Culture and Startups

Culture is quite possibly the only way that you can maintain control in a startup

The success of most startups comes down to the people in it. If the question is how to find great people, one of the answers you are often going to hear is to create a great culture.

Last week I understood why culture is the only way for a startup to manage its people.

An organisation is made of people and there is a need to manage the efforts of those people to direct them towards a common goal. Organisations are designed to make this happen.

Photo by Marvin Meyer on Unsplash

Every organisation has several levels of control within and that often resembles an organogram or what is commonly known as an organisational chart. An org chart tells you who reports to whom and what is the chain of command.

This results in better communication and management.

Almost every large company can attribute its success to its processes. This takes away a bit of nimbleness but ultimately avoids ambiguity. Imagine a company with 10,000 people where every manager decides to conduct appraisals in their way. You can expect the HR head to accept defeat and put down his/her papers.

In organisational design, you have three levers of control. Structure, Processes and Culture.

When you look at the organisational structure of a startup with 10 people or fewer, it would resemble an atom rather than an org chart.

Source: BBC

The Nucleus is the founders and then there are team members who are moving between different rings based on what they are engaged in. The structure is extremely fluid.

In such an organisation where everyone can holler across the floor and talk to anybody structures are impossible to enforce. Also, the only advantage you have at that stage is that you do not have processes. This is quite possibly the only superpower that makes startups thrive. If every decision had to be taken by committees and protocols ONE mistake can finish off the company.

This leaves founders with only one lever which is culture. A weak structure implies you might feel like you are at the heart of decision-making one day and totally at the fringes another day. Only a strong culture can keep the environment from turning political and people trying to sabotage each other out of envy.