Founder's willingness to build a Culture

The founder's willingness, conviction and effort to build a good culture is the most important determinant of its manifestation at an organisation.

Having spoken to multiple founders / leaders, I believe unless the founder truly believes in the importance of consciously building the culture and priorities it, no amount of HR-led employee-friendly policies and benefits will cover up for it. These things are just hygiene factors, not the core of the culture.

Here, culture doesn't refer to just the work-environment, but also the habits you want the team to inculcate. Eg. data-first thinking, discipline, ears to the ground, etc.

An analogy: its like building a relationship. Unless you really believe in prioritising and working on it, no amount of superficial acts will do you good. Those acts are necessary but not sufficient.

This is what differentiates the Great from the Good in building lasting organisations. Most founders agree that culture is important, but their actions are not in accordance - especially true for first-time founders. How much bandwidth do you actively spend on this? How much do you just tolerate vs intervening and rectifying? Do you hold yourself to high benchmarks on this front? How often do these efforts just die down after a couple of months?

And how does this behaviour compare to your efforts on the business / operations / product fronts? There is no dearth of literature on how, in due time, culture eats everything else for breakfast.

In the initial days, you build a product. Then you must build a company that builds a product. Without that, the product will not endure. For that you need a Culture that aligns everyone. Brian Chesky | Founder, Airbnb

And we understand why founders don't focus on it: it's not measurable, it doesn't pay off in the short term and not many people / resources talk about it. You may ignore it now, but you will never be able to ignore it forever. It catches up.

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Once you are convinced of the importance of Culture, the "what" and the "how" can be figured out. We at culture eats are happy to discuss and help you on that part of the journey, using a product-thinking approach to figure out the best features that suit your org. Reach out to us or explore our services.