they faced a critical crossroads. Netflix reinvented itself with a digital-first approach, diving into content production and international expansion. This wasn't just a business move; it was a cultural transformation. What's striking is Netflix's transparency in publishing their values online. These values aren't always popular, but everyone knows what they stand for. Remember, when pivoting and evolving your startup's culture and values, transparency and authenticity are key.

One way to improve your culture, after you define the key factors or principals you hope to build around, is to ask your employees with anonymous responses how important each principal is to them and then compare that to how they would rate the company today. So, for example, if innovation is a cultural principal you plan to build around, do employees rate that has a 9 (out of 10) in their own eyes in terms of importance, but only a 4 in terms of current performance? Your biggest gaps then are your biggest opportunities as shortfalls in value or perceived current achievement relative to desire.

I touched on this in another section. Much like your microbiome, culture needs to remain adaptive, inclusive and diverse. This creates power. Making every employee responsible for culture helpsl. This is not a top team initiative, but actually a top-down, bottom-up dynamic. Bottom-up is where the energy and vigour (inspiration and motivation) will come from. Add this to everyone's impact plans/ OKR's. Blue Ocean Strategy can help to define elements of differentiation and advantage. Then dial these up. And make them aspirational; they inspire something in everyone, from founders, to customers, and even suppliers. There's a lot of value to be generated from this. Measure: new hires are clear on how to conduct great interviews.

There are certain metrics that can be used to measure culture and values as well. Employee's KPI for the start-up can not be thrown away. Sense of ownership is a great culture where everyone can feel free to contribute as if it is their personal company to support its rapid growth.

Culture is something that is hard to shift for large corporations, expecially the one's I have worked with (Tier 1 Global Multinationals) By creating a model of what good looks like, a 'Proof of value' versus 'proof of concept', larges clients will want what you're selling. Culture could include IP, how quickly you answer the phone, whether you are on call 24/7 or only Mon-Fri 9-5. By understanding the market, the future of work, and applying your ability to see around corners (or learn from those who do) you will become more valuable to those who want to 'cut-paste' this into their organisations. Prove it, then offer to help others implement, and iterate/ learn/ experiment (outside-in benches, adjacent and unrelated industries, etc)

I think that I might be na?ve on this topic. I suggest looking at the actions and behaviors of the organization's people and seeing if they match the cultures you espouse and the values you have said you hold dear. If there is a misalignment, there is a problem. And the most significant indication of this is… allowing people to violate the values and cultural norms with no negative ramifications. If you let the "star player" walk all over people when one of your values is respect, you have told everyone that you were just kidding about the values. This is especially true for the leadership team. You must be a living example of the culture, behaviors, and values you want in your organization. As goes the leadership team, so goes the company.

To measure the impact of your company values, start by identifying the key metrics that are most important to your business. This might include things like employee engagement, customer satisfaction, revenue growth, or other metrics that are relevant to your industry and business model. ? Depending on your objectives and resources, there are various ways to measure your culture and values. Surveys and feedback, such as online tools or interviews, focus groups, or feedback sessions, can provide data on engagement, satisfaction, alignment, diversity, and inclusion.

While most startup founders have skin in the game, they don’t recognise that an employee that goes all in on a startup mentality also has skin in the game in other ways. Could be managing multiple roles at the same time, working crazy hours, contributing ideas and processes that set the company up for success. A good startup will measure and reward those people for being part of the foundation of the company. But without doubt the most important value is pride in the company and brand through social proof. Employees who actively engage and share the brands visibility and success publicly are ones invested in the success of the startup. We see it time and again. The startups that embrace this online social culture are the ones who succeed