Culture as a Differentiator. Building & Growing Startups in a Chaotic World! Part 3 - Culture

Now that we've discussed how Founders & Startups are evolving from Financial & Technological perspectives, let’s explore how they think about Culture. While many traditional companies view their employees as a line on a spreadsheet (at least if it feels like that sometimes), Founders & Startups who are able to attract & develop top rate talent treat people very differently.?

Some of the most successful Digital Native companies with whom I’ve worked use Culture as a key differentiating factor. They treat people like human beings; allowing mothers to take a healthy amount of time off, encouraging people to disconnect during vacation & are proactive in recognizing amazing work to make people feel appreciated. Let’s dig into some of the mental shifts we’ve seen as it relates to attracting, retaining talent & building teams.?

The Shift from ‘Culture Fit’ to ‘Culture Add’?

Thinking back to when I was first leaving University, one of the most common reasons folks were rejected from a role is that they simply just weren’t a ‘Culture Fit’. Culture fit was a concept where in order to maximize that success of a company, the people within the company needed to fit snugly into a specific mold to optimize for collaboration. Often this meant that people who didn’t fit into this restrictive vision of what a company’s culture should be, were quickly rejected with little to no feedback - and underrepresented groups in particular suffered as they didn’t talk, walk, dress nor perfectly fit that mold.?

As organizations have evolved over the past few years, they’ve started to realize that DEI or Diversity, Inclusion & Equity principles, are actually fundamental to building all-start teams. Having folks with different backgrounds means you’ll have a broader set of ideas surfaced, different sets of expertise and experiences applied to hypothetical situations & ultimately make better decisions.?

Google, for example, adopted the diversified approach to hiring & has been tremendously successful in implementing it. With a ‘Culture Add’ mentality, they’ve attracted top talent from around the world to their Cloud business and in the last 5 years, have been able to build a $28B+ company while hiring away the brightest minds from their competitors. It is a much healthier approach to hiring, where you prioritize what value someone can add to your company over whether or not they play golf.?

Focus on Learning & Development?

Hiring is expensive and losing talent is extremely painful, particularly if you’ve invested in their development. However, I am reminded of the old story; ‘CFO goes to the CEO and says ‘We should cut the training budget to save $, what if we invest in our employees and they leave?’ The CEO shoots back at the CFO ‘What if we don’t invest in their training and they stay?’?

It is incumbent on a business that plans to attract & retain talent that they not only create career paths for top performers but also actively invests in helping folks develop the skills they require to take the next step in their careers.?

Founders and Startups who take their hiring process seriously, investing in learning & development will have the advantage of building leaders within their team. Someone who has been around for 3 years can often add more value than an outside hire unless they are severely lacking in skills & development. I strongly urge folks to think through what your performance review process is, how Managers are coached to develop talent & ensure that there is both accountability & transparency in the process.?

Cross-functional Collaboration?

With the rise of service-based, knowledge work and the complexity of technology, people have actually become more valuable - particularly skilled workers. In contrast to the Assembly Line model, it’s difficult? to break specific work components down into very basic, repeatable processes. Whenever you do identify those kinds of workstreams, you often end up with highly siloed teams that are highly specialized and then struggle to align with other business units and drive towards meaningful change.

In parallel to this evolution to knowledge work, technology has made it possible for folks to collaborate around the world. Across cloud productivity tooling & project management frameworks like SCRUM working in distributed teams has become easier than ever before. Founders who build global teams, leveraging the evolution of distributed work culture and can get them to work efficiently & effectively together will have a massive advantage. Not only will they be able to hire the best talent for the job, they’ll also be able to save headcount cost relative to geography & ensure they build a long-term, sustainable business.?

Conclusion?

Digital Natives have a big advantage over traditional companies given that the principles above are often part of their DNA. They want to hire people with diverse backgrounds that can ask meaningful questions and challenge them when appropriate. They push their teams to grow, learn new things and proactively engage them with growth opportunities. They empower underrepresented groups, helping them become successful while also having a big impact on the world.?

Hiring top talent is extremely competitive and folks who are able to attract diverse talent, invest in them & equip them to work in distributed teams will have much stronger teams than those who fall into the traditional Human Resource mentality of treating people like they’re disposable.?