How did your company define its values, and was it effective?

Lucy·Feb 14, 2021

Posted in:Management and Leadership Startups

Hi founders/early startup employees, very curious to learn how you set the culture and values in your company early on.Did you follow a particular framework or use any tools to help you? ls there a trusted source for the "best practice" way to do this? Is this something you did super early or only after a certain milestone (e.g., hiring x number of employees, raising x funds, etc.)?And then reflecting on your company values now, did they help achieve the culture you wanted to create?Are they incorporated into hiring, decision making, performance management at your company?Anything you wish you knew or wish you'd done differently?Thanks for your thoughts! I'm trying to figure out how to best do this at my company.

DianePrince·Feb 15, 2021

Hi Lucy, I use tools to set core values and then a system to directly use them in hiring, decision making and performance management. Would you like help with that?

thisisjv·Feb 15, 2021

@lucyz The Nasdaq Milestone Maker program was really helpful for this exercise. Part of the program focused on Principled Entrepreneurship which is all about defining company values and principles. We learned about the tools and how to effectively roll-out / introduce company values to your team. It is quite important to define in the early life of your company.

Lucy·Feb 17, 2021

Thanks for your reply! I wasn't aware of the Nasdaq Milestone Makers--looks like a great program.

thisisjv·Feb 18, 2021

Hi Lucy, yes it is a great program that is 100% free. We were matched with mentors in our industry and a coach. There are 12 spots in each cohort. Applications are open for Spring 2021 https://thecenter.nasdaq.org/milestone-makers/

lauraglu·Feb 16, 2021

We use our values nearly every week when referring to a decisions - partnerships, how to respond to outreach, prioritizing projects or resources. We revisit and discuss about once a year - are they still serving, reflected in our approach etc? We are a small team but I think they work best when leaders are equally behind using them regularly.

Lucy·Feb 17, 2021

Interesting that you refer to them every week--I haven't experienced that in companies before. Kudos that you were able to build that into the culture!

LindseyMiranda·Feb 16, 2021

Hi @lucyz! I'm a co-founder and CEO for our company; myself and cofounders @StephanieGorosh and @lyra have put a TON of time and energy into building intentional culture for Tell Me More Gifts. Stephanie and I were Ops, HR, and People team professionals before starting TMMG. As such, we were often hired to startups loooooong after culture and policies needed to be in place...meaning we're very familiar with the foundational parts of the company unaddressed and the enormous pile up of issues that can create for the entire company later. I think the "Best Practices" are dependent upon the company and industry but there's probably general lists from Forbes or The Muse.We've used tons of different techniques and methods and I'd be happy to share my Operating Manual (a written doc Stephanie and I completed to help describe how we work best to each other as we've never met in person before!) and other tools I've used both at TMMG and at a handful of various startups in the People Ops role to help set culture. I'm so happy to see your question because I think a lot of people assume culture is ONLY built intentionally but it's built every day with every message and every interaction between all people in the company. If the culture isn't tended to (I think of it like a garden) or isn't guided by a thorough framework that's built to evolve with the team, the culture will STILL be built...but it probably won't end up serving the company nearly as well as it could have if the groundwork is laid thoroughly. Here's some quick links to things I've personally used to support culture setting and growth:-Teams would take this assessment then compare to see what everyone's potential weak spots might be, so we can plan ahead and work with our blind spots before they show up: https://www.positiveintelligence.com/assessments/-MergeLane changed my life on a personal and professional level: https://www.mergelane.com/-Identifying a personal mission statement has helped me see where my specialties and passions are, and then be able to see opportunities to grow them: https://www.indeed.com/career-advice/career-development/personal-mission-statement-examples -Knowing my own internal ethics code is also helpful for making decisions and guiding my team. I can't lead them if I don't know where I'm going or what I'm doing: https://www.indeed.com/career-advice/career-development/personal-mission-statement-examples-Lastly, we've been incorporating Systems Thinking, which is basically the understanding that there are explicit and implicit parts to every team, and every team is part of a system. I've had trouble talking about challenges we've faced before because our team didn't share the right amount of overlapping vocabulary to properly address every issue that has come up. Learning Systems Thinking has helped give us language to talk about things that were previously un-addressable. It's an ongoing process, but it's really had a hugely positive impact for us. https://learningforsustainability.net/systems-thinking/#:~:text=Systems%20thinking%20is%20an%20approach,other%20parts%20of%20the%20system.I hope any of this helps <3 Warm wishes!

Lucy·Feb 17, 2021

Thanks for your thorough & well thought out reply! The links you included to all these resources are great--I'm already going through them :)

LindseyMiranda·Feb 19, 2021

@lucyz Absolutely, my pleasure! Hmu if you ever want to talk company culture more, it's a personal favorite philosophical topic over here :D