Startup, Scaleup, Screwup.

25Culture Clash

Identify Core Values, create a Culture Code, and use stories and rewards to prepare your business for scaling.

 

During a Daily Cafe last week, I told the team that I want to start publishing some business metrics on our company blog, either monthly or quarterly. I’ve been inspired by articles from other startups and scaleups that had good success with full transparency. Now that we’re preparing for new rounds of Agile Funding, full openness about our failures and achievements would be good marketing. And as I remembered recently, Transparency is one of the Core Values of our team.

Some time ago, I was trying to recall what the other Core Values are that our team agreed upon during a team offsite in Copenhagen. But for at least an hour, I failed to remember the outcome of our discussions. However, suddenly, I had an idea. I opened Slack and I typed the word “mnemonic” in the search box. Sure enough, there it was! A message from me that I sent to the team, three months earlier:

“I found a mnemonic for our top five values: PETIT: Passion, Empathy, Trust, Integrity, and Transparency. Maybe now we will be able to remember them more easily.”

Well, that little trick certainly helped a lot.

As a startup or scaleup founder, entrepreneur, or intrapreneur, you have many number one jobs. Sometimes, your number one job is hiring a great team. Other times, your number one ...