The Culture That Helped Build A $1 Billion Company
Transcript of The Culture That Helped Build A $1 Billion Company
DON’T THINK HOW TO BUILD THE BEST COMPANY CULTURE
Think about building a system that will work best, for you and your
team, and will move the company forward.
THE KEY IS… MOTIVATION
In other words: your own concept of your craft can drive your work forward.
In an old Zen parable from 1,000 years ago, an old man walked by a
stonemason and asked him what he does. The man replied, “I’m making
a brick”. As he walked by another man doing the same thing, this time
the mason replied he’s constructing a wall. He then met a third mason,
who told him he’s building a temple, a place for people to pray and find
hope and for the poor to find nourishment.
WORKING FOR THE GREATER CAUSE
Creates motivation, commitment and collective thinking
within the team.
Helps retain your workers’ commitment in later stages.
CEO GUIDELINES
The company you have is the result of the team you build, not the
product.
As CEO, your main task is to make sure everybody focuses on the
company, instead of their own egos.
HIRE THE SMARTEST PEOPLE
A wise person once said, “if you bring a lot of excellent people to work
together, you will find that excellent things happen without you having to do
anything”
Hire the best and smartest people – you need teams comprised mostly of
A+ employees
It’s better to hire smart employees with motivation than average
employees with experience. This is because:
- After a few months, the smart employees will become great, while the
average employee will still remain average
- A+ players always strive to hire other A+ players. B players always hire
employees that are weaker than them
“If your organization is growing by 100% each year, employees must
improve by 100% each year, just to stay in place” (Janet Holian, VistaPrint)
Ultimately, the team you build is the company you build.
“At a startup, you can often be tricked into thinking you’re
building a technology company and so you focus a lot on the
product. But ultimately, what you’re really building is a team to
build the product and then the company”.
(Keith Rabois)
DON’T LIMIT YOUR TEAM’S INTELLIGENCE
If you bring intelligent people on board, and don’t give them all the information
needed, what did you achieve by that?
If you only give them information that you consider to be important, you are aligning
the company to your own level of intelligence, which isn’t necessarily the highest one
there
If you limit information, you are building a team that is about:
Classes = who knows what
Hiding information = secrets
Information leaks= investigating it is a waste of time and energy, and is
detrimental to company morale
When you don’t limit internal sharing of information:
It’s about collaboration
It’s about finding information required to do your job
It’s about an open and honest company
WHY KEEP SECRETS?
If you are a web company, the following numbers are very important to you:
Conversion rate from free to paying users
Cost of lead, translating to cost of paying users
Support problems
If someone else has this data, in effect they know everything about your
business. However, if your company is working well, all employees are
constantly working to improve those numbers. This means they must be
exposed to those numbers to begin with. Therefore, if the core of your business
has to remain exposed to everybody, what else is there to keep secret?
DEALING WITH PROBLEMS
Worst-case scenario - everyone thinks of bumps as someone else's
problems.
Better scenario - everyone takes responsibility, thinks of it as their
own problem, and blocks others from interfering.
Best-case scenario - everyone considers it “our problem”, and
makes sure it is solved
The only thing worse than that is when people who should solve the
problem – don’t even know it exists
THE ACTUAL OFFICES
Offices have glass walls .
The doors to all the rooms remain open. Always.
The office entrance has a display of all the relevant data
SHARING INFORMATION
Each month, we conduct a company meeting in which we present
the main and most important things that happened at Wix
We share our problems and our plans with everybody
We also make sure everyone is drunk afterwards ☺
DAPULSE
Everybody in Wix can use daPulse, must be on daPulse and has a
profile with their photo on daPulse, so they could be easily recognized
You can try daPulse for free >>
Each team posts a weekly report to
daPulse, including marketing and sales,
product, customer reviews and more.
Everything is available for all to see, learn
and consume.
A daily operational meeting is uploaded
into daPulse after taking place – so
everyone can see and be part of what is
happening that day.
You can try daPulse for free >>
PROJECT
PRODUCT BOARD
A central products and projects board is available for all. It includes
projects that the entire company is currently working on, their status
and whether their delivery is delayed or on time.
PROJECTS COMPLETION
Once a project is completed, we load the information onto daPulse.
For instance: Template Creation – the designers will load the info onto
daPulse; Product – the business results will be loaded onto daPulse
You can try daPulse for free >>
HOW DID DAPULSE CHANGE THE WAY WE RUN MEETINGS?
Now, meetings are all about what we’re doing next, not what we did.
WHERE TO START? STAGE 1
Choose the most important KPI for your company. Is it conversion? Is it
the number of sales?
Make it, and all of its components, visible to everyone
Make sure everyone knows it is the most important KPI for the company
STAGE 2
Make sure all the projects are listed, including dates and stages,
so everyone will know what is going on within the company on each level
Sales and Support know if and when there is a change in the product
Everyone can see product designs and comment on them
STAGE 3
Share customers feedback
What is good?
What is bad?
How did your product improve someone’s life?
Remember the temple from the Zen parable?
STAGE 4
Schedule a monthly meeting in which you share with everyone what
took place and what is planned
The good the bad and the ugly - include everything
For more information on daPulse, click here
To learn more about the Culture of Transparency, click here