Build a thriving company culture
Build your remote company culture deliberately, not accidentally. A culture that you and your team are excited to wake up and be a part of.
15 min read
Creating Your Culture & Values
Intention makes a large difference. It's the difference between something rotting and fermenting. You can think of your company culture like grapes. Do you want your fruit to rot and be thrown away (or worse, become a raisin)? Or would you rather it turn into a fine wine that is sought after across the world?
If you let your culture develop naturally without guidance, problems will arrive sooner than you’d expect. As your company scales, these problems scale exponentially with it. This is true of all companies, remote or not. But like with most things, it's infinitely easier to achieve remotely.
We’ll have a whole chapter devoted to creating a healthy remote work culture. For now, understand that to deliberately develop a company culture, you must:
- Clearly outline what you want that culture to be
- Communicate it clearly and directly with the team
- Hire accordingly.
In an office setting, failing at the first step is immediately catastrophic. Tension and toxicity fill the space in a vacuum. It’s not obvious right away that you’ve failed to outline a culture, because there is in fact a culture there. It’s just something horrendous that no one ever wanted.
Missing step 1 is harder to do remotely, because it tends to be more immediately clear. Things feel empty. There is too much silence, too little collaboration. The company doesn't have a bad personality, it has no personality. In an odd sort of way, it can be easier to notice when you're in purgatory than in hell.
Communicating remote company culture is also easier. When you work remotely, everything important must be outlined. Because you can’t just say something on the fly while walking by a desk, things must be outlined and documented. This almost always (and should always) be done in digital writing via some sort of internal wiki or knowledge base.
If you’ve done step 1 and 2, step 3 becomes more obvious during interviews. When you are living out your intentional culture day to day, it’s pretty clear when something (or someone) doesn’t align.
Outlining your culture makes every aspect of exploring how to build a remote company significantly easier. Put time and thought into this early on.
Creating Your Culture & Values
Intention makes a large difference. It's the difference between something rotting and fermenting. You can think of your company culture like grapes. Do you want your fruit to rot and be thrown away (or worse, become a raisin)? Or would you rather it turn into a fine wine that is sought after across the world?
If you let your culture develop naturally without guidance, problems will arrive sooner than you’d expect. As your company scales, these problems scale exponentially with it. This is true of all companies, remote or not. But like with most things, it's infinitely easier to achieve remotely.
We’ll have a whole chapter devoted to creating a healthy remote work culture. For now, understand that to deliberately develop a company culture, you must:
- Clearly outline what you want that culture to be
- Communicate it clearly and directly with the team
- Hire accordingly.
In an office setting, failing at the first step is immediately catastrophic. Tension and toxicity fill the space in a vacuum. It’s not obvious right away that you’ve failed to outline a culture, because there is in fact a culture there. It’s just something horrendous that no one ever wanted.
Missing step 1 is harder to do remotely, because it tends to be more immediately clear. Things feel empty. There is too much silence, too little collaboration. The company doesn't have a bad personality, it has no personality. In an odd sort of way, it can be easier to notice when you're in purgatory than in hell.
Communicating remote company culture is also easier. When you work remotely, everything important must be outlined. Because you can’t just say something on the fly while walking by a desk, things must be outlined and documented. This almost always (and should always) be done in digital writing via some sort of internal wiki or knowledge base.
If you’ve done step 1 and 2, step 3 becomes more obvious during interviews. When you are living out your intentional culture day to day, it’s pretty clear when something (or someone) doesn’t align.
Outlining your culture makes every aspect of exploring how to build a remote company significantly easier. Put time and thought into this early on.
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