From Founder to Corporate Executive: Adapting to a Corporate Culture

As I shared in my last post, I struggled to reconcile my identity as a founder versus my management role. My mentors helped me understand that being an entrepreneur is not a title, it’s a way of thinking. Unity wanted me to embrace that way of thinking, but before I could be effective, I had to learn how to channel my energy and empathize with the teams I worked with.

Overcoming culture shock

While the setup was right, the initial six months were a challenging adjustment. I continuously felt frustrated without empathizing with my colleagues at Unity. During this time, I built a reputation of being difficult to work with and having sharp edges because I kept pushing back against and questioning the Unity way of doing things - sorry about that! Fortunately, Marc Whitten, my HR Business Partner, Greshma Saxena , and Marc’s HR Business Partner and now Chief People Officer of Unity, Marisa Eddy , always had my back. They wanted to infuse Unity’s culture with my entrepreneurial mindset and pushed me to continuously push against the status quo to solve latent business issues. To achieve that, they spent a lot of time helping me learn better ways to communicate outside of the core Parsec team to build influence within the organization. They really wanted me to be successful, and I knew it based on the actions they took to support me. While it was difficult for me to balance my desire to move quickly and challenge the status quo, I decided to work on doing that without creating waves of frustration throughout the company. Having the support of other leaders was key to this.?

Embrace the acquirer’s culture

I took some pointed advice that I needed to embrace Unity’s culture to reach my potential. I signed up for the leadership training courses that new managers and employees take. These courses taught lessons on how to use the Unity values to facilitate a shared communication language. As an entrepreneur, I initially detested what I framed as “indoctrination” in my own mind. But ignoring these courses was not the way to have the impact I wanted. So I reframed this task and engaged with the content about six months later than I should have. The Unity ways of working and values became a tremendous asset in my communication toolset at the company.?

Helping your team stay focused

Once I had the shared language and understood the ways of working, I could rely on the company values to communicate clearly and align teammates with a purpose. What I tried to do from there was create an environment where my team could stay singularly focused on the objectives they had to achieve. I tried to protect them from any other distraction that encroached on their time. At a larger company, that can be quite challenging. There are a lot of opportunities and ideas that everyone can work on, but I believe that winning requires a focus on one thing at a time. The maxim that strategy is defined by what you and your team say, “no,” to is especially true in a corporate environment where everything seems possible. In the next article, I’ll share a few tips on how I tried to keep my team focused and over communicated to give people the clarity they needed to achieve the goals we set that would help Unity reach its broader objectives.