In a Startup, Culture Isn't Created by the Organisation; It Is Created by the People in the Room

Author | Marc Wicks MBE

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Over the past ten months, I have thought a lot about culture, values and what actually makes a small team work.

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I don't mean culture in the traditional sense of having a set of values written on a wall or included in an employee handbook. I mean the culture you actually experience every day. It shows up in how people interact, how they respond when things get difficult, how they make decisions, how willing they are to help each other, and, perhaps most importantly, what happens when something doesn't go to plan.

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Startup Culture Is Built Through Everyday Behaviours

Working within a relatively small startup team has made all this much more visible to me. In a large organisation, roles and responsibilities can be clearly defined. There are specialists, established processes and usually somebody whose job it is to deal with something when it falls outside your area.

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A start-up is different. There are times when you find yourself responsible for something you have never done before; you don’t have the knowledge, you may not have the answers, and you may not even be entirely sure where to start. However, the work still needs to be done.

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You can explain why it isn't your responsibility, or you can take ownership and work out how to move it forward.

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What I have really enjoyed seeing in our team is the latter.

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People have been prepared to step forward, often outside their immediate area of expertise. They ask questions, seek support, learn new things and have a go. There is a genuine sense of, "We'll work it out", rather than, "That's not my job." For me, that says something important about the relationship between vision, values and behaviour.

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Your Vision Doesn't Create Culture, Your People Do

A strong vision gives people something to believe in and something to work towards, but the vision itself doesn't create the culture. Culture is created by the people trying to make that vision a reality and, more importantly, by the behaviours they demonstrate along the way.

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I have always believed that values only really mean something when you can see the behaviours that support them in action.

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At Mission Inc., our values are Innovative, Credible, Impactful and Collaborative.

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Innovation is not demonstrated because we say we are innovative. I see it when somebody challenges the way we have always done something, suggests a different approach or is prepared to experiment, knowing it might not work.

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Why Credibility Doesn't Mean Having All the Answers

Credibility doesn't mean having an answer for everything either. Sometimes the most credible thing you can say is, "I don't know." What matters is what you do next.

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Do you go and find out? Do you ask somebody who knows more than you, or do you acknowledge that there is something you need to learn?

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That is particularly important in a startup because none of us can know everything we need to know. I don't expect people to have all the answers. I expect them to be willing to learn, ask for help, and take responsibility for finding a way forward.

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Impact is about asking whether what we are doing actually makes a difference. Collaboration is not simply about working alongside each other. It is about sharing ideas, listening to different perspectives, supporting one another and being prepared to step in when somebody needs help. Those are the moments when values become real.

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Trust, Accountability and the Confidence to Get Things Wrong

My biggest takeaway, though, is the importance of trust. You cannot ask people to take genuine ownership if you don't trust them to make the necessary decisions. Equally, you cannot expect people to continually stretch themselves if they believe every mistake will be held against them. Which doesn't mean accountability isn't important - quite the opposite.

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High-performing teams need clear accountability. But accountability and blame are not the same thing. If something goes wrong, I would much rather ask, "What happened, what can we learn from it, and what might we do differently next time?" than immediately look for somebody to blame, because if people become frightened of getting things wrong, they eventually stop taking responsibility.

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They play safe. They wait for instructions. They avoid difficult decisions. And that is the exact opposite of the culture I believe we should be creating.

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I want people to feel able to have a go. I want them to challenge things when they think there is a better way. I want them to ask questions and be comfortable saying, "I don't understand that." I want them to be able to say, "I got that wrong." Not because standards don't matter, but because learning matters.

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The other thing I have appreciated is just how much better we become when we genuinely listen to one another. Everyone brings different experiences, perspectives and strengths. In a small team, those differences are particularly visible.

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Creating a Startup Culture Where People Feel Safe to Take Ownership

When people share what they know, ask for help and are prepared to listen to another point of view, better decisions tend to follow. I have seen that happening within our team, and it is one of the things that makes a healthy culture feel different. People begin to understand that their success isn't separate from the success of the people around them.

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To me, that's human-centric leadership. Human-centric leadership can sometimes be misunderstood as putting people before performance or lowering expectations. I don't see it that way at all.

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For me, human-centric leadership is recognising that people enable performance.

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If you want great performance, you need people who care. People who feel trusted. People who understand the purpose behind what they are doing. People who are willing to take responsibility and know they will be supported when they need it.

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The Leader's Role in Building a Healthy Startup Culture

And that places an important responsibility on leaders. Our role isn't to have all the answers. It is to create the conditions in which other people can succeed. That may be why the startup environment has reinforced so much of what I believe about leadership.

When the team is small, the distance between leadership and culture disappears. Culture has nowhere to hide. It shows up in every conversation, every decision, every mistake, every success, and every interaction between colleagues.

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A strong vision is incredibly important, but it only becomes real when people feel they own it.

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I don't want everyone doing the same thing in the same way. I want people to understand where we are trying to get to, what matters along the way, and feel trusted enough to use their own judgement to help us get there.

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That creates something much more powerful than compliance. It creates ownership, and that's what I have appreciated most over the past ten months.

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From Shared Vision to Individual Ownership

Seeing people take responsibility for things they haven't necessarily done before. Seeing them learn. Seeing them support each other. Seeing them challenge, experiment and sometimes get things wrong, then pick themselves up, learn from it and move forward. For me, that is what a healthy culture looks like. It isn't perfect, and it shouldn't be.

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What matters is that we have a shared vision, values that genuinely mean something, trust in one another and the confidence to take responsibility.

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Because ultimately, culture isn't created by the organisation. The people in the room create it: when they genuinely believe in the mission, live the values through their behaviours, support one another, and feel trusted to take ownership, something special happens!

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People grow, the team grows and ultimately, so does the organisation.

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How Mission Inc. can help

At Mission Inc., we work with organisations to bring these elements together through strategy alignment, leadership development and coaching. Our approach helps leaders translate strategic ambition into action, develop the capability within their teams and create the conditions for people to perform at their best.

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Find out how Mission Inc. can help align your strategy, develop your leaders and unlock the potential of your people.

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