🔖 Contents on this page:
📃 Culture Code
To make it easier to get aligned, to constantly verify if you’re living up to your cultural goals and for new hires to understand the culture more quickly, it is very useful to make your cultural values and principles explicit in a culture code. This is a document that outlines the most important elements of your culture.
Typical contents:
- The company’s mission and vision
- Foundational values (with explanations)
- What the company expects from employees
- What employees can expect from the company
- High-level policies
🏡 Remote Working
Remote working is increasingly a more and more important component of company culture.
Five recommendations should be considered for the implementation of remote working:
Tip 1: Establish a routine
The flexibility of remote working is a great advantage. However, a regular start of work as well as timed breaks are important to stay motivated and to get the required work done. Those who work remotely should therefore develop a daily routine.
Tip 2: Set boundaries
Clear boundaries between work and private life help to focus on work and reduce distractions. In a home office, for example, this can mean setting up a separate study. If you prefer to work remotely in a café or other location, you should only go there for work-related purposes and avoid it in your private life.
Tip 3: Interact socially
Counteracting social isolation is usually the biggest challenge in remote work. Here, too, routines can maintain communication with colleagues, if possible, e.g. at a joint lunch or fixed presence days in the office. For self-employed people or freelancers without colleagues, it is important to communicate regularly with clients or peers in the industry. Those who rely on digital communication channels can make more use of telephone calls instead of e-mails and participate in weekly meetings in the form of video conferences.
Tip 4: Plan tasks
A structured way of working maintains motivation and improves time management. Therefore, it is helpful to plan all tasks for the day or even the week at the beginning of work. Another tip for this is to bundle smaller tasks. For example, it makes sense to have a specific time slot for dealing with all open emails instead of answering them individually several times a day.
Tip 5: Maintain your appearance
Numerous studies show that the right clothing has an impact on the quality of remote work. Remote workers are more concentrated and productive if they dress the same as they do in the office. At the same time, they are always prepared for spontaneous video conferences.
📚 Useful Resources
Hubspot Culture Code
Netflix Culture
Daniel Coyle: Culture Code
Everybody knows that culture is an essential ingredient for startup success, but how do you build, stabilize and communicate it?
Lencioni: The Advantage
Organizational health is a complex, but crucial concept. Its principles enable companies to live up to their full potential.
Scott: Radical Candor
Startup life is full of difficult decisions and complicated leadership situations. This book argues that being candid in a compassionate way is the best way to deal with it.
Lencioni: The Five Dysfunctions of a Team
Team cohesion is hard to achieve but incredibly valuable when it happens. How can dysfunctional teams be transformed into high-performing ones?
Schmidt et al.: Trillion Dollar Coach
Legendary management coach Bill Campell was an advisor so such unknown people as Steve Jobs, Larry Page and the Google founders. Ex-Google CEO Eric Schmidt and co-authors examine his life and principles.