Posters don't shape culture - leaders do

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Organization, Culture
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Theirs was a dream team. One was Steve Woz, the essential geek who coded obsessively. The geek was not the one who could be put in front of the investors. This geek was a genius at all things tech. Businesses are however built by people – not tech. That needed a different Steve. He wrote the culture code.Steve Jobs was the one who could articulate the grand vision of making a “dent in the universe”. He could make impossible design challenges seem inspiring. No wonder Jobs's ability to convince himself and others to believe almost anything with a mix of charm, charisma, bravado, hyperbole, marketing, appeasement and persistence was called Reality Distortion Field (RDF). RDF was said to distort an audience's sense of proportion and scales of difficulties and made them believe that the task at hand was possible.He had the ability to build the design obsessed culture that created evangelists out of customers. That needed people who were “insanely great” at their work yet shared the culture that defines the DNA of Apple. Apple’s culture must take equal share of the credit for the billions in cash reserves that its strategy generated.

Culture impacts the talent pool

When people desperately want to work for an organization, they are attracted to the manifestations of its culture – not the strategy. The leaders of great companies work as talent magnets. The leader’s behavior sets the foundations for the company’s culture. It is interesting to see how the CEO’s vocabulary (and dress code) gets copied across the organization. Leaders inspire their teams in more ways than one.

Start-ups fail to scale not because of poor business strategy but because they get the human elements wrong.

A resume does not reflect values

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When a group of like-minded and driven individuals come together to create a business they just have to get the business model right. They do not need to worry about the people issues. Each member of the founding team is driven by the same purpose and vision. The moment they make their first hire they have to think about the values they wish to evaluate the new hire against. This is a watershed moment in the life of the firm. When the business grows, the founding team alone will be unable to manage the expanding needs. They have to hire professionals. It is only competencies that are listed in a resume. Rejecting a candidate who has all the competencies but doesn’t share the firm’s values is seen as a luxury the fast growing firm doesn’t have time for. This is where the seeds of destruction get sown.People can be trained to build their proficiency in a competency, but their values cannot be changed through training. The person’s values are naturally reflected in their behaviors – especially during times of stress and conflict. Screening for values is often seen as a nice-to-have in case of a startup. That is precisely why they must put in enough guardrails to ensure that people are hired for values.

Hiring around values

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Organization Culture

How can a startup be built around values? The founding team must articulate the behaviors that is common to them. That is what will become the de-facto values of the organization. Before the founding team makes their first hire, they must ask what behaviors the candidate must display and assess against them. Assessing for values impacts the culture of the organization. Strategy is on paper, whereas culture determines how things get done. The company’s culture is created the leaders’ behaviors not by clever words on posters.I wonder if a quiet media-shy leader can shape the culture just as effectively as a more articulate or flamboyant leader? Do you think clever marketing campaigns also play a part in shaping culture? Is that campaign necessary to reinforce the message? What has been your experience? I would love to learn from your experience. Thanks for leaving your responses in the comments.

Written for

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