Building Corporate Cultures

My HR career so far has been a unique one, starting in a tech start-up having two of the smartest people I have ever met till date as founders. I couldn’t have wished for a more challenging role as an inexperienced lad just launching his managerial career. I was saddled with the responsibility of helping build a team, set up its first Office, recruit its first set of staff, oversee its daily operations. So my job description was like HR/Operations Manager.

But getting into the work made me quickly realize how daunting it was to manage people and get them to deliver expected results. As time passed and we started scaling as a company, getting another office space, recruiting more software developers (mostly part-timers at the time). We set up a payroll system, designed an organizational structure creating departments like “Dev Unit” for software developers, “BizDev unit” for Business developers.

The founders wanted a work environment that broke away from the traditional 9 to 5, a team that could be flexible enough to deliver irrespective of their location, an agile team. We were and still are a millennial team. We have worked on many successful and failed projects alike and are on the verge of releasing not one but two enterprise products (quite the feat!).

Reading up relevant materials and articles when I was faced with an unfamiliar challenge became my habit. I constantly read and followed the more experienced tech companies and their leaders within and outside the country, reading their articles wherever they post them, follow their social media pages, read their blogs (Jason Njoku, Evans Akano, Taiwo Judah-Ajayi,Sheryl Sandberg, Mark Essien, Mark Zuckerberg, Natya Sadella, Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos).

All these made me realize the common ground between these companies and their leaders. They all had to intentionally create the desired culture based on their values. A corporate culture built with the end goal in mind.

Every company has certain values and creeds they work with. These values are mostly a reflection of the founder(s)’ vision. It reflects in the way the company executes their mission, how they recruit, who they recruit, who they choose to bring on board as investors, directors, CEO, CTO. It’s the very DNA upon which companies build their success or failures upon.

Culture must be built deliberately to align with the values of a company. The interesting thing about culture is that whether you build it consciously or not, you have a culture. It’s your way doing things from day to day as a company. When you don’t consciously build one, your staff will come in with theirs. This sometimes yields positive results, but it’s not always the best way to “build to last” (shout out to Jim Collins). Remember, as much as you want to keep your amazing staff, they also have their dreams and aspirations that might one day leave your company. Build your culture with a long-term approach. 

At Mettalloids Limited, our core values are; People, Excellence, Innovation, Speed, Transparency, Self-Discipline, and fun. Our approach to daily operations, recruitment and partnerships have all these values infused in them.

When it comes to Culture in Nigerian, I look up to two Companies a lot; Andela and Cregitals.

At Cregitals, I think Evans and his team built a culture that is so enviable. The bond in the team is almost tangible. You can tell It’s a consciously built culture that values people (staff, clients and partners alike).

I listened to the Senior Director of People at Andela speak at HRBootcamp 2017. She spoke on culture and blew my mind with the “Slack n Trello” video track. Having built a similar culture on a smaller scale with my team I could tell they consciously built their culture on a set of values (they call them “EPIC” values).

But there is a bottom-line when it comes to building a corporate culture, Irrespective of your values, it must lead to productivity, successful projects, empowered people (staff and client alike) and also profits. This is the balance. If a free culture leads to unproductive teams and losses as a result, then you have to go back to the drawing board. Everyone is involved when it comes to building a culture. But It must start from the head. The leaders must lead by example, it’s the best way to pass the message across to the team. Live the values you desire to see the rest of the team inculcate.

Building successful cultures are mostly iterative processes, it’s a work in progress. While there are so many amazing corporate cultures with proven results, It’s always a work in progress. But never forget to consciously build the culture you desire to see in your company.