We build trust not during times of success, but during challenging times.
Starting a company is easy. Making sure our employees work on meaningful things to maximize its success: less easy. Making sure everyone understands and loves what they do: harder.
I forgot where I read that, but it’s something I keep remembering and I fully acknowledge.
We build trust not during times of success, but during challenging times.
I co-founded conduktor.io years ago. It started as a side project, then a tiny startup, and grew way bigger.
Founders fail at many things
There are many things to take care of in a company and many dimensions to consider carefully. We can only fail.
We have to make sure all employees understand why they are here, what their role is, their impact, their goal, and how working for our company will impact them personally: their present (knowledge, money, opportunities) and their future (new projects, money, stock options, roles, career ladder).
A founder is generally thrilled to wake up every morning and keep building their company like a zealot (if not, stop). No matter their motivation: money, fame, or power, they are here to realize a small dream. Founders are crazy because nothing seems impossible, and their energy is almost infinite (if not, stop).
We have to make sure this is similar for all our employees. They have to be happy to wake up in the morning and excited to resolve challenges and be part of our company's success story.
I can tell you upfront: you will fail hard in some aspects. Life. 😘
Your company is a people-story forging its culture
Not everything is about work. It’s also about people. Employees are the golden nuggets of a company. They form the culture. The culture is not what is written. It’s all these things that everyone ‘knows’, passed implicitly during meetings and discussions, that impact most decisions.
Culture is a hidden system interpreted and conveyed by everyone to drive them and provide guidance to make the right decisions. Culture takes time to build and needs stability to be resilient to changes.
It’s difficult to identify precisely what is ‘culture’. It’s not only up to the founder to build it. People build it based on what they think is aligned with their intrinsic values.
- Culture is based on examples.
- Culture is based on decisions made.
- Culture is based on communication.
Hiring is critical as newcomers will affect the company culture. Make sure you understand this. Do we want someone to improve the culture in some aspects? Do we want someone to fit in the existing mold? If we don’t carefully plan this and hire based only on skills, we might create cultural friction later on and have to make some hard decisions to correct the direction.
The Culture of Trust
Sometimes, when the culture is brittle, some organizational decisions or people leave, and the whole house of cards will shake. It’s delicate to avoid. It’s going to be tough. You have to hope that the culture is strong enough so that people’s trust will stay intact and that they will understand and adapt to the situation. Do not treat employees like children. Trust them, and you might be surprised.
If you feel your culture is not strong enough, you’re probably going too fast and hiring too fast. Forming a culture needs stability and continuous coherence. If you keep bringing people, you’re building a large multicultural potpourri in your company, giving no time for a culture to ‘dry’ and propagate.
We all need trust to do our work efficiently. It’s super hard to build trust. As the title says, “We build trust not during times of success, but during challenging times.” You will recognize your true friends when you’ll endure challenging times. If you have never had any clash with a ‘friend’, you cannot say you are genuinely friends. If you clash and your ‘friend’ leaves and says GFY, what? It’s the same in a company but at scale and more organic.
Challenging times are scary (layoffs, team restructuring, project shutdown, etc.) but are the best times to strengthen and rely on the company culture. Culture can overcome any challenges and guide people to build something even stronger afterward.
Communication and transparency are key
Everyone watches the founders for inspiration, guidance, (good) decisions, and support. Founders are the ones who can change anything, and ‘no one’ is forcing them to do anything. It’s up to them to go in any direction. It’s up to them to fix crap no one else can. It’s up to them to take responsibility no one else can. It’s not always easy. It’s very tough sometimes. You need large shoulders, a mind of steel, be passionate about everything, and always be energetic.
Hopefully, your organization has key people to rely on and help you with everything. You need to trust them fully. They will help you bear the burden with you. Trust is built upon communication. Communication is probably the most complicated topic in a company.
Finding the right balance for everyone to understand perspectives and decisions is delicate. Not everyone has the same experience, background, or interests. You will never please everyone at once. For instance, during Company All Hands meetings, talk too high-level/strategic and nobody will care except execs. Talk too low-level/operational, and only engineers will understand (but might miss the “why”). It takes practice, lots of feedback to find the right level, and more dedicated meetings for each audience/team to nail it.
One simple rule: talk about successes, customers, roadmap, and mention the hard truths as soon as possible.
Communication and transparency are key, no matter what. 🙂
Founder is a lonely job
Even if a founder can do anything, it’s a lonely job. I have the chance to have co-founders to discuss anything and solve problems together. I cannot imagine what it is to be a single founder in a company and take on the whole responsibility. Some subjects are so very sensitive and impactful. So many people depend on you. We don’t have all the answers, but we should still be able to answer anything. Having a co-pilot is not a nice-to-have but a must-to-have to drive more efficiently.
As founders, we fail a lot, but we also have many opportunities to learn and improve next time. Keep learning.
