The Culture That Helped Build A $1 Billion Company

Post on 15-Jul-2015

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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