Transcript for:

[Music] [Music] we're gonna have a lot of fun this evening I've managed to just get around the tables and talk to each about this what we're trying to do this evening is make sure that you get a chance to engage on what you want so you were all actually not all necessarily but a number of you were very good about filling in the survey and telling me what it was you were coming to the class for so I'll give you some Clues here about what I hope we'll cover but I also think it's fine if something comes up in the middle of the class and you say gosh I have no idea why I was here but then this occurred to me I need some help with X that's absolutely great so a lot of you came right to the point and said for example things like well how do we Define our culture well that's the core of this workshop and it's actually really important to me that you do get somewhere with it today so that's why the white boards are here and that's why we want you to come up with your own approach to this how I approach this is not with answers at all it's actually with questions for you because there is no such thing as an answer to how do you define a culture it's going to be unique to you it's going to be specific to your Venture and it's also going to be very importantly defined in person sorry in concert with who you are as a person so another thing that I heard a lot about and the number of teams talked about this is what about hiring can culture help me with hiring I know that's a big problem for a lot of people in the early days might be attracting your co-founder so one of the teams said for example you have one to three more co-founders to bring on this was City bricks anybody from City bricks here um yeah so tell me a little bit about that before I go any further yeah I think um it's right now I'm a solo founder of a startup and I'm looking to add one or at least one or two more people over the next six months and so I'm concerned that if I drive and Define a culture before I find my co-founders it might push away someone that otherwise would be a great fit but then on the flip side it's like maybe defining a culture um and a starting point will attract the right kind of person that already is a fit for that so I'm not sure what that which comes first chicken or egg but it's like you could give the class because that was an excellent answer I.E there is no answer there's no right answer you you should decide whether it's important to you to establish a culture before for example attracting your first Founders because that might determine who you attract or whether you want to co-create it with them in which case you'll bring together more values and it might be harder work but it probably more significant in terms of who it feels ownership for that culture going forward and I'm going to give you a chance to understand this from a practical perspective so we think about culture and we typically think about it as a very soft thing you think about it as something that for example oh I can't feel culture I can't touch culture and so what is it that we want to Define if it's something that you can't touch and feel well by the end of this evening I want you to have some elements of culture that feel very real to you so anyway I wanted to give a couple of examples to get you going because the point here is this there are no answers but there is an important outcome here which is it matters that you have a culture and I'll tell you why right up front which is if it doesn't get defined by you it will be defined on its own and you might not like this answer but it could be a bacteria that kind of culture that you wouldn't want that would infect your company in the wrong way that would not attract people but on the contrary would actually make you unproductive so Define it as early as you possibly can is the answer that I will give up front the rest of it is up to you so why are vision mission and culture important first of all there are some elements of culture that are very tangible so one of the most important ones of these is having a vision and Mission that is clear about what you're trying to do so people who want to engage with you in any kind of stakeholder wants to engage with you is clear what you're trying to do otherwise why would they get involved and if you think about it the ultimate extreme this is a customer why would a customer engage with you if you're not clear what what you're doing if you're not clear what problem you're solving for who uniquely well how are they going to engage with you if you're all over the map so that's a fundamental thing it's just as important as hiring of course because if people don't know what your purpose is and they can't relate to it how are they going to get excited about it and you want them excited about it and compelled to not just join you but then contribute to it so it's very fundamental to selecting the right people so let me give you a counter example so you can think about this this evening too if you didn't put any Vision or Mission out there it's the classic story of any road will get you there if you don't know where you're going so it's very problematic in that regard likewise if you don't have a culture to find and you start hiring people what criteria are you going to use for hiring those people well sure you can do things like experience Knowledge and Skills but if you find out that they're fundamentally different in their values about things like honesty or trust that's a real problem because you might end up with a very you know disparate kind of set of energies in your in your company before you even get going so that's why this is important and if we get it right on the positive side it should really help you in your execution in building the business it should bring Focus because everybody's clear about what they're doing it should bring alignment and somebody brought this up actually so I'll get to it straight away uh connected who's here from connected okay you said something very important this is a perfect example of why this is important you said you want to bring everybody onto the same page is it uh gulnas yes tell us a little bit about why you think that's important so I think now connected has been working for two years and now we're having like 2.0 version and still we always like every six months have the question of where we are going and like every team like needs to understand what we are doing again and like what is our ultimate mission to be on track and like to speak the same language internally and externally perfect so what Google has just said is the reason why this is so important if everybody is not clear about what you're doing and they're not on the same page they don't have the same language even about how they talk about it you're going to find your energies are very quickly literally wasted in all these different ways that people could for example go off so that's a perfectly good example of why alignment's important what about Agora anybody here from Agora yes you said something very important you said you wanted to align your teachers with the right culture but you didn't know how to do that so tell me why you think that's important so for context agoram it is a is a platform that wants to give after school opportunities for kids in Spanish who are based in Latin America and are lacking access to interesting courses that could develop their Hobbies or their passions so for instance you take math in school but in Agra after school you can take design in your video game I essentially am a Marketplace so I find teachers and I try to give like the availability of these teachers to students But ultimately I need to empower these teachers to deliver what they want to deliver so it's always a concept about how much I should step in the middle and I do and I need to somehow be very Nimble bringing teachers on board showing the culture that I want them to have but also releasing them so they can do freely what they want so how can I keep that alignment how can I like just like be part of it but let it grow and then don't let it become a mess where like teachers provide a different culture through different classes and I think it's an alignment a mystery but probably after this session perfect so again you could give the class because the way you're thinking about this is exactly how I think we all need to think about it imagine if you could give people instead of a rule book that says here are the things you must not do or uh worse than that a set of instructions which they had to follow which was frankly the opposite of empowering imagine if you could give them a culture that made them feel like oh I am incredibly clear that I'm empowered and then alignment around a very clear vision mission and purpose that they could all get behind that would be really attractive to your potential teachers and as you said would really Empower them so that's what we're talking about this evening that's why this is so important this is why it's actually not a soft thing it's a very hard fact that the greatest and most successful companies you can go and look at this on Fortune 500 you know analyzes are usually those with the best cultures they're the best places to work they're the places where people all want to go and work so this is really exciting we can get this right so let's put it all together because sometimes people lose track of where it all fits when they're starting a business and I want you to all have a very clear picture of this so let's start at the very beginning obviously you have to have some kind of a value prop that's addressing the kind of problem you want to solve or perhaps an opportunity you want to exploit there's a whole startup Secrets workshop on that I think it's in a few weeks time so good news you don't have to think about that tonight but imagine if you had a really clear problem to solve but you couldn't all agree what that problem was that's what the vision and Mission is really important for you all need to know where you're headed and by the way we all know this people make decisions all day long you can't just keep coming back to the well to check is that the right decision you want this culture to empower people and align them as we just heard are very well articulated by Agora and as you can see at the bottom here between those two things I've written one keyword and it's not culture it's consistency because what you want is a platform that people can rely on that when they go back to touch this Touchstone if you will of what it is they're doing and why they're doing it and indeed how they're empowered to do it what your cultural values are Etc they can rely on it because again if that keeps changing you're in a lot of trouble now businesses get into trouble so let's talk about that I've actually never backed a startup that went from zero to a billion dollars as a straight line just doesn't happen usually they're the exact opposite they have this wonderful Journey that I call the startup squiggle and it's sort of you know if you're lucky ends up in a place where you hopefully have some great value being created but in these troughs of disillusionment or in these problems where you're pivoting or in these places where you're trying to raise money uh or where for example you suddenly discover you're in the wrong Marketplace you have really big challenges to overcome these are all typical at startups the one thing that can help you get through to that is culture and let me tell you a story so you I can understand I've experienced this plenty of times I'm lucky enough to have backed some great Founders who were one of the first companies to get into the SAS business well SAS wasn't even a word back then and so we went through so much pain trying to build that business that at one point my entire partnership declared the company bankrupt because they couldn't understand SAS economics they hadn't been invented we were busy writing that book at the time so that was problem number one problem number two was the founder had actually taken the IP out of a prior company and he got sued and the next thing we know we're having to take him out of the CEO hire a CEO position and hire a new CEO whoa it's starting to get interesting now we're in the next phase of the growth these are all twists and turns and by the way by the way you know the legal suit could have taken the company down any one of these things could have taken it down and in the middle of that we're actually encountering a huge challenge which is that the markets decided that actually this is a business that needs a different business model than the one we have by the way I'm very happy to tell you we didn't accept that we actually stuck with our business model and that company became a very successful IPO and was ultimately acquired for 2.8 billion okay but what was consistent in that culture so that story I could repeat basically for almost every company I've ever backed lucky enough to have a Founder here who I've worked with uh and CEO so you can talk to and find out you know what happens in the tough times but it's really really important so any questions before I go on about now why we're doing this where it fits so is culture something that once you are able to describe it and articulate it um do you have to then do you then codify it do you like how do you bring it from it's now this thing that we know into like the actual world that you can feel see touch excellent so if I haven't answered that question before the end of this evening and you can't tell this class what the answer is I've failed so do we codify it is it something that we should be able to feel see and touch all right so I'm going to start you oh yeah at the back my name is Giovanni um my question is about before the culture the vision and the mission I always have a bit of misunderstanding in terms of separating what is exactly what is exactly the vision and what is exactly the mission because I feel sometimes they kind of go hand in hand so can you based on the history State your previous vision and your previous Mission so we can have it clearly established okay no [Applause] so I told you I wouldn't given you answers but the reason I said no so strongly is that honestly some of the biggest most successful companies in the world merge those two things talk about them one way talk about them another way it doesn't really matter I'd almost like replace them with the word purpose like what are you trying to do but we're going to talk about that tonight so again after we finish the class tell me whether we've helped you figure this out does that make sense all right thanks a lot Mr Giovanni yeah great pleasure okay so let me keep this rolling because I don't want to make you late this evening and by the way if I'm going too slow you can also do this totally fine by me I don't take anything personally I've learned a long time ago that it's I'm here for you so good news there is nothing you need other than yourself to start figuring out how to define your culture because actually every culture starts at the top and usually with obviously the founders the the people who create the basis for the business in the first place so I'm going to ask you all now to just stop and think about a really easy question which is what are you uniquely qualified for now you're all looking at me blankly well I don't know well let me give you the good news you already know you're all unique you are not one in million you're not one in a billion you're one in eight billion you are unique so just think of on your personal whiteboard one thing that you think you're uniquely qualified for and it might be based on your personal experience it might be based on your past job that you've done something you've been educated in or anything but there is something about you that's unique we know that now you just pull out one word don't think too hard let's just get one from each table so on this table do you want to pick one what's your word uh my word is buildings say more uh it's kind of a play on words because I have a lot of experience in real estate um but also when I work in teams I've often been told that I have a unique strength in like when other people come up with an idea helping refine and build it instead of just like like when we're brainstorming like building off of someone else's work fabulous say no more what a great example of something that feels unique but personal to you okay I'm gonna guarantee nothing other than some point that's going to come up in your culture because that's who you are it's authentic to who you are so this is how easy it is to come up with culture you just have to look within to start off with and say what are you unique at okay this team was um oh you're doing great now you've come along very well you want to pick one uh my word is connecting um because one thing I think I'm good with connecting with people but also connecting others together um when I think about my strengths and my past job it was being a great manager and having people come up under me that were out performers outperformed me and I do think that part of that was connecting with them finding their purpose and making sure that I invested in their individual goals wow so whether you start something or join something every startup needs you so I'm actually going to stop here because we already have two great examples we don't need more you're getting the point which is that everybody has something whether it's something they've experienced or somebody's told them that they feel oh this is me this is kind of one of the values that I you know espouse or um seem to be doing uh or known for that's a great starting point for you to start thinking about your culture so now I'm going to challenge myself does everybody think they could figure out at least something even if not right now uh that's unique about them anybody who doesn't all right good then you are off to the races on starting to Define your culture one of the things I'll tell you though is um there's a word on here that is the one that I think people pay very little attention to in startups which is great when the chips are really down your cultural strength is going to come through so your ability to see people for what their strength is and connect them and promote them is going to be a hugely important thing in whatever you do I don't know anything else about you I just know that your ability to help people build on whatever it is was an idea or something that you're working on is going to be a strength for you when things get tough so again these things are all connected and not just raising them because they're sort of you know ideas they are all connected to how you build your culture to sustain your business one of the things that you've done here is an exercise in this room but when you get together with your next two or three founders or the next two or three hires I'm going to encourage you to do the same exercise now can anybody tell me why I already gave you the answer it was one word what's that so do you find the culture as a team that's definitely true but I gave you a word go ahead well consistency bingo thank you very much because imagine if you hired three people and by the way you didn't check on the way in that they have the same cultural values as you and then they're not subscribed to something that you really care about like building or connecting that's going to be a problem it may not be a problem on day one but it will become a problem down the road in fact what I'd like you to think about is a graphic imagine how quickly a degree off course becomes a mile well you're going to be in business typically on average startups of seven to ten years minimum before they get critical mass to go public for example seven to ten years down the road if you're culturally misaligned you're going to be all over the place so your first three highs man you better get really clear about that they have the same values as you that they care about connecting they care about building or let's pick another word who hasn't who's got a word here uh solving this was you yes what a great word tell me about solving uh well essentially you know someone hands you a problem that they're not sure if you can solve and then you learn to break that down into smaller problems you know everyone can solve small problems you're going to be an awesome Panda too if you're not already I mean that is one of the biggest challenges that people face is it's problem solving honestly there's never a day that goes by they don't have some problem to solve and if you can break it down to small parts to help people figure out how to make it digestible and solve it awesome so your name is kale oh my gosh that's way too simple all right so Kayla's is another example of somebody who can bring that value instantly into what it is is you're doing do you have a venture already kale no not yet okay great well I want you on whatever team is problem solving to State the obvious uh and that would be pretty much anybody so let's go to Vision next oh sorry question when you say talk about these values with whoever you bring into your company yep to make sure that they're on the same page is that sufficient like can you know somebody's values just by talking and you know for sure because like sometimes somebody just says yeah I agree with that but they may not actually or they may not feel about as strongly as you do or it's the same words as you so I'm going to challenge you to answer your end question so what do you think oh man well I'm thinking like maybe you'd have to find out a way to like make it less abstract like if there's something that you can create like a question that isn't just like do you believe in X or like if you were in this situation what would you do wow awesome okay you just nailed your own answer frankly if you can come up with a question that will draw out of somebody what their values are or what they would do for example the problem solve you're going to find out very quickly whether they think like you like if their answer is I'm not a great Problem Solver and I don't really care about that I mean you know that's a bit of an obtuse example but this is the essence of hiring is not to tell people what your values are but to try to extract from them what it is they believe in and why they believe in it and how they behave in situations just as you said now there's a whole workshop on this so I'm going to pause here and just say you're started and you got started in a great way I have a question about the activity we just did so um I'm going to use the board as an example but so what happens um when you think you're unique in a space and what ends up happening is maybe you're unique in one space but for example we're both in the GSD and I did not know that so I wrote designer and Artist as my two unique talents and assuming maybe he's a good designer and a good artist too because he's in the GSD um so yeah just uniqueness in different spaces okay this is just such a fun question and I want to keep us on track but I can't resist it so I'm going to give you the the one key principle here which we started with which is are the two of you the same are you the same are you the same people you don't look like it to me how much is your background the same I used to be an architect same here okay great so keep going with this question so do you come from the same country I'm from India from Korea okay perfect I can tell you it wouldn't take me longer for just number of questions as to how I found out how different you were and by the way how similar you are Architects both at GSD Etc the net is your background in some shape or form is going to cause you to see things differently and therefore design things differently just you will you just will approach things differently and that was my point about you're all unique so you don't have to be better than somebody you just have to be uniquely good at something that you believe you can go and pursue to solve a problem or obviously create some unique opportunity some kind of opportunity and it's that that's the key to this that makes sense yeah you trust me I don't have to argue this it's the only thing I will say you will know you're unique so just think about it that way and it might be your backgrounds to go back here just to make sure I've said it it might be your personal experience it might be your past jobs it might be where you grew up it might be your education it might be the way in which you come through life as basic as that like what your family is like or how you've engaged for example to to get to where you are today all of That's Unique to you nobody else did that took that same path as you so that's what sets you up for this so we're on to vision and I always like to give an example here this is my era but Gates said at one point he envisioned a world where every desk had a computer and every home had a computer that was a vision right it didn't exist at the time now we take it for granted you might even go so far as to say and everybody has a phone okay so Visions aren't necessarily things that determine your success but they help guide you they set a direction and they are the basis for people to think about well what if every home had a computer or every person had a phone now the minute you think about I mean let's talk about phones because that's much more Our Generation if everybody has a phone there are a whole bunch of things you can take for granted like oh we could message everybody we could share stuff with everybody we could put for example banking in everybody's hands whole Industries came out of the mobile Revolution so having a vision is important because it gives you the basis to set a direction that you can pursue it's not in my opinion terribly important what the words are which is why it's actually much more important and a couple of you said it that you can clearly get people on the same page as you about what you're doing rather than whether the words are perfect so don't feel like you've got to have the perfect word to put on your whiteboard or whatever else just be clear that you could articulate it and that anybody who said it to goes oh I get it we've all got phones sure we can do Mobile Banking now how could we make for example the next generation of banking easier and simpler and less costly for everybody to use it can be as basic as that all right go ahead how precise does the vision need to be because this seems to be a little bit like it's wide it can mean so many things so um how precise do we need to be when we're writing a vision it's just not because we want so many people to join us that's why it's very wide and it can mean so many things but it's also at least at the beginning we need to be very precise to know in which direction we're headed to but based on what we were just talking about somebody thinks they use LinkedIn for networking but you didn't even see that word on their Vision what do you think now but now it's too popular right so that everyone knows about it that's why a lot of people use it for different reasons but when you're just starting I don't know if you need to be that not very specific I love your point so I'm learning from you as you say this so you're helping me think of something that's very important so there's a very big difference between a starting vision and when you're a company the size of LinkedIn and what I think you're saying is you know let's just call this late stage I think you're saying is really uh well questioned which is if you're starting out and and you have this incredibly broad vision and nobody can relate to it could be all things to all people you'll have people wondering well what do you do so I think you're right it should be as defined and as tight a vision as possible where everybody can relate to and say okay I understand what you do is networking and it might evolve to something that in the late stage is a much bigger Vision that incorporates all these words that for example LinkedIn has so I think was a great question like I said I don't have answers I would say in general what you're saying is let's get it really tight so people can relate to it right off the bat in the early days but I also will say the following which is you need room for it to grow so let me tell you why if a customer felt like they were buying a feature from you and that feature only did one thing which was networking they'd question well where are you headed because I actually want to keep doing business with a company that can do all these things create Economic Opportunity for me with every member of my Workforce of my Global Workforce that's when they go okay great this company's got a nice feature networking but they've also got a vision for how I could work with them for years to come because they're going to empower my Global Workforce so I think vision is important on both levels make sure you hear that it's not an answer it's a position I'm taking which is start somewhere simple where everybody can be clear what you have that's usually what I call a value prop rather than a vision be clear where your vision could take your customers and for that matter compel your employees and your team and everybody else to stay involved with you for the long term that's why that diagram was a you know a literally a sort of a map with the cultural consistency Underneath It All does that make sense so developing your vision here's the good news we've already started this because each of you is defined what you are trying to do and you know you've got your own basis for for example you know a value proposition and now you've got some values that you think are important so developing your vision is really what we've just mapped out here it's it's thinking about well where are you starting as a Founder what problem are you uniquely able to solve and then what is it that you think over time you're going to be able to do to lead a Marketplace so it's almost like read the top line of the slide and read the bottom line and what I would say is as follows you often don't know and that's okay visions do evolve you might start out with a clear for example sense that you're going to address this market and realize over time that that Market's different than you first thought it evolves you know technology changer so your customer patterns change and so you need to evolve your vision that happens all the time but what's important is to keep having one because again otherwise you won't be clear about what direction you're trying to go so let me just give you all a chance to actually get involved in this exercise and I'm going to give you a very very simple thing what is one Element just one element that you'd like to have in your vision and it might be something as basic as I'm really clear I want to have this happen in my venture or the thing I work on is going to have this impact in the world or it's going to make this difference or this change so just one thing and again put it on your personal whiteboards I notice a lot of you are hesitant to just say what comes straight to you I had this experience over here and you had a great answer for me so do you want to share what it was sure so uh I'm I already built a website that's it targets misinformation it's related to the head and neck surgery and my vision is behavioral change because if people can relate to misinformation and then go to the website and get credible information then in the future they'll know that references are very important when they read in information on the web and they shouldn't just listen or read on any other resources without getting some sort of credibility so what I'm looking for is behavioral change great so Giovanni here's an example of where a vision could be a mission so your your vision is actually just as good as a mission my mission is to get behavioral change so all the other things you said happen make sense okay great so uh Victor also gave me an extremely good example so I'm going to have the dialogue with Victor so he wrote down one word which is guidance so I said well what guidance you're going to give so let's have the dialogue in front of everybody well the idea I had was when people look at my vision they're written down they would get guidance from the statement so they'd get guidance from your vision so I said what guidance and for what purpose and I said um because I'm building a data-driven nutritional recommendation app the vision I have is for people for the global population to use my app and they will have I think I prevent a lot of disease from happening you know what I want I want to congratulate Victor because when I first asked him none of those words came out and within 30 seconds he figured it out and look what a great vision and Mission he got to he's gonna change People's Health by giving better recommendations for supplements what a great vision and Mission that is he said it much better than I did and we just had a 30 second dialogue awesome you are a perfect example of what we can do if we just tease it out of each other now something is terribly important to me is that I unfortunately can't get around all of these tables and ask those questions but guess what you are sitting next to each other you can ask each other and it's the biggest biggest single thing I think you're going to learn today is get your peers challenging you on everything that we're doing tonight after this Workshop don't wait for the next Workshop you all have the ability to ask these questions of each other that's why I put questions and Frameworks up not answers so remember that feel empowered go challenge each other go tease these things out of each other and you're on the your uh your way already with this you know peer chat you just had to Define your vision now because Giovanni challenged me and I don't want to say anything other than I don't know I don't think we really need to get into Mission we already had a great couple of examples of how visions and missions are very similar uh and in fact both yours I think are very good examples of that the vision in itself can often incorporate Vision but I did have an example that I think is kind of fun and I do have a framework for you that might help you uh Giovanni get more to a mission rather than just a pure vision so how many of you eat sweet green I eat too much by the way but what's interesting about their mission is it has nothing to do with why I go to them like I I don't go there because they're trying to build a healthier Community by connecting people to real food I could care less about that actually I go there because I think it's healthy food so sometimes these things are so grandiose that they're kind of unrelated and they have a few things though that I did like when you broke it down so one of them is that they have core values that guide actions and that aim to empower that word that we talked about earlier that also includes not just their customers but their team and their partners and I like all of that because great visions and missions do actually impart everybody I said it earlier stakeholders the entire stakeholder group that's involved should be feeling compelled by your vision and Mission and and then they say how they're doing that which is you know they're building a transparent supply network so people can say okay I see it's healthy you can see transparently where we get our food from that's cool they cook it from scratch so they're not relying on anybody else so that you know clearly they hold themselves accountable for that and they're building a community which is cool they need to go into more detail than that so from that and with a view to helping you define your mission I have four M's that I recommend you try to come up with the first one is unbelievably obvious which is is it memorable if nobody can remember your vision and Mission you probably just failed right there because nobody's going to be able to honestly repeated the following date let alone for five ten years ahead so memorable is an easy one manageable well I gave you some examples of what for example sweet green is doing to try to make their mission manageable you can think of what those might be in your context so for example what will make it manageable for you to reach the world that might be you have to build a community or you have to create some basis for it to get broad reach what makes it measurable that's actually much trickier so how do you measure somebody's Health well you can do it in one dimension but if you're doing supplements for example you might need to pick a vertical or a particular problem that you want to cure people not cure people but you want to improve People's Health then and figure out how to make it measurable and then the last one is pretty obvious which is we've all been talking about this we want it to be so compelling specifically motivational that you attract customers to you and you attract for example all those stakeholders that might want to get behind you not just your team but for example funding or Partnerships or communities that could support you so these are the four M's of mission so now now that you know those I've got a little quiz for you how do you rate sweet Green's mission first off is it memorable show of hands okay what was it it's not on this slide well from what I see reimagine fast food for a new era because I think when we think about fast food we think about junk food great and sweet green is healthy food Okay so what was their mission though anybody remembered building healthy communities okay good for you but that's one in 60 people here he remembered it what I actually like Giovanni's answer way more reimagining fast food healthy fast food I'm gonna say the obvious though it doesn't really matter what it is if it isn't memorable it's not going to work so simpler is generally better and to the point you made earlier it also needs to start in a place where people are going to say okay it's simple enough I can remember that and then obviously even if you're going to expand to something that is you know going to last for years it also needs to be a memorable enough for people are going to go great I know you're trying to for example improve People's Health by for example giving them better guidance on supplements I think yours are going to be pretty easy to be honest with you we've already done it okay so that's memorable what do we think about manageable do you think this is a manageable mission go ahead what does manageable mean yeah I mean in this context what's your what do you think yeah yeah manageable as in it's risk you know it doesn't feel like it's unreal it's completely unmanageable it's not going to be possible Etc realistic all sorts of other terms like that so now what do you feel about this is it realistic or you know yes I would say it's realistic because we rented an era when lots of people want to be healthy and it takes time to make healthy food sometimes I feel I mean thanks for letting me know about this because I would love to try it out usually all I have is like junk food recipes so what's neat about this is I think it's manageable too and everybody here is starting to relate to one word which is healthy which by the way might be the great example of reduce this vision and Mission down to something very very measurable that is all about health anyway so that's great what about measurable how are they going to measure whether this vision and Mission is working anybody think that they have an idea you have to go ahead sounds very dreamy because it's like let's change the world right so I don't know how this is going to be memorable how are you going to change how are you gonna imagine how people are reimagining the world and how exactly in which way they're reimagining it yeah great well I'll give you a vision mission that seemed equally bold but now we all take it for granted those of you may remember Google in the early days said our vision and Mission is that we will basically make all the world's information accessible seemed crazy but now what do you do when you have a question So that obviously was pretty manageable and by the way can they measure it yeah they have the best damn measurement systems on the planet every time you type in a query they're measuring what the query was and who did it and where was it from and how are they using it I mean it's like very achievable so if you do this right you can actually come up with some very good things that are all of these three amps and then the last one we already talked about is is it motivational well that's obviously a personal judgment but a question I'd have is any of you want to go work for sweet green like immediately no you're all founders you've got other better things to do but anyway this is the point you do want that reaction by the way you do want somebody going wow I really care about health enough that I want to go work for Victor to solve that problem because the supplements business is huge and there's a huge amount of waste and problems associated with it I'm motivated please talk to me bingo bingo good for you Victor all right so Giovanni did we make it clear why vision and mission may or may not be important to merge but what they are yeah thank you if if you could come and tell me why afterwards that'd be great my my issue right now it's I can merge both but at the same moment if I also think about LinkedIn what's the mission of LinkedIn that's why I picked it up because it's so vague in my opinion I just don't like it I'll give you one I mean I've got so many of these that I've listed in previous classes one that I much preferred was was airbnb's for how many how many of you stayed in an Airbnb you don't need a vision or mission for that right it's pretty obvious there's all sorts of things that are great about it not the least of which is it's inexpensive but as it turned out now what they've realized is it's not just about expense they want to give people better experiences better travel experiences so their whole vision and Mission is emerged to to that has evolved to that I don't really have to be focused on vision and Mission but mostly focused on the potential impacts that's one of the things I definitely believe in that's why I said to you you know when I was walking around what's an impact you want to have with your visual Mission if you can say for example you want to change the world's health or you want to improve misinformation or you're very clear who has something they want to bring out just so we can challenge challenge me on it accessibility for what um if you have impairments if you have impairments so you want accessibility for people who are impaired in some shape or form people can understand can understand that if you are going to help people get better accessibility because they're impaired that's going to have an impact so however you bring this out this is why I don't want to be too precise about it the 4M should still apply though so let's just make sure you don't lose sight of these we want it to be memorable enough that people are not going to walk in the following day and say well what do we do again it's not what you want you want it to be manageable so that it's clear that when you are doing this it's achievable to use the word that Willow came up with and if you for example can clearly say how it's motivational and you're going to have people compelled to get involved with you then I'm just going to make a lot easier to do things like hiring attracting funding actually and a very importantly attracting customers Partners Etc so I just walk away with four amps don't worry too much about getting it perfect and don't worry about the distinction between vision and Mission make sure that these things are being achieved and that you feel like to use your word you're going to have an impact when you do this you have one minute only because I want to go back on time to come up with one word that will be memorable in your mission so my favorite word that I saw I didn't get around everybody was obsessed and I love that word because like about what so that's going to be memorable but tell us a little bit about why you picked obsessed because it's triggering work in any context that you use the word obsessed like if I went to my life my wife and I told her as much as she knows that I love I say I'm obsessed like a strong feeling even if I could not agree more so um I I want to say thank you to indonga I am never going to forget this class I'm now obsessed with abdonga uh great perfect example that is memorable all right now much harder was Vivian and uh I'll try to help out a little bit so Vivian shared with me that the word that came to mind was data but she recognized right well that's not necessarily memorable but then when she told me what she did which is that she's going to use data to help people in Neuroscience understand the brain better I'm like that's memorable so I'm not going to give you the answer to what you might pick but I'm going to ask your peers to work with you and say gosh that's something that's really interesting everybody would love to understand the brain better it's still one of the least understood parts of the body having had brain surgery which I don't want to go into I can tell you that that is something you do want to actually understand so we can talk afterwards experiment for you for you I'm not sure I'm up for that but as you can tell I need lots of more brain surgery all right so thank you very much that was fun now we're on to the next part of this which is really all about culture and as I said to you this is the one thing you want to get consistent throughout your Venture so it's a little more challenging because we don't want this to be changing all the way along the line like pivoting and you know going off to different markets this is the thing that we want to be the Bedrock of the company so I'm going to start at the very basic level which is with some ideas about how do you build culture from the ground up which is starting with values and it's such a tough topic I think the best way to start is with an example so how many of you have heard of HubSpot not enough of you okay so I'll tell you what it is it was one of the first companies in Boston to break into marketing with a new approach which is now called inbound marketing and Brian Halligan came to this very classroom joined one of the startup secrets and told everybody why uh inbound marketing is so important so you can go find that on the Harvard iLab YouTube channel I think it's on um going to Market yeah it is on the go to market startup secret session and he talks about what they do but that's not as important as how they've done it and they're actually famous for having built a very strong culture and I'll put it in the workbook for you because it's fun to watch it dumbass Shah who brought this particular culture to life the one of the founders and ctOS co-founders and ctOS helped codify culture and so who asked the question about codify it was uh mahashi so uh yes is the quick answer it is very important to figure out how to codify your culture so that it becomes reinforced operationalized Etc going forward and the way HubSpot did this was they literally created a deck that was I think it was at some stage like 60 70 80 pages long but that's too long for people to be able to read and to remember every day so they eventually had to get it down to five things and this is what they came up with what's important about this is what do you do to operationalize that like how do you make sure that people actually do solve for the customer the thing I want to pick on though which is really fun to me is we believe our best perk is amazing peers that when I read it was like hmm that's different now what does it mean to you anybody want to take a guess at why I picked that one out like if you're going to go work there and you said well I hope my best perk would be Healthcare or it might be foosball if you're so inclined but no it's amazing peers go ahead Victor well guys um your peer is the number one reason people are leaving the company so I guess if you have an interesting peer to work with where you can brainstorm new ideas who you can rely on and basically everything else relies on peers like long-term impact autonomy accountability transparency it's all goes back to what kind of people you're working with every business absolutely so it doesn't matter what the particular interpretation is that you have with this the one thing we could all say is as follows obviously every business is ultimately reliant on its people and so if you have amazing peers and you really enjoy working with them there are two things that come out of it one as you just said you're going to be attracted to stay there and continue working with them but you're probably also going to be more likely to succeed than the next company that doesn't really care about its its people and isn't focused on for example creating that same culture really amazing peer peers and what did I say to you earlier you're all amazing people if you can appear with each other and help each other amazing things can happen so I found that to be a very good example of a differentiated culture that feels actionable if we can really focus on for example building a company where we have amazing peers that can solve problems that can build Etc together so the the best sandwich to start building a culture is to identify your values and a few pointers here we've already talked about some of the things that you think you're uniquely you know qualified for or that you have is a unique background now I'm going to ask you a very simple question what is one value your company needs and why and before you answer this question let me give you some Clues there are some things that you've probably got to live through like these hard times I've talked about where you're going to need this value what is that what do you think you need when you really get in a difficult situation what's going to be really important to have in your company that can get you through this winding path I drew so that might be one clue another clue might be something that you share with your family and friends and you say you know whenever I tell a story about my venture or my company this always comes through they always say hmm seems like you valued this might be make a difference it might be improving Health it might be building it might be anything like that but it has to be authentic to you and then here's the one that I think is the no-brainer for all of you you all have one of these there is something that is non-negotiable to you so I'll tell you what mine is honesty I I like I mean it's so fundamental to me that if I don't have honesty in my relationships zero good is going to come of them now I haven't gone so far as to Define it even more specifically I like proactive honesty so I don't want people to wait and come and tell me what they think I actually encourage them to come forward and say you know Michael you talk too much foreign what is one value your company needs and why you just did what I hope you'll do after class two which is you all started digging in which is great so this group's got really great peer strength what I saw was a whole bunch of you starting to think about things that you cared about look at the boards they're fantastic grit and serve passion dignity value mental health ownership empathy networking EQ Integrity again money let's see okay that matters that matters I'm not going to judge any of this care it was right underneath that pretty cool this board is fantastic passion optimism honesty fairness growth mindset open-mindedness boldness wow incredible team I don't know what you're going to do but it's going to be awesome and then what a great human set of values over here empathy resilience credibility so just look at this team this uh this group rather in a few moments you very quickly came up with some values you all care about now by the way the hard part is they might all sound great but how do you pick one or two that you really think are absolutely critical because people can't remember 30. uh you need a few so I'll give you an example of how tough this was for me starting a new Venture firm I absolutely had one vision and Mission and it still hasn't changed which is I want to change Venture for good there's a double entender in that and it's intentional I really do want to change Venture for good and the way in which we do it is using a community which is a model designed to bring the very best people at the right time for adventure uh to play depending on what domain or stage or function you need them and I learned a lot from open source it's all great but how do you reduce that down to a value that we're going to constantly you know sort of uh sort of play to and we came up with many to start off with but we only have four now and one of them I'll tell you is actively evolve why is that important because I realized that every day we get up if we actively evolve to listen to what our Founders and entrepreneurs need and their world is constantly evolving for example you know where they are on the stage of their Venture what Market addressing how that's evolved and we can actively evolve with them to understand how to help them we might change Venture for good so that's just an example of how I related these things now the good news is you've got some great values up here so all you need to do now is think about how those will evolve to support your vision your mission the way I just described it with you and that's a dialogue you could have as peers it's a dialogue you can have as co-founders it's a dialogue you can have with anybody and I encourage you to do it I'm going to go back to one key test View if you had to only pick one just one and now the exercises go up and circle on your board which one you will need when it's really hard going when things have gone wrong you're in the depths of Despair or the trough of disillusionment what's the one value you just gotta have okay Circle one on your board we've got some really good discussion going on in the room which is so much fun and one group just can't even figure it out which by the way tells me they're going to have a problem working together as a team and by the way I'm not joking when I say this this is what goes on this is the real world right if you can't agree on basic things like what are the values that really matter to you you're going to struggle to work together when things get tough because you'll argue about well do we care more about honesty or boldness for example or optimism versus growth mindset actually those might fit together anyway that's the reason this is such an important exercise and it's also why it's so important for you to get on the same page that we talked about earlier and why it's so important to do this early because if you attract people who have completely different considerations it's going to be a challenge for you but the good news is look what we came up with ownership this team's so clever they took two of their values must be Marketing in there somewhere and and came up with empathetic resilience okay uh Integrity over here and I think Integrity over here too right can you just say why because obviously that's something that's pretty fundamental one of you want to speak to you I think if you're doing the right thing even when things get hard it will work out especially if you have a team that's relying on you and you take shortcuts or do something unethical that has trickle-down effects that impacts their lives their families lives so just thinking about those long-term and short-term effects excellent and so what I love about that is honestly any team that could say we have deep Integrity or whatever your way of expressing it is so you can rely on everybody on this team to have that you know you're not going to worry about anything other than okay so what problem do we need to solve you're not going to be thinking about although I trust this person or can I think about you know how I'm working with them no just going to get straight to building or problem solving or whatever else it is fabulous and the last one here is grit I love that because it takes a lot of grit persistence many other things somebody else came up with it this team came up with it too to get through all these steps so if you have grit and integrity and you're empathetic and uh you have and you both come up with integrity give us one word just try one more time what would it be passion awesome okay passions one of those things that you can't if I'm not embodying passion now telling you what I really care about which is you innovators and entrepreneurs breaking through and doing stuff I don't deserve to be up here it does take passion it takes passion and grit and integrity so you'll come up with your three four five whatever it is and they if you do the work you've been doing this evening they'll be memorable and you'll have all sorts of great things that come from that so well done great great work I really impressed so I have a bit of a joke here which is often I teach at MIT for example and I'm dealing with engineers in the room and they just don't let up on this question like these are all soft words what do they mean how does this actually work in practice so I finally came up with this phrase which is culture is really like establishing an operating system for your company it's to empower your people though as opposed to run your apps and if you have a crappy operating system no apps run on it so Engineers can relate to that I describe the culture as the same thing if you have a crappy culture nobody understands it they can't relate to it it doesn't feel real and it's not authentic and you don't live it you're not going to run your you're not going to empower your people effectively so that's the bottom line but I have some other startup secrets for you by the way this name startup Secrets just to make sure you understand my goal is that there should be no startup Secrets like everything we could possibly expose that will help you accelerate your Venture we should get out that's the reason this class name came about so this startup secret is something that I hope you'll see from this next slide so let me put the slide up and then see what you can guess so I hate remembering 911 for obvious reasons it's a horrible image and In the Heat of that moment a company called Enterprise Rent-A-Car still around today had a very interesting moment people did not want to rent cars the way they traditionally rented cars which is two-way rentals because guess what all they wanted to do is get out of New York what did Enterprise do they said hell yes you're our customers you need to get out of town here's our one-way rental go for it how do you think that made the customers feel pretty obvious great do people remember Enterprise rent a car for that particular moment anybody who did that day absolutely and that's what you want as a culture you want a culture where and this is the startup secret when you're not looking when you're not thinking about what the circumstance could have been where something comes up that was completely unexpected your team does the right thing that's a powerful culture and the really important thing about it is most of the time you don't want to be looking you're trying to empower your team you want them to feel like they know what the right thing to do is they're going to act with Integrity they're going to have resilience they're going to show passion they're going to care about the customer all these things when you put them in a good culture not only Empower your people but they enable you to do really great things that make a difference in the world so that's what I think about as culture and the basis on which you can really make a difference so rather than call it in my terms now you've got a chance to think about this in your terms but I will just give you one simple thing to think about here we've already discussed how you as a Founder have certain values things that are non-negotiable to you so Integrity for example if you have that that's a starting point now you've got to attract other people around it and you've got to fake make sure that it ends up being something that is truly the personality of the company that it's how you actually embody it and if you've done that well if you've embodied it in the way you act every day then people will do the right thing and they will write a one-way rental or they'll respond to a customer problem they've never heard of before by maybe giving something free or just taking that extra moment to explain to the customer why they're screwed up and that they're sorry about it and how they might fix it those are all the things that come out of this and the reason that I bring this up at this point is because there's a framework here that I think you can use you need shared values we just talked about that if that team literally was going to start a company that would be the first thing I'd ask them to do is go figure out okay you've got a whole bunch of things up there what are the shared values between you they don't necessarily all have to be the same guess what real difference so we're not saying that we should have a normalized culture I actually think it's really important to have diversity in your culture the more different opinions around the table for example the more different backgrounds the more likely you are to be able to represent the World At Large which is incredibly diverse and has all those different opinions so you want that so we're not saying no it's all got to be one thing we're saying they need to be shared though and you need to have some guiding principles amongst you like okay we may all come from different parts of the world we may have different religions Creeds whatever it is but one guiding principle we have is and now I will give pay homage to HubSpot and maybe other companies who know this which is we're going to solve for the customer or put the customer first now you thought that was easy right I'm about to challenge it which comes first your team or your customer there's absolutely no answer that is right here no answer that's right what matters is how you're going to explain it so our team in the top left has decided to redeem themselves we're going to have to give you a name by the way what do you want to be called divided okay somebody gave you your name that's what happens culture gets defined by if it isn't defined by you it gets defined by others so the divided team would you like to tell us how you got aligned um we chose team because we believe that when you start to try to satisfy the customer you lose the values that each of the individual members wanted to start with so we believe that team values yes we believe team values are important for that reason sorry for the no sorry needed I think I think you're all incredibly Brave and I'm very challenging I keep asking you all these hard questions so I said I don't think there is an answer I think what's important is that you can explain it and that you're clear on why you can explain it so how do you think they did I thought they did great thank you well done you're now you're now team aligned not divided and you're aligned around you're going to put your team first so this is an example of why culture is not that easy actually it was all feeling great up to that point and then I said you know well what about this situation so one of the ways that I love you to test your culture is to discuss how you're going to live it so your customer is going to say to you but you promised me this feature on the roadmap and you haven't delivered it to me why not Mark and I have been in this situation why not and by the way because you haven't I'm actually going to uninstall hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of software we're both laughing at the front here but it's a real example now you could fire your VP of engineering or your founder or whatever it is or you could say you know what actually I think I need him or her around in the future to fix the next customer's problem why don't we Instead address that with the customer and say we're really sorry we can't do that if you don't feel like you're a fit for us you know what we probably shouldn't have you as a customer which Mark was bold enough to do and guess what we live to tell another day and serve another customer so this happens all the time so again this is why all these cultural things are back to that thought they're the operating system that makes you able to operate successfully through difficult times as much as good times the good times are easy everybody looks good when the Tide's rising and all boats are rising so the last piece is now an important piece which is how do you actually put this into practice so that it is something you can hold people accountable for and that you can say hey what are you doing you know you're not living up to our culture and that is actually important because you don't want people who are not living up to your culture that is going to destroy your company it's like One Bad Apple can spoil the barrel so uh keeping going with this what is one Behavior you'd like to model in your business venture and that if somebody didn't model it you wouldn't want them on your team and now this one again back to the group whiteboards and I said one so don't put up 10 now just discuss as a group something among you would say you want to model this in your venture between you and if somebody doesn't exhibit this you wouldn't want them on the team there's some great words up here and what's interesting is some of them are completely different to the values you'd pick before so our aligned team has uh Joseph who has picked a new value that wasn't on any one of the other boards which is very interesting right so there's other things were very aspirational but when it comes down to it Joseph why did you say if somebody doesn't have honesty you don't want them on the team because we want to make the environment in a transparent way and we can like share our value together in that kind of environment so if someone who is not honest you'll feel like a bit away from our value awesome so that's I completely agree deserve a round of applause it is funny though because that is one of the values I told you that I said you know proactive and open honesty openness and honesty is one of the things I personally believe in too so but whether I do is not so important what's interesting though is that that value is not on your other board so this is why this exercise is so important too which is at some point you have to say okay but just what is it so critical that I cannot work with somebody unless they have this value or that we agree this okay there was another wonderful one over here and this is Kavita can you share why you picked respect for respect for me and my company would be very important because a company would go through many highs and lows at that point the pressure points it is very important that each one of us respect us with all those high points and low points and from the culture I have come from from India where caste plays an important role so respecting each other we may be from different cultures but without carrying that baggage with us respecting each other I feel will give the high productive environment for the company also fabulous fabulous um so what I love about listening to you guys is that you will have these things and you speak them with such passion so I'm lucky enough to have been to India I felt that in your culture and I was always amazed I would go to dinner and there'd be three or four generations in a family serving dinner with tremendous respect for each other whether you were 80 or eight and that's something if you can bring that to a company and I love the way you said it tid wasn't just respect for each other it was respect for the company and you could take that value and could say respect for what we're doing respect for our customers respect for all these things if that's a really deep value that is authentic to you that can be so empowering in a well so enabling in that case for your business so Bridget you wanted to talk about navigation you said you needed to explain this yeah and then we'll have a bunch of thinking a bunch of very new situations for everyone on the team unfamiliar water is right so I was thinking being able to navigate those which requires things like honesty and respect and EQ you know that's how I interpreted this word like being able to navigate those and stay cohesive as a team beautiful well I mean I it doesn't matter how that word came about your explanation was wonderful so congratulations again um that is actually the the best way I could have embodied what I was saying is the journey you're going to go on if you could navigate all these twists these turns these ups these downs and you had the empathy resilience all the other things you came up with along the way to do that what a great great value excellent all right I really feel like if I did nothing other than call the class to a halt at this point you'd have done great but there are a few tips I want to give you so this is one that's fun and it's embodying Amazon's culture in a simple physical way so those of you don't know this story when Bezos started Amazon he literally took the door off its hinges and made it his desk why do you think he did that I can tell you it's driving around on every truck you see that's Amazon today yeah what does it show uh uh it's to be frugal Bingo what do the trucks say anybody been watching the Amazon trucks go by your neighborhood they have two things on them I'll tell you low prices fast delivery pick two that's a vision a mission a culture a value and a whole set of things right there in two words low prices is obviously what he was trying to embody here he wanted a Frugal culture and he started the company right away with that mentality Amazon's powered its entire Cloud business with a simple principle will not only innovate faster we'll have the best cloud services out there but we'll constantly lower prices that's how they took originally at one point they had like 60 plus percent market share so now a you know multi tens of billions of Dollar business because they had that embodied in their culture so not going to do this tonight because I don't have ability to take you into your physical spaces but think about what you might do in your physical spaces or your virtual spaces for that matter to embody your culture that people could touch every day there it was the door nobody at Amazon forgot that all right so this is back to operationalizing it and um you know I think a magashi you asked about this so we're gonna hit it again which is it should be something you can relate to that's personal to you the things we've talked about that you can engage in that you can act on so you can always reduce prices for example you can always improve delivery actually Amazon used to have a third thing and I think it's still there which is um infinite assortment uh infinite variety so there's always you know a choice for you so uh what's exciting about this is you can also do this again with a framework in mind which is if somebody doesn't know what the right thing to do is and you've said look it's either faster or cheaper then you know what the right thing to do is when there's a decision like how should you serve this customer well we should either make it faster for them or cheaper for them cheaper for them or give them more selection so it can be very clearly embodied into what you do and you saw the example with um now Amazon with that example you've seen it with uh HubSpot in terms of how they want to solve for the customer you've seen it with Enterprise with the way they empowered their employees and we could probably keep talking about examples but the point is to test yourself to say okay when there is no obvious answer what would somebody do and I already gave you this startup secret it enables you to do the right thing versus the easier obvious thing and it should be possible when you're not there and you don't have a rule book or anything else here's one that's an anti-example for me how many of you use Facebook or not matter okay this is their set of operating principles I I got nothing against matter by the way at all I mean I'm a user of it I think it's a great company that done amazing things for the world but when they say keep people safe and protect privacy you're all laughing I don't need to say anymore so now if I say apple and privacy what do you think you're all nodding your heads they fought the government they took them on they said no you cannot hack our phones sorry we're not going to give you the back door what are they advertising the iPhone for these days privacy it's one of the key things face identification so it doesn't work if you put up values that you can't live up to people laugh at you It's actually an anti-culture at that point it does work when you just deliver and you don't promise enough said okay sir one of the things that has to be in a company to for this to work is good communication if if you don't communicate constantly what your vision and Mission and culture is it will not flow it's the lifeblood of your startup you can do it informally or formally you can do it around the water cooler or you can have company meetings once a month or you can have Town Hall meetings once a quarter you can do all these things but whatever it is you do do not assume culture do not assume your mission or vision and do not ever take for granted how things are changing around you that's why as I said we pick our actively evolve value because you constantly will have changes going on around you and you'll need to constantly reinforce and recommunicate how your values and your vision and Mission still apply so there's a great example of this you'll find it in the workbook and on the slides and I encourage you to read about it gitlab they have a great way of actually talking about communication what does it mean how do you get your message out in the right format through the might medium how do you test it Etc I'm going to give you my startup secret with a simple example so how do you know absolutely clearly that somebody has a good communication skill you might have a judgmental like oh they're very clear they're very precise or they you know articulate well but there's an acid test what's the acid test when somebody's communicated well you can explain it back to them wow straight off the bat say why because it means you you received information internalized it now you can you can share it with somebody else perfectly said your name is yeah so Dan is who you now should go talk to about communication perfectly the truth is there's really no way of feeling that you've been successful at communication you have to test it you have to feel like somebody could authentically communicate back to you with as much Fidelity as you could possibly expect so 100 Fidelity would be ideal exactly what you just communicated which might not just be the words it might be the intent it might be the feeling Etc but that's the measure of good communication thank you Dan so it's an easy thing for you to do you can test it every day what do we do we send out surveys all the time to our Founders or to our entrepreneurs I think you had to answer one recently uh Mark we send them out to our investors we send them out to everybody we talk to regularly to say well are we doing what we thought we were doing is our message getting through if we hear it back differently which we often do by the way we go well why what are we not making clear and so I encourage you to do that it's also by the way the number one thing you need to do when you start your business which is if you're going to figure out what problem you solve uniquely well for who so for your value prop you're going to need to listen to your customers which is the biggest form of communication as to what their need is or what that opportunities that you see and you're going to need to test that communication with them by saying back to them I heard your need is X did I hear it right if you can't start there you're going nowhere but if you can start there and you can listen which has said that in my opinion the most powerful form of communication and you can hear your customers needs or pain points or the opportunity you're on to something strong that you can build on okay so how do we reinforce this well I like to have a bit of fun we we gave examples of the door they have to be substance to this there can be things like your reward people but it's also what goes how you reward people when things go wrong so do you reward people for failure actually I think it's a great thing to do because you're never going to get a breakthrough of people aren't trying to do things that have never done but been done before and if you're trying things that have been done before you're going to make mistakes and you want to fire somebody for doing that or do you want to reward them for trying I know which I'd pick but that'll be your choice and then do you want rewards to always for example come from the top what do you want to have peer rewards do you want to encourage you know peer communication and peer uh acknowledgment at underscore we made the cheapest form of reward system you can possibly imagine it costs us nothing it's a virtual system we let everybody on slack give each other tacos and you can give each other a taco anytime there are only five you get to give a day but we're all giving each other tacos for you know tacos for having looked after that particular entrepreneur and found them this person tacos for the fact that you supported your teammate when they were in a difficult situation tacos for a mental health solution you came up with for one of our Founders who was stuck with a kid at home we're getting tacos all the time and by the way as a result you know at the end of the month we don't have to actually figure out who should be what we call the Kick-Ass team member we just look at the number of attackers they got super simple cost nothing incredibly easy just an example to give you some fun to think about okay has to be authentic you can't just borrow mine start giving out attackers if it doesn't mean anything to you the reason we pick tacos by the way is because one of our team absolutely loves tacos she can't get enough of them National Taco day to her is more important than any other day in the year so it's authentic to us and the bottom line on all of this is you have to live it you have to walk the talk it's defined by you and so you have to lead by example and if you do all of this you get a great to a great place and I love this particular sit quote an example because it's very real which is for those of you seen how well Southwest Airlines has done they always are to me an embodiment of culture as herb said you know anybody could copy our Playbook if you will but nobody can copy our culture and that's what differentiates them and that's true for lots of companies when you get to think about it you'll have your own favorite example about it so to bring it home and put all this together this is really about finding this platform of cultural consistency which along with your vision and Mission can lead you to where you want to get and if you bring that in a form that people can relate to that they're empowered by and that they're also going to feel for example as motivational as memorable and that you can then communicate reinforce consistently and live it you're going to build a great company thank you very much [Applause] foreign