Company culture: virtues over values
Words are good; actions are better.
Hi, I’m Russell and this is issue #6 of Russell’s Index, where I write about the lessons I’ve learned—and continue to learn—as a founding employee at SharpestMinds. Subscribe for a new issue every week(ish).
Virtues over values
Company culture is hard to define and hard to measure. But—according to every management book I’ve read—it’s critical to a company’s long-term success.
Ben Horowitz, in What You Do is Who You Are, defines culture as a kind of operating framework for employees:
Culture is how your company makes decisions when you’re not there. It’s the set of assumptions your employees use to resolve the problems they face every day. It’s how they behave when no one is looking.
In the early days of a startup, culture evolves organically—an amalgamation of the values and behaviours of the founders and early employees. It wasn’t something we thought about much at SharpestMinds until it was time to grow the company beyond myself and the two founders. We wanted our next hire to align with our cultural values. But first, we had to codify those values in writing. [1]
Feeling out those values and writing them down was a good exercise. It proved very useful for filtering candidates—providing a checklist to screen against. But, when it comes to propagating those values, it doesn’t matter what we wrote down. What matters is what we do—the virtues implicit in our actions and decisions.
Andy Grove, in High Output Management, emphasizes that being a leader means being a role model—for your subordinates, your peers, and your supervisors. The best way to communicate a particular set of values is to lead by example.
Values and behavioral norms are simply not transmitted easily by talk and memo, but are conveyed very effectively by doing and doing visibly.
The takeaway here is a common cliche—actions speak louder than words. Focus on virtues (what you do) rather than values (what you believe).
A simple example
We had a new employee in a weekly meeting with the whole team for the first time. We had selected them based on cultural fit. They had read through and believed in our values. That was a good start, but we still had to be role models and set the norms.
During that meeting, I told the team that I had been struggling with burn-out. They were helpful and supportive—offering advice and sympathy. But, ultimately, they trusted my assessment and gave me permission to do what I thought was best. We didn’t realize it at the time, but we were exemplifying one of the values that we had written down: a culture of introspection:
If we get frustrated, angry, or burnt-out, we talk about why and unpack things mindfully. We’ve all been through difficult times. We understand, and we listen. [2]
It wasn’t until later on that this new hire told me the effect that meeting had on him. He had never seen such trust and honesty in a work setting. The fact that we talked openly about burn-out and anxiety made a lasting impression.
He now fully lives this value himself—helping to cement it is a core part of our culture. When he eventually has his own team to manage, I’m confident he’ll pass this along.
[1] I will be sharing some of these values in future issues of the Index. Eventually, making it public.
[2] This was copied verbatim from our list of values, but it under describes the virtues involved in that meeting. There was more than introspection at play. More notable was the high trust and empathy from the rest of the team. Writing down values is a useful exercise, but demonstrating virtues can communicate so much more.
Thanks for reading! Subscribe for a new post every week(ish). If you have a comment or want to chat, replies to this newsletter will go directly to my inbox.
Find me on Twitter @russ_poll