7 Slightly Crazy Ways To Build A Happy, Productive, And Transparent Company

By: Leo Widrich

Building a “normal” startup was never something that excited us much at Buffer. After all, if you go ahead and start your own company, you finally have the chance to put all your ideas for how to build a great company into practice.

A few months back, we finally put the first ideas for the Buffer culture into words: You can see what we came up with in the above slideshow.

Of course, culture is much more than just a slideshow. Since we first started working on Buffer two years ago, we have been searching for the best process to make working every day as enjoyable and impactful as possible.

Here are the 7 top things we’ve been experimenting with and implementing: 

Free Jawbone UP for everyone
 What we’ve recently started is to give everyone that starts out at Buffer a Jawbone UP wristband. The band allows you to seamlessly track your sleep, your daily steps, nutrition and much more. Here is a screenshot of the Buffer team’s sleep habits: 

Why try this? 
One of our key values at Buffer is to work smarter, not harder. Together with an immense focus on personal improvement, giving everyone a chance to improve their sleep patterns seemed like a no-brainer. A few weeks in, this has already had an incredible effect. Browsing through everyone’s sleep patterns and discussing how to get more deep sleep over our virtual water coolers has an amazing effect on productivity. 

Open Salaries 

Something that was definitely very scary for us to do was to make all salaries public within the company. We created a formula to calculate everybody’s salaries and then went ahead to add it to our wiki page for everyone to see. 

Why try this? 
There are two key reasons we did this. The first and foremost is to truly commit to our value of transparency. Here is what Joel sent to everyone in the team in the announcement email:

“I truly believe that transparency breeds trust, that's one of the key reasons for this adjustment.”

The second element was that it made hiring new people for our team a lot easier and yes, you guessed it, more transparent. In fact, we could tell people how much they would earn, before we got into any details. We just ran through the formula and came up with the number.

The goal here is to eventually make all salaries and the formula publicly available. 

Free Kindle books for all 
Everyone on the Buffer team can grab any Kindle book they want, for free, at any time. There are no questions asked, you just drop the link to Amazon into a form field and you will get it on your Kindle device minutes later. Here are a few books I snatched up recently: 

Why try this? 
If you browse through the above slideshow, you will see that another one of our core values is “Have a focus on self improvement." And what could suit this better than reading books? So far dozens of books have been grabbed by our team. This is a great way to encourage learning for the team and quickly upped my daily reading amount. 

Open Equity 
It is one thing to have salaries made completely public throughout the company. Going the extra step to make equity completely open to everyone in the company was next. We created another formula that determines how much equity each new person on the team will get and why everyone on the team received what they did. This was definitely also nerve-racking, and yet, today it feels like one of the best decisions we’ve made. 

Why try this? 
I’m not exactly sure why, but making equity public felt like going beyond salaries in terms of transparency. Combining both salary and equity really made us put all our cards on the table. I believe this creates an amazing bond for the team. And as we plan on making all equity completely public, we hope to truly make the step towards an “open company.” 

The daily personal improvement 
At Buffer, we are using an amazing productivity app called IDoneThis, where everyone logs what they've accomplished and how they are working to improve. Glancing over recent examples for improvements, these stick out:

- “4th day streak of 6am rising.”

- “Back to 10 minutes of daily meditation consistently.”

- “Need to do some Pilates. Walking all the steps but still missing planned exercise.” 

Why try this? 
A daily log is a widely used tool in many companies. The element of “what am I working on to improve myself" is something that has always been a core part of what we do at Buffer. Because all improvements are shared company-wide, it is a great way to get encouragement and find a habit. On top of this, it’s an awesome opportunity to learn new skills. For example, I've picked up coding, in part because of this daily log. 

Great support for a free product 
This is something a lot of people called us crazy for doing. We are doing our best to provide amazing support for a product that is free for 98% of users. In fact, out of our 10-person team, about a third of us do full-time customer support work.

Why try this? 
Giving great customer support for something that’s free is great, precisely because it is crazy. No one else does it, and it allows you to truly create a “wow” effect. No one expects to get a response, so whenever people do get one, they are over the moon and spread the word as far as they can. Customer support is the new marketing department. 

Managing a remote team: The daily pair call 
The last idea that we’ve implemented recently is the daily pair call. Most startups use a daily standup to sync up on everything in the morning or evening. With a lot of our employees being in different time zones, that quickly became impossible. Instead, for each week, two people on our staff are paired up and have their own one-on-one calls. In these calls the two paired-up people talk about challenges, daily improvements, and what we are working on.

Why try this? 
The pairings are completely random and involve each team member. People that might not talk that often with each other get a chance to do so. An engineer, say, may get paired up with a support person. It’s also a great way to get daily face time in, which we couldn’t do otherwise.

Those are some of the ideas that are the key at Buffer for creating and maintaining our culture. The feedback so far has been amazing. I’d love to hear any thoughts you have on the above ideas, and what's worked well inside your own company.

Pitching your business to the media? Digital’s the way to go

LISA OSTRIKOFF 

Special to The Globe and Mail

Posted May 7, 2013 on Challenges In Agri-Food And Supply Chain

  

If you’re a small business trying to figure out how to get your story out there, the digital world we live in offers amazing opportunities. From social media to content creation to the distribution of video segments, the options are more exciting than ever before.

However, if getting mainstream media on board with your brand and its story is your goal, there are a few things to consider.

I was recently interviewed for an article about the last time someone ‘wowed’ me with a media pitch, and what made his or her PR approach ‘unique and memorable.’

Sadly, I had to respond that in my near decade-long news career, not one approach stood out. I recall often cringing at the amount of money spent on fancy folders and press kits that would arrive daily, and usually go straight into the recycling bin.

Why? As a news director and reporter, I was already busy pursuing stories I was working on, so the chances of me looking through a fancy, 20-page document were slim to none. Mostly, none.

If getting your business in front of major media is your goal, the digital era has opened up an entirely new and exciting world for you. Here’s some advice:

The death of the press release


Old-school lingo and traditional format press releases don’t work, unless it’s a slow news day, but that shouldn’t be your intention. If you are working with an agency that recommends and charges for such things, fire them. As digital media continues to evolve, how you speak to them needs to evolve, too.

Go digital


News directors, assignment editors and reporters are becoming more and more available via social media. If you compare sending a press release to an already-overstuffed generic news inbox with being able to talk directly to decision- makers, the choice is obvious.

Sure, it takes more work to figure out who you need to talk to, and what their Twitter and Facebook IDs are, but the return on the investment of your time is well worth it.

Just make sure that your social media feed backs up the story you are trying to sell. It’s easy to confirm or discredit a person’s expertise with a few clicks of the mouse.

Be a storyteller

If you want media coverage, think like a storyteller. Pitch your story in a way that will resonate with reporters. Regardless of what medium you use, if you can make the decision-maker visualize how your story can come together and how it will be told, you have made their lives easier and, therefore, increased the likelihood of your story getting picked up.

Why is your business interesting? What value does it offer? Why should people care? These are a few basic questions that should spark some answers when it comes to creating and selling your story.

Online video works


We live in an increasingly visual, interactive and engaging online world. Online video is still relatively new as a communication medium, and not yet widely used as far as media relations go. (This will soon become the expected norm, mark my words).

So, if you want to really stand out and ‘wow’ a decision maker at a news outlet, use video to tell or introduce your story. Video engages and can sell a story like no other medium available today.

My company has had many clients say the use of video has been the most effective tool in their media kits. Others have had media approach them after coming across their businesses’ online video story. It would be nice to have media come after you, rather than the other way around, wouldn’t it?

Like it or not, the face of media relations has changed. It’s impossible to talk about a PR campaign and not mention the use of social media or video these days. Make a few basic tweaks to your strategy and you’ll be well on your way to additional exposure for your business, whether it comes from traditional or new media approaches.

Lisa Ostrikoff is a TV journalist/anchor-turned-creator of BizBOXTV , a web video and social media marketing agency based in Calgary. Find her onTwitter and Facebook .

Six Components of a Great Corporate Culture

The benefits of a strong corporate culture are both intuitive and supported by social science. According to James L. Heskett, culture "can account for 20-30% of the differential in corporate performance when compared with 'culturally unremarkable' competitors." And HBR writers have offered advice on navigating different geographic cultures, selecting jobs based on culture, changing cultures, and offering feedback across cultures, among other topics. 

But what makes a culture? Each culture is unique and myriad factors go into creating one, but I've observed at least six common components of great cultures. Isolating those elements can be the first step to building a differentiated culture and a lasting organization.

1. Vision: A great culture starts with a vision or mission statement. These simple turns of phrase guide a company's values and provide it with purpose. That purpose, in turn, orients every decision employees make. When they are deeply authentic and prominently displayed, good vision statements can even help orient customers, suppliers, and other stakeholders. Nonprofits often excel at having compelling, simple vision statements. The Alzheimer's Association, for example, is dedicated to "a world without Alzheimer's." And Oxfam envisions "a just world without poverty." A vision statement is a simple but foundational element of culture.

2. Values: A company's values are the core of its culture. While a vision articulates a company's purpose, values offer a set of guidelines on the behaviors and mindsets needed to achieve that vision. McKinsey & Company, for example, has a clearly articulated set of values that are prominently communicated to all employees and involve the way that firm vows to serve clients, treat colleagues, and uphold professional standards. Google's values might be best articulated by their famous phrase, "Don't be evil." But they are also enshrined in their "ten things we know to be true." And while many companies find their values revolve around a few simple topics (employees, clients, professionalism, etc.), the originality of those values is less important than their authenticity.

3. Practices: Of course, values are of little importance unless they are enshrined in a company's practices. If an organization professes, "people are our greatest asset," it should also be ready to invest in people in visible ways. Wegman's, for example, heralds values like "caring" and "respect," promising prospects "a job [they'll] love." And it follows through in its company practices, ranked by Fortune as the fifth best company to work for. Similarly, if an organization values "flat" hierarchy, it must encourage more junior team members to dissent in discussions without fear or negative repercussions. And whatever an organization's values, they must be reinforced in review criteria and promotion policies, and baked into the operating principles of daily life in the firm. 
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4. People: No company can build a coherent culture without people who either share its core values or possess the willingness and ability to embrace those values. That's why the greatest firms in the world also have some of the most stringent recruiting policies. According to Charles Ellis, as noted in a recent review of his book What it Takes: Seven Secrets of Success from the World's Greatest Professional Firms, the best firms are "fanatical about recruiting new employees who are not just the most talented but also the best suited to a particular corporate culture." Ellis highlights that those firms often have 8-20 people interview each candidate. And as an added benefit, Steven Hunt notes at Monster.com that one study found applicants who were a cultural fit would accept a 7% lower salary, and departments with cultural alignment had 30% less turnover. People stick with cultures they like, and bringing on the right "culture carriers" reinforces the culture an organization already has.

5. Narrative: Marshall Ganz was once a key part of Caesar Chavez's United Farm Workers movement and helped structure the organizing platform for Barack Obama's 2008 presidential campaign. Now a professor at Harvard, one of Ganz's core areas of research and teaching is the power of narrative. Any organization has a unique history — a unique story. And the ability to unearth that history and craft it into a narrative is a core element of culture creation. The elements of that narrative can be formal — like Coca-Cola, which dedicated an enormous resource to celebrating its heritage and even has a World of Coke museum in Atlanta — or informal, like those stories about how Steve Jobs' early fascination with calligraphy shaped the aesthetically oriented culture at Apple. But they are more powerful when identified, shaped, and retold as a part of a firm's ongoing culture. 

6. Place: Why does Pixar have a huge open atrium engineering an environment where firm members run into each other throughout the day and interact in informal, unplanned ways? Why does Mayor Michael Bloomberg prefer his staff sit in a "bullpen" environment, rather than one of separate offices with soundproof doors? And why do tech firms cluster in Silicon Valley and financial firms cluster in London and New York? There are obviously numerous answers to each of these questions, but one clear answer is that place shapes culture. Open architecture is more conducive to certain office behaviors, like collaboration. Certain cities and countries have local cultures that may reinforce or contradict the culture a firm is trying to create. Place — whether geography, architecture, or aesthetic design — impacts the values and behaviors of people in a workplace. 

There are other factors that influence culture. But these six components can provide a firm foundation for shaping a new organization's culture. And identifying and understanding them more fully in an existing organization can be the first step to revitalizing or reshaping culture in a company looking for change. 

 

John Coleman

John Coleman is a coauthor of the book, Passion & Purpose: Stories from the Best and Brightest Young Business Leaders. 

5 Things Never Heard at the Most Innovative Companies

Kathy Gersch explains that while it may be difficult for your company to generate innovative ideas, high-tech start-ups and other companies we consider to have innovation built into their DNA have just as much difficulty maintaining their innovative edge.

The most interesting thing about the Fast Company Most Innovative Companies 2013 list isn’t who is on it. It’s who isn’t.

Writing about the companies who had fallen off the list (and were obviously upset about it), Robert Safian, Editor of Fast Company magazine said, “It’s not that these businesses suddenly lost their mojo. But in a climate where the velocity of change is accelerating, these companies didn’t have a compelling-enough breakthrough for us to highlight.”

Safian’s remark perfectly illustrates the essential element required for survival in today’s economic environment. If you aren’t constantly innovating, your organization is most likely losing its edge. If your innovations are incremental – not big enough to move the needle – you’re still losing.

What do the companies on Fast Company’s list like Nike, Uber, and Pinterest have that others like Facebook and Twitter don’t? Better new products – which came from innovative ideas, that’s obvious. The mystery is where these ideas come from, how they rise to get noticed, and then how they are brought to market faster than anyone else. This list is a reminder that some of the companies we’ve historically associated with innovation because of their brand name (3M, Facebook, and Twitter) aren’t immune to losing their edge.

While people have spilled much ink on how to create innovation, I’d like to offer an easier way to get there – by process of elimination. Let’s start with five things you will NOT hear at the most innovative organizations. Be on alert for them; These are clear indicators that your company is losing its innovation “mojo.”

1. “Can we do that?” Permission seekers are the mark of unclear company vision. If your company’s vision is clear enough, and has been communicated constantly and consistently, people do not come to you for permission, they come to show you what they’ve already done.
2. “We can’t do that.” On the flip side of the previous comment, you find the limitations or barriers people have set up in reaction to the punishment they’ve experienced for prior failures. If your people see others try, fail, then get punished, you can guarantee that people will remain in the safe spot. No one is going to try to innovate, much less try anything remotely outside the box ever again.
3. “We have to go through proper channels.” A mark of truly innovative companies is that the employees are well-networked, and they are constantly crossing silo walls to engage other departments, gather knowledge, or just get an outside opinion. Though one person may come up with the idea, nobody creates a great innovation solely on their own.
4. “That’s good enough.” In many companies, once significant progress is made, momentum slows and eventually the project fails. This is one of the key reasons 70% of change efforts fail. Yes, it’s important to celebrate incremental wins, but in innovative companies, people don’t let up – they continue to focus on the final prize. This only comes from a relentless focus on winning.
5. “That’s not my job.” This final phrase is the clearest indicator that people aren’t focused on the future of the company. If employees have a clear understanding of the vision set by leadership, no one will be talking in terms of their box on the org-chart. If you hear “us” and “them” language referring to internal teams, beware. Employees at innovative companies know it is always “our” job – we win together.

Stay on the alert to these dangerous phrases that might sneak into conversations in your organization. A great brand name no longer protects you from losing your edge. Remember Kodak?

Kathy Gersch is an Executive Vice President at Kotter International, a firm that helps leaders accelerate strategy implementation in their organizations. John Kotter is the chief innovation officer at Kotter International, and is the Konosuke Matsushita Professor of Leadership, Emeritus, at Harvard Business School.