#9 Cultural disconnections and tackling them

A little bit on culture—within communities, and within companies.?

So, a story first. Three years ago I bought a Tesla. There weren’t too many Teslas on the roads of Helsinki back then, and one day, I met another Tesla driver on the road. He waves at me, and I wave back. A tiny little thing, right? I then noticed that was a gesture almost exclusive to Tesla drivers. I started waving at all the drivers I saw and noticed that those who didn’t wave back were likely new to this culture—like I was before.?

Time passes, and tons of new Tesla drivers appear on the road. Previously I would maybe see one a day, now—dozens of them, including taxis. The taxi drivers never wave back—so it must be about the ownership culture. I noticed how new Tesla owners didn’t absorb this tiny gesture, and now, it’s mostly gone.?

Makes you think—what was once a tiny community that understood one another without words, now is just the gray majority.

This is what happened with AppFollow , past the Series-A round.?

On scaling company culture

A long time ago (it’s been a nine-year process!), a metric-driven culture was our primary approach, for everyone. As we grew, we then swapped it with something simpler (transparency, communication, inclusion, the basics), and we've learned that we could be better. The good news is that we now know it.

What comes with growth is the challenge of keeping the company culture true.

As we expanded rapidly, we diversified our team a whole lot, and it changed what AppFollow culture was. Of course, the company culture 2.0 effort is in full swing, we did our best to adapt to newcomers and stay true to our values at the same time. As evident in hindsight, it’s never that easy.

Without the right kind of onboarding (a wave to your fellow Tesla driver!), it just doesn’t work.?

18 months we spent fixing the cultural disconnection, and figuring out how to normalize core values between the company and people with diverse backgrounds. We had quite a turnover in the process—due to these very cultural values.?

Case in point: at an earlier point, most people at our company understood its culture differently.?

Normally, you would say, if you’re building an overseas office, one of your core execs comes around and stays there for a year or so—to share everything with the new team. In a remote-first company, that isn’t as easy. Our American executive didn’t absorb our culture as clearly as we would have liked and even hired new staff according to his own values—not company values.?

It went as far as our American office holding separate standups from ours, using a separate format, and following separate values. The company was divided in half. Different management styles, different channels for communication—straightforward things that you would expect to work together, and yet they didn’t, really.

What is AppFollow? Its Mission? Vision? These were drastically different from our European office. The standups themselves were differently structured.

What can you do as a founder to establish a uniform culture?

“Culture eats strategy for breakfast.” —Peter Drucker

I knew this quote for a long time and, to be honest, didn't understand how it could be in reality. I thought we, as founders, could manage our company's culture, especially when we needed to scale the team and hire 50-100 people from different cultures with different mindsets and behaviors. We failed for 100%.

This is a difficult lesson to learn, as in the moment, it’s hard to see what culture truly is. Bad culture can and will wreck even your well-working processes.?

AppFollow is a journey of 9 years and a true understanding of its culture and how important it is only started to gain solid form about 3 years ago. You might think it’s actually OK—you have growth, you gain clients, you move forward. No, long-term, it’s unsustainable.?

Adopt one strategy and stick to it. New hires, old hires, doesn’t matter. Every manager must live and breathe that which moves the entire endeavor forward. Of course, I can assure you that with something so delicate, you will not succeed the first time, not a chance. Try things, see how they work, and evaluate them. Fail fast, fail often—so long as you learn something and never repeat your mistakes.

Looking back, I got quite lax with what I thought wasn’t as important—and that’s why our culture went on its separate journey.?

The hackathons we held are a good example of this—they were gone during the scaling stage. Too many things to care of, and too many people to teach and manage. Too much noise, and not enough zen.?

Once new people come in, this cultural balance is suddenly gone if everyone is too busy or unwilling to preserve it. You must share these values with the new hires.?

Of course, we always knew how important culture is, but only once you survive a real cultural disconnection, that’s when you truly gain a perspective. You will find it extremely important during the expansion of your business abroad, too—-we are all very different, and yet there is but one North Star to guide everyone on this ship you’re piloting. You can’t have people row in different directions.

Now, there are people out there who can explain these things so much better than me. That’s why I recommend reading these books:

• Tribal Leadership by Dave Logan, John King, Halee Fischer-Wright (won’t spoil; just try it)

• No Rules Rules by Reed Hastings and Erin Meyer (Reed is the CEO & co-founder of Netflix , by the way!)
• What You Do is Who You Are by Ben Horowitz—a brilliant read on culture with great historical examples

I’ll be sure to cover more on culture and what it truly means, so stay tuned. And if you got to this point, thanks for reading!