WHAT YOU FEEL: you don’t have the time and don’t really know how to create your company’s culture

PERSPECTIVE: Establishing your company culture is difficult in the beginning.  You don’t have a chief people officer – you probably can’t imagine the day you will hire someone with that title.  You do envision the day that your organization lives and breathes the culture that you want.  At early stages, you can’t spend the time or money on this that you wish you could.

In an early stage venture, you lack defined parameters for behavior.  It is like driving on a road without a speed limit.  In an environment where lots needs to get done, there are lots of reckless drivers, speeders, honkers, lane changers and dragsters.  As you hire, you will also encounter many personalities.  If you don’t set some basic parameters for your culture, it will define itself.  Given the chaos of early stage ventures, it is rare that a culture that develops on its own will foster positive, collaborative principles.  Left to its devices, culture generally will develop with negative undertones.  As a result, set core values that are non-negotiable.

I suggest setting three core values that are non-negotiable.  Here are a few:

• The only criteria for decisions will be what’s in the best interest of the business

• There is a zero tolerance policy for untrustworthy behavior

• We must constantly be learning about ourselves and our company to find a way to be better today than we were yesterday.

Keep them simple and no more than three values in the beginning.

One more piece of advice.  Not setting your values is one thing.  Setting them and not enforcing them can be worse.  With these three values, have a zero tolerance policy.  Not only does it undermine the values, it undermines the leadership.  When leadership sets rules and doesn’t enforce them, or enforces them selectively based on who is breaking the rules, the rank and file loses faith in their leaders that they are going to do what they say.

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