During the last couple weeks, I visited with several technology start-up businesses in San Francisco, Boston and Las Vegas. I’m particularly interested in how start-ups build a culture in their organizations and whether or not it occurs by default or if it is deliberately designed by the entrepreneurial team. What is culture? It is pattern of basic assumptions and beliefs, the learned behaviors, shared values and norms that define the work in an organization (Schein, E. 2006, Organizational Culture and Leadership, Jossey Bass: San Francisco, CA). The visible artifacts of culture have to do with stories, ceremonies, symbols, events, the way people dress, and layout of an office. But the roots of culture have to do with beliefs and assumptions that underlie how work is done in the venture. For example, beliefs about time- do people work 24 hours or do they work 9-5? Beliefs about space- no walls or closed offices? Beliefs about people- are they inherently good and work for intrinsic rewards or inherently lazy and have to have be motivated with punishment? Culture is “learned” in a venture from events, and what the entrepreneur pays attention to, measures, and controls. Why is culture important in a new company? The failure or quit rate of new ventures is around 50-60% during the first 2 years. When a business closes their doors, one of leading causes is leadership or management which is often stated as poor team composition, incompetence (living too high for the business or emotional decision-making), all of which can be linked directly to culture. In San Francisco, I had the opportunity to participate in a panel sponsored by the Silicon Vikings where we talked about culture in start-ups. One of my co-panelists was Risto Lahdesmaki, founder of IDEAN, a design firm founded in Finland but later located Palo Alto, Calif. The purpose of the company to develop elegant user interface designs for customers and they do this by providing a fun, learning environment for employees that favors both diversity and flexibility. In a word, the culture of IDEAN is “awesome”.
Reported by Forbes.com 4 hours ago.
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