Values

I thought we were the perfect startup team. Despite the differences in age and experience, we all wanted the same thing: to disrupt the ass-backwards way we aligned people to jobs. We thought resumes were creative fiction, job descriptions were useless, and that billions of dollars every year were wasted with talented employees doing non-productive work.

We had an audacious vision. We had passion for solving this massive problem. We knew our market intimately having worked in the recruitment and HR industries. I thought that was good enough for building the right team to execute on our vision. I was very wrong.

Soon after launching, I could see how different we approached work. I worked quickly and just tried things. My co-founders were much more deliberate. They wanted to debate and analyze everything. I felt over-communication and collaboration was slowing us down.

I thought the problem was that we were all remote. I worked in NYC, one co-founder was in Kansas, and the other was traveling all the time for his still full-time consulting job. When we did meet in person, however, we would get into epic arguments about the dumbest things, and then avoid coming to consensus on the big matters.

Of all the issues I could point to with my startup, I think the lack of alignment we had on how to work together was our biggest failure. We lost precious time battling each other and getting consumed by ill-will towards each other rather than solving problems and helping customers. We never spoke to each other after exiting our startup, and I fell into a deep depression knowing that the outcome could have been so much better.

The reality is most co-founding teams never work out. From the “The Founder's Dilemmas”, Professor Noam Wasserman found that 65% of startup failures are due to toxic co-founder relationships. Around 10% of co-founders end their relationship within the first year of the startup and 45% breakup within four years.

One of the major issues that leads to co-founder divorce has little to do with lack of vision or passion. They split up because they simply cannot figure out how to work together. Then they come to resent each other. This was confirmed in research by Yael Daniely showing 20% of breakups were due to CEO tension, 20% due to decision making, and 10% due to differences in values and motivation.

In big organizations, you rarely experience this tension. Sure, there are people you probably will not get along with and teams that can be outright toxic. For the most part, though, most people tend to get along even when there may be differences in working styles. You gloss over the negatives for the greater goal of working together as a team to get work done.

Early stage startups do not have that luxury. Especially with co-founding teams that are in constant communication, working in high stress situations, and doing many things for the first time. You work in a haze of uncertainty where there are no right answers, just more questions to resolve. Differences in opinion are bound to surface.

What I did not understand in my first startup was just how critical it was to understand how a team works together. Even more important though is how you work. We all have our own approaches to getting stuff done, but we rarely take the time to dig deep into what makes us tick. Before you can work as a team, you need to know how you work as individuals.

How do you begin to figure out your working habits? It starts with knowing what you care about most. This includes the things that you appreciate, that bring you joy, that help you get into your flow state. You should also consider the things that annoy you as things you would like to avoid in your working environment. These are your values.

Company values are the core guiding principles that define how an organization operates, makes decisions, and interacts with stakeholders. Values serve as the cultural foundation for employees. When values are set, they provide strategic focus, framework for working with customers, a means to attract talent, and a path to better quality decision making.

Earlier in my career, I never appreciated why establishing values was important. The places I worked at always had a set of values, but rarely put then into action. It felt like one of those things companies did because they were supposed to do but never really believed in. They were meaningless, like those Successories posters companies hang on the office walls (I do love the sarcastic versions the skewer these posters).

When I joined Amazon, I finally saw the power that having a set of values could be. Every aspect of Amazon was guided by sixteen Leadership Principles (LPs). During the interview process, I was evaluated for my alignment to various LPs. All performance reviews and promotions are assessed based on LPs. Every narrative, project, and product launch was littered with references back to LPs. Then when we would discuss a narrative after a silent doc read to start the meeting, much of the conversation would revolve around alignment to the LPs and whether the item under discussion was “customer obsessed”.

That is the incredible influence a strong set of values has over an organization. It aligns everyone, from the most junior intern to the CEO, to a way of doing things that are uniquely part of that company and make it easier to work together. When values are put into action and connect employees to the culture, a company can achieve unstoppable growth.

While many founders I speak with think of values and culture as an afterthought, I consider establishing values as the first step. For my current startup, I have started the process of value setting with these set of ten values:

• We excel as owners of this company, propelled by passion, ambition, and enthusiasm.

• We prioritize honesty and transparency in all of our communications.

• We trust in ourselves, our colleagues, and our partners to drive extraordinary outcomes.

• We earn respect by doing what we say we will do on time and with attention to detail.

• We listen intently to our customers and seek to understand their implicit needs.

• We foster creativity and innovation through a diverse, resourceful, and globally minded team.

• We work with urgency, collaborate, learn fast, and iterate constantly to deliver results.

• We value experiments and taking big bets as the best way to invent and compete.

• We accept failure happens, never blaming, but always seeking to understand and improve.

• We achieve goals, celebrate wins, and award excellence together as a team.

These are still a work in progress. I may add, remove some, or edit theses. While these are values I would like for the startup, as I bring on co-founders and employees, these values will change and evolve over time at the startup grows.

When establishing your values, here are some things to keep in mind:

• Define your vision and mission – It is important to know the why and what of your startup before you set the how.

• Dedicate time think & discuss – This is a collaborative effort and should involve open discussion with the early team.

• Share and record thoughts on culture – Setting values needs to be a transparent process that involves the entire team.

• Block out time for a culture discussion – Once the initial set of values are created, have a time for a conversation to gather feedback.

• Whiteboard the culture & values discussion – I find it is helpful having feedback on the whiteboard for everyone to see.

• Incorporate feedback into founder views – Once you grow beyond the co-founder team, you need to also add employee feedback to process.

• Announce values and integrate into work – Once you have set your values, they have to be actively used in the company. Some ways to do that include:

  • Add culture training into employee onboarding

  • Use values and language in documents

  • Build values into how you conduct meetings

  • Make values public, share openly with customers

  • Integrate values into review & promotion process

  • Incorporate values into recruiting & interview process

  • Review & revise every 6 to 12 months

When you establish a strong set of values that everyone agrees with, you have a solid foundation for your startup. Everyone feels a sense of belonging to the team and work can be executed with more clarity, purpose, and quality. When conflicts arise, you will have a basis for resolving them faster. The best way to bring joy and well-being into your startup begins with a well-crafted values put into action.

Mark Birch

My book Community-in-a-Box has been out for over two weeks now and I am thrilled with how it has been received! I recently got a shout out in the latest Singapore Global Network newsletter (a community of over 150,000 around the globe), and many people have been buying the book. I now need a BIG favor from my awesome followers. If you have purchased the book, please take a moment to give leave a review on Amazon. Having reviews enables the book to be discovered by more people and gives it legitimacy for people that do not know me.

I also had an amazing evening last Friday co-hosting the GenieFriends dinner in Taipei! We have nearly fifty people attending with many attending for the first time. While the events are not meant to be spaces for promotion, I was thankful to the team for allowing me a minute to share the book launch.

And thank you for everyone that I had a chance to meet with over the past week in Taipei. In particular, I had the most amazing conversation with Miranda Meng who helps companies with leadership coaching and organizational change. I also enjoyed chatting about community with Perng Aw from Singapore who is helping organizations implement communities and Aletha Alfarania with GitLab to discuss the challenges of balancing community and corporate interests. I also got to catch up with my dear friends Bruce Bateman and Anita Chen who both helped out with the book (Anita wrote an amazing One Thing contribution). Thanks again!