Experience is nothing compared to cultural fit, attitude and drive - but you can’t screen that from a CV

Building culture and a team; and how we have to do it all again.

Team, team, team.

I’ve said it, investors say it, companies often fail because of it. Why is it so hard!

I’ve already shared my thoughts on (the pain of…) hiring (https://www.dhirubhai.net/pulse/hiring-people-who-right-fit-number-one-challenge-edward-booty/). But what about culture? Why do some people work out and others don’t? What is a ‘great culture’, why do people care, and how do you build it?

Firstly, sorry, this is not a passage of wisdom.?There is a huge amount of work to do for reach52 to have the culture and drive we want and need.??If anything, this is at the ‘I haven’t been able to do this yet’ end of the spectrum.

Especially as, when I’ve asked our team about what they like/dislike/want more of/want less of, you often get polar-opposite responses – it’s hard to make something work and align to 50 free-spirited humans!

Let’s start with why this is important. Our lead VC from a previous round told me about the ‘no asshole rule’ once, which is as simple as it sounds: avoid working with assholes.

We often spend more time at work than with our family and friends. So it matters, as it’s a majority of what we spend our conscious, temporary, finite life doing… unless you retire at 40, which ain’t gonna happen for most of us… (2052 is when I hit retirement age – so I’ve often joked I just want to reach ’52).

So, step one, just avoid assholes. And lazy people, as that will just piss off the team.?

Then, assuming you’ve got some nice people that will do their hours and deliver the outputs on time to the best of their ability… I’ve tried a fair few things to build our culture, categorised into three:

1.??????Having shared values and vision, that are implemented well… such as sharing stories of teammates that exhibit values, factoring it into performance appraisals, etc

2.?????Team ‘work focused’ initiatives, such as workshops about key problems we are facing across countries and cultures

3.?????Team social initiatives, such as virtual happy hours, external talks

But these didn’t work for various reasons… Cross-country team video calls are hard. For us English as a second language can be an issue across the countries. People don’t want more Zoom/Team calls, some people want more socials out of hours, some want less! Many problems aren’t for virtual workshops – they are deep issues that require small working groups and focused effort from the most knowledgeable team members…

If I’m honest with myself, our culture was better when we were smaller… is this just part of growing up…? The scrappy days locked in an office with pizza are gone, and now I need to focus on being an ‘SME’ / growing business, changing the approach to something slightly more ‘corporate’. Alas, being in six countries now and based on where we’re at, I think the answer is yes.

There’s no shortage of startup literature, that are sort of easy to read, and hard to implement… Be collaborative, feedback, openness, transparency from the top… We’re always pushing this, and have more work to do.

And, I do feel reach52 is different to many, I think everyone is here, regardless if they want a pool table in the office, flexi-hours, or no-assholes, because they care (at least a little bit) about the mission…. As a VC said to me last week: ‘you are an interesting founder, I’m not sure if it’s a good thing or a bad thing, but you seem to care about your customers more than money, whereas many founders just care about making the business model work’. Bit depressing, but we are a mission-driven company. Customers and impact first.

With hindsight, it’s probably much more important than I realised right at the start. Get a good, stable core – which links to my ‘finding co-founders’ points in previous posts. It’s harder to change later (both for finding your comrades, and building the ‘vibe’ you want with them). ?Getting the right core team that drive the right behaviours and values is probably the best thing to do, and what I’m focusing on now.

Accept many aren’t like you - I think that has been one of the tougher things for me. ?My dream culture would be ‘work hard, play hard’: team workouts, plenty of sarcasm and banter, and ample drinking (at different parts of the work day, of course).

I love late nights in the office, I miss it as we’ve grown and had more resources… but that’s not what many want, so having a central ‘thread’ of what you stand for that can manifest itself in different ways for different people is probably the central theme.

Attitude and drive is key. I tell our team that I like working with people I trust, and I define trust as executing on time, and to the best of your ability for any given task. This is relevant for the most junior or most senior member of the company. When I look at my most trusted teammates there isn’t a pattern – some went to top schools, some didn’t. Some were at startups before, some were at NGOs. Some are in their 20s, some 30s and 40s.

Ultimately, I think you have to get a read in the interview, and look for signs of true drive and strong attitude… some dream answers for me might be ‘I wanted to get into product, but I was in accounting, so I took on unpaid internships out of hours to get the experience’, or ‘at university I saw an opportunity for ABC, so me and my friends tried a startup/project to address this…’, or ‘I was in a big corporate, but no one really cared about my business unit, it was only me really?so I did a bit of everything and really had to just get it off the ground myself’. All see opportunity, and are self-starters to try and make sh*t happen.

It seems the experience here is somewhat shared…

In terms of hiring, the founders I interviewed recognise that finding the right talent is difficult. On a scale of 1 to 10, with 1 being easy and 10 very difficult, they gave an average rating of 7. They gave fundraising 6.

In terms of traits, having the right culture fit is the one quality that most of the founders look for in a candidate. They emphasised that they always look for people who fit the core values of the company and are aligned with its vision. The lack of culture fit has also been the top reason why some hires have not worked for them.

The other traits and qualities that these founders value are as follow, in no particular order:

·???????Good work ethic

·???????Hunger for knowledge

·???????Ability to self-manage / can think and speak for themselves

·???????Having the right skills, expertise, and experience

·???????Tenacity

·???????Empathy

·???????Good leadership skills

Ultimately, I got a pool table, ping pong table, mini golf and dartboard for the offices. Like with many other companies, it’s not used. This is the culture I want (work hard, play hard…), but it doesn’t suit many others. And quite right too! They aren’t the founder, and rightly want (and have…) a social life beyond work.

I find more ‘culture’ by having a network of founder friends that ‘get it’ – so in reality my needs are nourished out of work too nowadays. Creating mini versions of a founder isn’t a good thing, but we do need people that take more ownership of their role, which gets harder as you get bigger. Accountability is now what I'm pushing for.

So, what? My current focus is to try and really clearly explain our vision, mission, values and plans to keep people aligned. Focus on what you feel is right, without over-analysis.

Be strict in hiring, and I want to get stricter. And strict on performance appraisals. Ask for feedback on culture building activities, appreciate differences and cater for them – do different events for different types of people. Trust your gut if someone isn’t the right fit and going against the core values you want.

A lot of work to do, but my current view… Culture is pretty organic and hard to transform through superficial, ad-hoc events or purchases – it’s down to the people you hire, and how you work together to achieve the mission, and how you try to embed them in daily work routine, celebrations; and performance appraisals, with associated rewards (and 'punishments').