EP #42 - Andreas Fischler: How To Scale Your Company Culture

Timestamps:

1:46 - What mistakes do Swiss startups make repeatedly when it comes to culture?
9:01 - The difficulties of creating a culture
12:58 - Important values
20:00 - Scaling company culture: recruiting & on-boarding
35:40 - Treating people fairly

The Episode In 60 Seconds

It’s never too early

• Create culture with intention from the very beginning.
• Start explicitly documenting and “negotiating” your culture as soon as you grow to 10 people or more.

Scaling culture

• Hiring the right people is the only way to scale culture.
• Hire for values rather than skills alone.
• Acknowledge that on-boarding new people requires effort from your existing employees.

The topic of salaries

• Fairness and transparency are key, but don’t allow salaries to take center stage in everything you do.
• Base salaries off of what people need to make a living. Allow for different compensation packages based on the risk appetite of different employees.

Letting people go

• Detect and tackle problems as early as possible.
• Provide open feedback and a path to improvement.
• Check-in as often as necessary until the issue is resolved or you let the person go.