Shaping a Strong Company Culture: Lessons from the SVB Crisis

"Culture is simply a shared way of doing something with a passion" - Brian Chesky, AirBnB Cofounder.

In any organization, people will behave in one way or another. They'll have a work ethic, a sense (or lack) of urgency, and a formality in language. All these things are part of any organization's culture. Culture can happen organically or by design. In most successful organizations, it happens by design.

For a startup, culture is often ignored in the first days. Yet, it's a fundamental driver of success. Culture should start by creating a set of values and ensuring that cofounders share at least a few. There might be make-or-break values.

Before we got married, my wife and I attended a weekend retreat where we were asked to question many topics. Things like how many, if any, children we wanted to have. Where we would like to live. How our relationship with each others' parents would look like. And many others. There were many things we had never thought of, even less talked about.

Business partnerships share many similarities; they are unlikely to succeed without an early discussion of key topics and cultural alignment between partners. Regardless of history or friendship, cofounders should go to a pre-marriage-like exercise once things get serious with any business.

Once the company starts to grow, having these values clear and making them known will make life easier for recruiters and throughout interviews. It will also make incompatible candidates self-exclude themselves. If they were incorrectly hired, they would soon realize they are in a fishbowl with a group of trout they don't feel comfortable with.

With growth, a clear and concise mission and leadership coherent with the values they publicly set out can take a company a long way. Culture does not have to be a paragraph written in stone. It can change over time. It should change, especially after going through hard and stressful times.

"Culture eats strategy for breakfast" - Peter Drucker.

Several startups were tested by Silicon Valley Bank's recent crisis, prompting them to evaluate their own company culture. If you are working in a company whose leadership did not communicate what was happening or made rash and panicked decisions, it may be a good time to consider whether or not to continue working there. As a founder, if one of your partners disappeared and left someone else to face the heat and pressure, it may be worth looking at the vesting contracts.

Once the crisis has passed, it is highly recommended to conduct a company-wide review to document how people felt, how they acted, what gave them energy, and what made them scared. Going through these emotions and understanding how, as a team, you reacted to the crisis will be valuable for the company's culture moving forward.

In the past, culture was regarded as a soft thing that large companies liked to put in their annual report. In the present, with people working remotely and communication flowing like wildfire, culture can make or break any organization in just a few days. A strong culture can be an antidote to chaos and create enduring and long-lasting companies.