How do I make my best decisions? (Think of a recent decision you made that had a good outcome. What qualities drive me crazy about people? When I look at my friends, what are the characteristics they have in common? What do I value about the people around me? What sets me apart from the people around me? If you’re a founder evaluating yourself, consider asking: Fundamentally, it’s an exercise in self-awareness.” It brings up a handful of helpful questions that can be useful in thinking about the DNA of your culture. “Regardless, self awareness (or awareness about your founders) is a really good starting place. “This might sound obvious, but to a lot of people, it’s not,” Graham says. If a founder is a designer, the way the company builds products will likely be led by design. On the other hand, if a founder deliberates too long over decisions, their startup may have a hard time moving as fast as it should. If they are analytical and data-driven, the company will tend to make metrics-based decisions. If a founder is competitive, the company will be more aggressive and competitive. If you’re not a founder, look at your CEO and the people who were there at the very beginning.” So when you start defining culture in an intentional way, first look at yourselves. “Companies tend to reflect everything about them - their personality, strengths, weaknesses. These are the people who sat down and said this is such a good idea that I want to devote my entire life to it, Graham says. LESSON 1: Companies are built in the image of their foundersĨ0% of your company's culture will be defined by its core leaders. There are three lessons in particular that she thinks can help startups get to “this is who we are” earlier in the process. “It’s an interesting story, because I think there are a few things we could have done to get to that identity a bit faster,” she says. Now the street leading into Facebook HQ is literally called Hacker Way and the center of campus is called Hacker Square. "But gradually, over the next two years, this attitude shifted," Graham says. Wary of possible negative connotations surrounding the word 'hacker,' the company avoided using it for a long time, opting instead for words like ‘entreprenuerial’ which weren't as powerful. "We had it written on all the walls inside the company, but no one was throwing it out to describe Facebook’s character.” In particular, she gathered together people who had been at the company the longest, split them into groups, and asked them the following question: What are the words you use to talk about this place? “One word that was noticeably absent from the conversation: Hack. So she pulled as many other people into the process as she could. Most notably, they resulted in the “hacker” identity that has distinguished the company as a technology powerhouse that is always experimenting to bring the world closer together.Īt First Round’s recent CEO Summit, Graham, who managed Culture and Employment Branding at the company for two years - and who now runs business operations for slick, modern word processor Quip - talked about what startup founders have to gain from defining culture early and often, and how to do this when there are dozens of competing priorities.įor Facebook and Graham, culture was all about staying true to the company's early identity and giving people the momentum to stay creative through hyper-growth. Since then, these two questions have formed the foundation of Facebook’s culture discussions. She started by asking two questions: 1) Who do we want to be when we grow up? 2) How do we talk to people outside about what it’s like to work at Facebook? Graham was hired to help make this happen - to not only tell the company’s story externally, but to build a shared vision and identity as it grew from 400 to thousands of employees. With 400 employees serving 80 million users, people were so busy “moving fast and breaking things” that the culture still needed to be defined. When Molly Graham joined Facebook in 2008, the company still felt scrappy.
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