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Entrepreneur Voices on Company Culture
The Staff of Entrepreneur Media, Inc., Derek Lewis
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eBook - ePub
Entrepreneur Voices on Company Culture
The Staff of Entrepreneur Media, Inc., Derek Lewis
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About This Book
No matter the size of your business, company culture is something that can make or break its success. For startups and established businesses alike, a high-performing company culture translates into happy employees, a productive and engaging work environment, fluid communication and more. In this book, Entrepreneur's community of small business owners and entrepreneurs share their battle-tested strategies, hard-won advice, and impart the secrets behind what works and what doesn't when defining and creating a culture that can make or break your company in a startup world.Readers will get insight on:
- What makes company culture a real thing
- Building a strong company culture on a startup budget
- How culture can ensure you keep your edge
- Improving employee engagement
- How to turn your company culture around
- Advice CEOs and company owners should and shouldn't listen to
Includes contributed content, interviews, and insights from:
- Matt Mayberry, author of Winning Plays
- Reid Hoffman, founder of LinkedIn
- Jeffrey Hayzlett, author of Think Big, Act Bigger
- Dr. Patti Fletcher, author of Disrupters
- Glenn Llopis, author of The Innovation Mentality
- Companies like Southwest Airlines, Google, Lyft, Gusto and more
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PART
I
CLARITY
As youâre about to read, we now have solid data to back up what great entrepreneurs have intuitively known for years: companies that are great to work for outperform their competitors whose employees dislike showing up for work. Thatâs on virtually every quantifiable measureâfrom productivity to bottom-line revenues.
But the best places to work for didnât arrive there by accident.
Those companiesâ cultures were deliberate. The founders and leaders found clarity about what was important, what was trivial, what was non-negotiable, and what was necessary.
We kick off this section with two chapters that represent what much of this entire book is about. Chapter 1 dispels the idea that âworkplace cultureâ necessitates a literal workplace; and that company culture is about the people, not the place. Chapter 2 puts two companies side-by-side that, on paper, should be identical . . . yet are diametric opposites solely because of the culture their founders set in the beginning.
This first section packs a serious punch with inspiration, hope, and insightful expert interviews. By the time youâre finished, there shouldnât be a doubt in your mind on the absolute necessity of having a clear vision, communicating that vision, living that vision, and reaping the rewards of that vision.
CHAPTER
1
CREATING ONE OF THE BEST WORK CULTURES IN AMERICA . . . WITH ZERO OFFICES
Sara Sutton Fell
In February 2017, Entrepreneur and Culture IQ released their second annual list of the Top Company Cultures in America, featuring 153 companies with âhigh-performance cultures.â For the second year in a row, a company with a completely remote workforce is included on the list: FlexJobs.
As the founder and CEO of FlexJobs, I can tell you that, while this is an honor, the distinction is particularly appreciated because many people think that a remote company canât even have a company culture, let alone a great one.
It takes a conscientious effort and continuous dedication to build an organization that actively supports workers to do their best work and be their best selves. All the companies on this list believe a thriving company culture can fuel the fire of a growing business and result in a better bottom line.
The inclusion of FlexJobs on the Top Company Cultures list highlights that itâs possible to have a remote company with a fantastic company culture. Furthermore, it points to the idea that remote work can even enhance and benefit company cultures.
Entrepreneur and Culture IQ focused on âTen Core Qualities of Cultureâ:
1.collaboration
2.innovation
3.agility
4.communication
5.support
6.wellness
7.mission and value alignment
8.work environment
9.responsibility
10.performance focus
Remote work is well-suited to support each of these qualities. Addressing all of these qualities let me share how we built one of the best company cultures in America at FlexJobs.
Agility, Performance Focus, and Mission-Value Alignment
We are a mission-driven organization: to help professionals find jobs that fit their lives with such options as flexible scheduling and the ability to work remotely. The fact that all of our own workers are remote means that our very way of working aligns with the mission and values of our company.
Remote work often strips away facetime and office politics. This naturally leads to a culture that focuses on results as our main performance measure. When and where people do their work isnât usually important; how, why, and what is.
And of course, we use remote work to find the best talent. Hiring someone based mainly on their skills and their fit with our company culture, rather than location, ensures that performance is a vital factor in recruitment and retention.
Work Environment, Support, and Wellness
Flexible work environments allow companies to better support their workers, especially when it comes to wellness. A flexible work environment acknowledges that our workers are whole people with full and sometimes complicated lives outside of the âoffice.â And it doesnât do the company or the individual any good to make them feel they need to shut that part of themselves off when they start work each day.
Take our buddy system, for example. People going on parental leave or dealing with a serious illness can be matched with a coworker who has experienced something similar. These connections help people cope with the full range of life experiences inside and outside of work, allowing people whoâve gone through something challenging to share their knowledge and experience to help someone else.
Because of the independent and sometimes solitary nature of our work, cultivating connectedness is one of our primary goals in creating a great culture in our âworkplace.â
Collaboration, Communication, and Innovation
One of the most pervasive myths about remote work is that it stifles collaboration, communication, and innovationâthat people lack those interpersonal dynamics unless they physically work together in an office.
However, our team members say they feel more connected in this virtual space than they did in jobs co-located with others. The only difference in how in-office professionals communicate versus remote professionals is the lack of in-person meetings. Most remote workers find theyâre able to communicate well without those, substituting office facetime with video conferencing, video calls, and occasional in-person meet-ups.
âProactive communicationâ is how we approach working together: encouraging everyone to speak up, ask questions, and clarify ideas when they arenât sure about something. Also, each team sets 30-60-90-day goals, big ideas are encouraged, and processes are always being refined to foster innovation and remove roadblocks.
Because of our explicit focus on ensuring that remote work doesnât interfere with collaboration, our communication channels often work even better than some teams who all sit in the same building.
Responsibility
I saved this cornerstone of our company culture for last because itâs so important. A remote work environment is built on trustâspecifically, trusting everyone to act as responsible professionals capable of doing their jobs well in an independent work environment.
Iâve worked with some of the folks at FlexJobs for years without ever having met them in person. Our people accepted their jobs without setting foot in a traditional office or meeting face-to-face. Therefore, as a company, every level of our operation starts with a baseline of trust.
Thatâs the key aspect of a remote companyâs culture. We donât have bricks and mortar. We donât have offices or water coolers, cubicles or conference rooms. Instead, the way we work together is our brick and mortar; itâs our infrastructure.
Our company culture is the foundation of everything else we do.
CHAPTER
2
UBER VS. LYFT: EXACT SAME TECHâENTIRELY DIFFERENT CULTURES
Jeremy Swift
I canât recall ever speaking to my Uber drivers.
I pressed the button, they showed up, and off we went; transaction complete. Then one day, I switched to Lyft. Suddenly, I was chatting with my drivers. Sometimes, we talked about mundane topics, but not always. One driver told me how he stopped driving at night after an intoxicated man became verbally then physically abusive. The driver punched his attacker in self-defense, then drove the man to the hospital and called the police. Another driver told me how driving part-time allows her to go back to school and pursue a teaching degree. Another driver told me how she supplements her freelance work as a graphic designer with Lyft rides and how on several occasions those conversations with her passengers actually led to graphic design gigs.
Hereâs perhaps the more interesting thing Iâve commonly heard: although many people drive for both Uber and Lyft, they never expect to have a conversation with their Uber fares. These are virtually identical services and virtually identical platforms, yet Uber somehow fosters transactions while Lyft creates experiences.
Same basic technologyâtwo starkly different cultures.
Same Service, Different Companies. How?
Uber has a four-year head start on Lyftâa tremendous advantage in any field but one thatâs especially important in tech. Uber remains the market leader, but Lyft has gained momentum, one year tripling its number of rides from the previous. There are plenty of reasons why Uber is losing ground to Lyft, but I link many of them to the companyâs problematic culture.
Culture, after all, is the context for our relationships, both transactional and authentic. The culture of any organization, big or small, takes its lead from the top. The good and bad of that culture permeate every level of the company, but it also extends out into the world where brand meets customer. There are plenty examples of Uberâs culture problems, including reports of blatant sexual harassment, blackmailing journalists who wrote unfavorable press, and threats of physical violence against employees. But the most relevant example is Travis Kalanick himself who stepped down from his post as CEO of the company he co-founded.
The incident that sparked that was when a video surfaced of Kalanick in an ugly exchange with an Uber driver. After a public backlash, Kalanick apologized. That was the right thing to do, but Kalanick missed the larger point. An Uber driverâthe only living, breathing connection between a technology platform and its customerâwas telling Kalanick something about authenticity, or rather the absence of it, at Uber. What the driver was saying was that Uber needed to be a better partner.
That is where the rubber meets the road. Either you subscribe to a transactional worldview that says every engagement is an opportunity for maximizing your return on investments, or you take a more holistic view toward building authentic relationships that create value for all stakeholders over time.
The Culture Is the Code
Both companies allow passengers to tip, but only Lyft makes it easy for riders to do so. Sure, weâre only talking about a few bucks, but the difference is huge in terms of the human experience. By making the tipping process opaque, Uber marginalizes people, and as a result, it reduces every encounter to a transactionâone which the driver can expect to be overlooked.
In contrast, Lyft makes tipping accessible and transparent, opening up the opportunity for a more authentic experience. These decisions are driven by culture, but theyâre enforced by computer code. While the interplay between culture and code has obvious implications for rideshare dr...