Culture isn’t created by fiat. However, culture is created and re-created by the choices made by individuals every day. It can be reshaped by conscious effort applied gently, subtly, and consistently (paraphrased from comments here). People make the culture, so invest in your people foremost.
- Make the right thing to do the easiest thing to do.
- Solve problems by fixing the environment that allowed them to occur.
- Automate all the things!
- The worst thing we can do for happiness and productivity is disturb the culture.
- The worst thing we can do to the culture is introduce tension.
- There are better battles to fight than with each other.
- It's hard to say objectively that one culture is "better" than another, but having the culture pulled in multiple directions clearly burns people out, so focus on cultural alignment in decisions and hiring.
- Perhaps the worst thing we can do for culture is try to preserve it.
- Times change, trends change, cultures change
- Culture change will happen
- 20% of culture is fast-changing, 80% is slow-changing from Leadership Conversations
- Plan around trust; allow for mistakes
- If tempted to introduce a policy, ask whether or not it is needed because you don't trust everybody to do the right thing.
- Mistakes are OK; expect them and learn from them.
- Transparency & Communication
- Lack of transparency alienates people and fosters resentment.
- Being upfront about risks, drawbacks, failings, etc., shows trust and fosters loyalty.
- Collaboration
- Happiness is productivity is happiness — at least for people who care about what they do
- Responsible Autonomy
- People are the most important asset
- Never hire for growth/hiring targets; only hire for fit
- High cohesion, low coupling — (Highly aligned, loosly coupled)
- It doesn't matter when or how much you work, only that your peers trust you and feel like you are contributing fairly.
- Leadership is not appointed/given, it is earned
- You are a leader if and only if people follow you.
- Leaders are servant leaders
- They treat you like a peer
- They make it clear that their job is to remove obstacles from your path
- They build trust through encouragement and participation, and never demand it
- They are great listeners and have a strong sense of awareness and empathy
- They understand that if they spend their time growing people, that they too will grow in the process
- They convince others rather than coercing compliance
- Don't hire for teams. Hire great people, let them pick the team they want to be on.
- Team can say no
- Bad projects who can't compel people to join them will die. Let them.
- Hire for culture fit first, talent second
- Only hire people you can trust
- Policies/procedures are created when you can't trust your employees — i.e. you made bad hires.
- Pay them as much as you would pay them to keep them from leaving for a higher-paying job
- Trust your employees to be professionals who know what they need to excel — be it bigger monitors, comfortable chairs, or healthier food.
- Netflix
- GitHub
- Valve
- 37 Signals
- Culture - Ted Nyman
- Your lifestyle has already been designed
- Social business well being and management (I'd love a more formal representation of the studies that were hinted at, though)
- Salaries and Raises - Dan Manges from Braintree
- Culture aren't like prototypes, you can't throw them away. How do you experiment to find the right culture?
- Being strict and intensive about hiring, but what about identifying bad hires and handling this once they're in?
- Companies with good 'chaotic' cultures seem to dogfood or have a close relationship with what they're building (eg Github). Is this a prereq for effective culture? This would mean that only engineer probs would get solved.
- What's the balance between hiring "culture-fits" to reduce cultural tension and forming a mono-culture?