Why "People" and "Culture" are the ultimate priorities

This is an email I sent to the company this week as part of a sporadic email series of random thoughts I call "Mike's Musings". Thought I'd share it more broadly, just in case it's helpful to anyone. If you'd like to learn more about our culture, check out branch.io/careers/culture/ .

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Hi All,

I often get asked in interviews "What are your priorities", and I thought it might be useful to share how I think about them.?

When someone asks about priorities, there's usually more nuance to both the question and the answer. Some folks are curious about department level priorities while others are asking about company-level priorities; some are asking about operational priorities, while others are asking more philosophically.

I usually split my answer in two: (a) I'll first address the operational priorities that are most relevant to the candidate, and (b) I'll then discuss higher-level, more philosophical?priorities. The first is straightforward, and usually covers things like Revenue, Margin, Product investments, customer adoption, employee engagement, etc.?

The latter is more interesting, and that's what I want to share my thoughts on. When I step back and think about the most important, highest-level, longest-term priorities?I have - as a founder, as a leader, as a Branchster - it is ultimately about two things: People and Culture. Specifically, my top priorities are to:

1. Ensure we have the highest quality PEOPLE in the company, and
2. Ensure we establish the right CULTURE in the company.

You see, for any company, over time things will always drastically change, and when looking at a long enough time horizon, the most central priorities are making sure you have the right People and the right Culture. All other priorities - while important to your survival in the short / mid term - are more fungible over time and become moot if you fail on People and Culture.?

That's because markets constantly shift, industries are regularly disrupted. Sometimes it happens in the matter of months, sometimes it takes decades. But industries will always?change. (Shoutout to the book Only the Paranoid Survive ).?And as a business, our objective is to stay in the game as long as possible. (Shoutout to Simon Sinek's book The Infinite Game )

Think about companies over the last hundred years that have survived or that have died (or are a shell of what they were before). The ones that died were ones that didn't adapt to the changing landscape. One of my favorite?analogies is how railroad companies - dominant in the 1800s - got demolished by the invention of the car and the airplane, and many of those railroad companies didn't survive. Arguably, similar things happened in the late 1900s, and some similar things are happening now (e.g. Tesla disrupting the internal combustion engine car industry, forcing those companies to either adapt or die). Over those periods, those that survived were ones that adapted with the changing landscape. And in order to adapt, you need to have the right People who can recognize the need to change and then steer the company through that transformation. And you need to have the right Culture where people will change with the company, operate with a growth mindset, and hold each other?accountable.?

I summarize the whole logic like this:?

The purpose of a company is to stay in the game as long as possible to further your mission. To stay in the game, you have to survive; and in order to survive long term you have to adapt. Even a great strategy gets disrupted and what enables you to adapt are the People and the Culture. If you don’t have good people, you won’t figure out when or how to adapt. If you don’t have a good culture, you won’t attract or retain good people, and even if you have them, they won’t be motivated to drive change or challenge assumptions or push forward in hard times. Even terrible cultures have great people - but the great people aren’t motivated enough to drive change (many of us have worked in such environments, and it's demotivating). On the flip side, if?you have a great culture and some bad people, you’ll expel bad people b/c the?good people won't tolerate mediocrity. If you have a critical mass of great people they’ll help create and reinforce a great culture, and those great people combined with a great culture can accomplish anything together as the world changes.

So, what can we all do to ensure Branch continues to have amazing people and culture? It's relatively straightforward, but it's not always easy. We all share the same ultimate job of ensuring we have great people and a great culture, so here's how you can help:

1. Ensure we hire the best people. Keep the hiring bar high. Don't accept mediocrity. Be patient. And don't let the fatigue of hiring or desire to "fill a seat" cause you to make the mistake of hiring a bad fit. Trust me - the patience of waiting to find the right?person pays off, and the pain of hiring the wrong person lasts way longer than you can imagine.?
2. Don't tolerate bad performance.?Sometimes we'll hire the wrong person, but we all need to hold each other accountable. It's all of our jobs to make sure everyone on the team is performing, and that the work being put out is of the best quality. So if you see issues or bad performance, speak up. Not saying anything and just tolerating mediocrity is how good companies eventually become crappy companies. Sometimes it's an issue with hiring the?wrong person; sometimes it's just that someone needs some feedback so they can adapt. Speak up, give feedback, lend a hand, and hold everyone to a high bar.?
3. Exemplify Branch values and ensure others do too. Regardless of whether anyone is around or will see it, live and breathe our values. Values aren't things we say. They're the things we do or don't do. So do everything you can to exemplify our values. And ensure others do too. As a company, how much we accept bad behavior w/o doing anything says just as much (if not more) than the things we do?do.?
4. Be proactive about creating culture. Culture isn't the job of some culture committee or on any one person's job description. Culture is what all of us create together. Branch is a community to all of us, and how we all contribute?(or don't contribute) to that community ultimately creates the culture. So be proactive about contributing to the culture; organize small group lunches or dinners; engage in events or discussions. Do anything that adds to the culture because if you're waiting for someone else to do it for you, it won't happen.?

So always remember, our job is to ensure we continue to have amazing People and an amazing Culture here at Branch.