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How to Set a Growth Culture in Your Startup Early

One of the big advantages of being an
entrepreneur and starting your company f rom
scratch is that you get to set the culture, which
is much easier than changing the culture of an
existing business. T he challenge is how to do
it, and how to do it right. Why not learn what
you can f rom companies like Apple, who are
leading the way with great growth and a great
culture?

Jim Stengel, in Grow: How Ideals Power

Growth and Prof it chronicles a ten-year study
of the worlds f if ty best businesses, including
Apple, and concludes that those who centered
their businesses on a culture of improving
peoples lives had a growth rate triple that of competitors in their categories.

Here are ten culture building principles, adapted f or startups f rom this study, that I believe have the same
potential f or tripling the growth and survival potential of your entrepreneurial ef f orts:

1. Communicate your dream and operationalize it. Mission statements tend to be narrow, business
oriented statements such as Be the leader in customer satisf action. Your dream and your company
culture needs to be outward f ocused with a higher good, extending beyond the companys f inancial
interests.

2. Be clear about what you stand for, inside and outside your company. Your personal priorities,
values, and principles set the culture. T he best way to be clear about them is to regularly engage
team members, customers, and suppliers. People f ollow what you do, not what you say.

3. Design your organization for what it needs to win. T his includes the specif ic work your startup
must do, the capabilities you need to build f or a competitive advantage, and the career path f or team
members to bring this to lif e. Traditional marketing, sales, and product management organizations
of ten lead to mediocrity.

4. Get your team right and do it quickly. For startups, this means knowing where you need help and
where you need helpers, and hiring caref ully. For help, hire people who are smarter than you in the
domain they know, while helpers give you arms and legs, but need you to dictate the tasks and make
all the decisions. Quickly handle hiring mistakes.

5. Champion innovation of all kinds. You must visibly champion a portf olio approach to innovation,
emanating f rom dreams, not desperation. T he portf olio should be much more than just product
improvements, and should include better business models, customer service improvements, as well
as continuous process improvements.

6. Set your standards very high. You tell people every day what meets your standards when you
agree or disagree with recommendations f rom your team. If you believe in your team, you set high
standards and stick to them. A good team will step up to the challenge, and your customers will notice
and respond to the culture of excellence.
 7. Train all the time. T his is simply a mind-set shif t. Every interaction every day is a training event, and
you can capitalize on it or not. Training is coaching, rather than criticizing, to improve the outcome
next time. Training all the time is a hallmark of great leaders and great companies.

8. Do a few symbolic things to create excitement about what is important. Focus on one or two
symbolic events a year, major actions that will be meaningf ul to your team and other stakeholders,
and make them f un as well as directional. Pick your heroes caref ully, both customers and team
members.

9. T hink like a winner, act like a winner. Customers can sense how motivated a businesss people
are just f rom seeing the product and how its presented to them. Customers want to buy into a
winner, so make sure your people never apologize f or price or quality, and never back away f rom an
opportunity to delight a customer.

10. Live your desired legacy. If you dont know your ultimate goal, you will never get there. If you team
doesnt know the ultimate goal of your business, they cant get it there either. Be like Steve Jobs,
who lived a legacy and lef t a legacy at Apple, of radical or even magical products and experiences. He
did it in one of the worlds largest companies.

T he right business culture doesnt require a cult atmosphere, but it does require a disdain f or concepts like
conventional wisdom and status quo. It does have to be built around ideals, employee permission to be
creative, and something other than just making prof it. How many of these principles do you practice in your
startup?

Marty Z willing