Plans for company culture
This is a working document of things I would like to build a company culture around. I take this from personal experience and from things I hear from different sources. The reason why I'm compiling them now, it's so that it is a lot easier to build and maintain company culture from the start. I've worked in place where culture had fallen apart. *** Working document, not everything in here I will stick to and not everything is the right thing ***
Office politics is not wanted here
- Value added (performance) based not time based
Employees should not be judged based on time but solely on value add. Allow people to mange their own time and when their most productive. - Transparent and open employee pay-scale
As part of eliminating office politics and having everything performance based there should be an open and transparent employee payscale.
http://www.inc.com/magazine/20090401/how-hard-could-it-be-employees-negotiate-pay-raises_pagen_2.html
Company development cycle
- Allow freedom to build weekend features in, freely
If there is a feature or project that someone wants to undertake and it can be done within weekend(s) but is not a core part of the product life cycle, then let them implement it (as long as there are no negative effects). This is not done for reward but from the persons own personal conviction, reward people for it but don't make money the main motivational factor.
People
- Hiring
Ask divergence testing questions to determine out of box thinking and creativity during interview stage:
e.g List as many uses as you can for the following objects?1. A brick2. A blanketReference: http://thisbrazenteacher.blogspot.com/2008/12/testing-intelligence.html
Malcolm Gladwell's Outliers Book
- Do not turn people down if they ask to work for you
If someone is interested in working for the company do not say no. If you can't afford to pay them, then say so. There are other ways to work with them. The reason for this, is that people that knock on your doors may be more passionate about your startup than a random hire.
- Meetings are Toxic
- Goals
- Look into OKR - Objectives and Key Results - Used by Google, Employees set themselves quarterly goals and targets which are visible to the whole company. And the goal is the achieve 2/3rds of the OKRs as if you achieve all of them you are not placing them high enough.
Work Spaces
- Open desk space
Cubicals are something of the past. They're not wanted here. Sharing of information is powerful by just being in the same physical space
- Quiet Zones
Space should allow for people to get into flow without interruption.
