Culture
- 1 minLast night I attended an event where a discussion panel was held on how to scale company culture. The panel was made out of individuals from established startups. Some of those companies are so successful that are no longer considered startups because of the size they’re at.
It was interesting to see what culture means for other companies and how they work towards maintaining it. At the end there was a Q/A with the audience and inevitably most questions were about how culture can be maintained when you grow as well as how to figure out whether your employees are aligned with the company’s values. These are challenging questions especially when you’re in hyper growth mode, hiring loads of new people within a short period of time.
Some of the panelists last night were talking about performing 5-7 interviews with a candidate in order to establish if they’re a good fit or not. I couldn’t help thinking that 8th Light has the right tool in place for establishing culture. It’s called apprenticeship.
When you go through an apprenticeship you learn what the values are of the company as well as how they apply to every day things. You learn how people live and practice the core values that form that culture. From an applicant’s perspective, it gives you the opportunity to find out whether this is the kind of culture you want to be part of. For 8th Light this approach helps identify the individuals that align with the company’s core values and can maintain this culture if not improving it.
The downside of using an apprenticeship as a tool is that you cannot be in hyper growth mode. You have to slow down but maybe this is the correct way to maintain culture. Increasing speed doesn’t always yield the right results.
Personal blog of Makis Otman