Company Culture

At the best companies, "company culture" is more than just a buzzword. Here's how the most innovative companies make company culture real.

To get started, you may want to read articles about specific companies like Zappos, Amazon, Shopify, Wistia, and Buffer.

For a comprehensive look at company culture, read our guide Company Culture for Startups.

12 Startup Leaders on What They Love about Their Company Cultures

September 19, 2017 by Walter Chen Leave a Comment

Startup founders begin with building new products and end up building new companies. Ultimately, some of the most successful companies not only reinvent a product or market, they change the way people work in a way that’s reflective of what they value most, and that’s embodied in their company culture.

To find out how startup leaders think about building companies that they themselves enjoy working in, we surveyed the founders of some of the most innovative startups out there to ask them one simple question:

What do you value most about your company culture, and what’s one important way that you contribute to it?

We received some amazing, proud and insightful responses from startup founders personally, another individual within the company who was eager to chip in, and the PR or marketing team.

How to Focus on the Magic Even When Scaling Up

April 10, 2017 by Jackie Cohen Leave a Comment

Onfleet Product Design and Strategy Director Ivan Tolmachev (right) discusses a prototype with Vice President of Sales Andrew Travis.

Teams of all sizes struggle with their processes at some point in their lifetime. If you’re a startup, one of the your advantages is how quickly you can move in a space where the big boys take a while. But what happens when your team is in transition mode and needs to keep scaling up as quickly as it did in the beginning? And how do you this in a design capacity?

How A Team of 3 Needed I Done This to Stay In Sync and Prioritize Work

January 17, 2017 by Evan Leave a Comment

The Brief

Productivity is everything at startups. And, with all the chaos that happens at startups (growth, hiring, legal – you name it), it’s easy to lose sight on tracking your productivity.

That’s where Markitors found themselves last year.

Markitors is a growing digital marketing agency in Scottsdale, Arizona with 3 full time employees and 15 small business clients. If you Google “digital marketing company”, Markitors usually appears on the first page of the search engine results. As a result, you’ll find a lot of the chaos at Markitors that you’d find in a typical startup. Onboarding new employees. Finding new office space. Delivering results for clients. Making sure deliverables are met. And, ensuring that the company is operating at max productivity to bring on employee #4.

How We Host Meetups

January 12, 2017 by Willa Rubin Leave a Comment

When we first started I Done This, getting to know our customers was easy. We also didn’t have a ton of customers.

As our subscriber list grew, getting to know our new customers became challenging. But we didn’t want to give up the close relationships we were developing with our customers. Our customers’ insights have been super valuable. And frankly, we genuinely like our customers and love connecting with them in a casual environment.

I Done This users are now based all around the world—so when we travel, we jump at the chance to get to know local users and have started hosting customer meetups. We carefully plan each step of the way, so that we set ourselves up for success. And by success, we mean having great conversations, really connecting, and positioning ourselves to maintain new customer relationships in the future.

Here’s how we plan our meetups to grow our customer relationships.

Lessons From A Year In A Remote Team Culture

December 15, 2016 by Ben Mulholland 1 Comment

Every remote worker I’ve seen stumble and fail over the last year has had one thing in common. They weren’t involved in the team culture.

I don’t just mean water cooler talk – culture includes almost everything aside from your actual output. The system you work by, the amount of meetings you have, the very structure of your teams is governed by your culture.

So when an employee doesn’t engage in culture it causes three things:

A feeling of isolation
A communication barrier
A lack of motivation
Lower productivity

However, when culture is done right, it powers motivation, encourages communication, and forms a solid, centralized base for your entire workforce to draw from.

Over the last year of remote work the practices I’ve seen benefit our team the most have been:

Assigning mentors
Hosting competitions
Posing problems instead of solutions
Centralizing information
Documenting processes
Giving structured freedom

Let’s dive right in!

The Science of Trust in the Workplace

November 1, 2016 by Willa Rubin Leave a Comment

A 2015 study at NYU Langone showed that when mice were given oxytocin—the hormone that enhances bonding—they started caring for other mices’ babies, as if they were their own. This behavior continued even after the mices’ oxytocin receptors were shut off.

trust in the workplace

Wouldn’t it be nice if you could give some to your manager?

It turns out oxytocin can actually teach us a lot about working together as a team and building great work relationships leading to more trust in the workplace. Here’s how it works.

3 Project Management Methodologies That Create Better Work Culture

August 23, 2016 by David Zha 1 Comment

People like to dismiss project management methodologies (PMM) as frivolous techniques that won’t really improve their business’s productivity. While they’re wrong on that account, they actually miss the point completely.

project management methodologies

What people don’t realize is that PMMs are more than just process-improvement tools. Project management is really about changing attitudes to create a trusting, collaborative company culture. By adopting practices that encourage communication, unity, and openness, a company can instill positive values within itself and become a great place to work.

We’ll take a look at how companies can use project management methodologies to unify teams and encourage collaborative attitudes for a better work culture.

How to run effective meetings with I Done This

July 26, 2016 by Evan Leave a Comment

Qualaroo has been leveraging I Done This to continuously improve their ops, communication, and efficiency. Their team wanted to streamline their weekly all-hands on deck meeting process.

The Qualaroo team was slogging through a Google document maze for weekly meetings but switched over to I Done This 100% to run more effective meetings. At the start of the week they now list their goals with a #weekly in I Done This. Every day they see how their team is progressing against their weekly goals.

The team limits each team member to five talking points from their #weekly entries and the rest of the entries were reviewed independently on I Done This. Any communication that involves one other person or small group would be moved to after the meeting to ensure a speedy meeting. Qualaroo’s CEO, Brad Wittwer, called ecstatically about how I Done This just saved everyone on the team 30 minutes. After doing the math, this was a huge cost savings for them. From Brad, “I Done This just cut down our all-hands meeting by 33%, which means you just saved us thousands of dollars.”

How to Handle 3 Types of Workplace Conflict

July 5, 2016 by Henry Updegrave Leave a Comment

Hollywood would have you believe that workplace conflict is awesome. Movies depict the best offices as filled with macho dudes in suits screaming at each other, throwing around insults, and somehow also getting fantastic results.

That’s entertaining, but let’s look at the facts: a 2010 study revealed that the average U.S. employee spends 2.8 hours a week dealing with disputes at work, resulting in losses of $359 Billion across the American economy. In reality, conflict pulls people away from their jobs and kills productivity.

With that in mind, your instinct might be to ruthlessly stamp it out wherever you see it. But that’s not always the best course of action. You need to recognize that not every workplace conflict is the same. It’s like criminal justice—a first degree crime is sentenced differently than a second degree crime. The context, causes, and intentions should influence how you deal with conflict in the workplace.

Here’s a rundown of three of the most common types of office workplace conflict, what they mean for your company, and how to solve them.

When Employees Feel Ignored at Work, Everyone Suffers

June 28, 2016 by Jimmy Daly 2 Comments

What exactly does ostracism at work look like?

On the exclusion spectrum, you’ll find everything from accidentally leaving someone off a calendar invite to purposefully avoiding an individual in the lunch room. Feeling ignored at work is a silent but hurtful experience.

feeling ignored at work The topic may seem trivial — “Are adults really so sensitive?” you might ask — but it’s one that can have a serious impact on your employees’ job satisfaction, performance, and happiness. A 2014 study questioned if a lack of attention could be more painful for victims than bullying. Perhaps surprisingly, the answer is often yes.

Company Culture

12 Startup Leaders on What They Love about Their Company Cultures

How to Focus on the Magic Even When Scaling Up

How A Team of 3 Needed I Done This to Stay In Sync and Prioritize Work

The Brief

How We Host Meetups

Lessons From A Year In A Remote Team Culture

The Science of Trust in the Workplace

3 Project Management Methodologies That Create Better Work Culture

How to run effective meetings with I Done This

How to Handle 3 Types of Workplace Conflict

When Employees Feel Ignored at Work, Everyone Suffers

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