Culture
What
Culture is “A pattern of shared basic assumptions, invested, discovered or developed by a given group as it learns to cope with its problems of external adaptation and internal integration, that has worked well enough to be considered valid, and therefore, is taught to new members of the group as the correct way to perceive, think and feel in relation to those problems.” In other words, organizational culture is ‘civilization in the workplace’ that helps promote and reinforce ‘right’ thinking and behaving, and sanctioning ‘wrong’ thinking and behaving (Belavey, 2019; Medium.com). Culture was so important to the founders of Airbnb that they took six months to hire their first engineer. They hypothesized that the characteristics of their first engineer hire would have a lasting and imprinting effect on the culture of their company.
Read
Reed Hastings' original slide deck on culture at Netflix (Slideshare.net). A signal *both* for people it wants and for those it does not want.
Watch
From How to Start A Startup video lecture series. Brian Chesky, Founder of Airbnb, and Alfred Lin, Former COO of Zappos and Partner at Sequoia Capital discuss how to build a great company culture.