Krish Chopra: What are the 3 most important values that your company’s culture is based on?
Steven Bartlett: The three most important values that our company culture is based one are simple but integral; first, fearless, ever-changing.
Krish: Managing millennials can often be a polarizing topic. Can you elaborate on your advice for managing the “millennial mindset?”
Steven: The most important learning from running a business and more specifically the people is really instilling trust into our environment. A large proportion of our workforce are millennials so establishing this trust in the workplace is so important to our culture. Social Chain employees have complete freedom, whether it be flexible working hours, unlimited holidays or our ‘see the world’ policy that allows people to go travelling for extended periods and have job security. Through this freedom we have established real trust with everyone who works here and this trust is reciprocated back to us.
Krish: What are your “3 Ways to Improve Your Company’s Culture” and why.
Steven:
· Care, but for the right reasons. Caring in itself isn’t enough, you must show that you care, just saying you do is no real use. One of the most important things we do for our employees is provide an onsite therapist to ensure mental wellbeing.
· Create an environment where people enjoy spending time. At Social Chain we provide a home from home, allowing people to bring their dogs to work, have food on site, a slide and speaking pods all of which provide the optimum working environment. This means our space has become one people love to be in. There’s a great difference in productivity when people feel at ease in their environment and it doesn’t feel like you’re sat at your desk all day long.
· No hierarchy. Ever. We pride ourselves on our decision making process, which involves every single person in the company. There is no top down approach when it comes to important decisions which impact every individual. Everyone gets a say in the company’s decisions. An example of this would be a recent enquiry from a potential client which would potentially be divisive in terms of opinion. Everyone in the company was asked their opinion on whether we would work with said client, even if they were completely far reached from the campaign. If we can’t agree on something as a company, we won’t do it.
Krish: Strong company culture is something that everyone likes to think they have but very few have it. Why do so many organizations struggle with creating strong, healthy work environments?
Steven: We never created a culture for the sake of having it, the culture was created by each individual that works for the company and we now work to maintain that above all else. People are hired here based on whether they’ll work with our existing culture, we hire people for who they are as a person.
Leaders become great not because of their power, but their ability to empower others
Krish: What is one mistake you see a young start-up founders make in their culture or leadership practices?
Steven: There is a lot of emphasis on entrepreneurship and the perceived glamour of running your own business. That is fundamentally incorrect. I see this image of what it’s like to be an entrepreneur really guiding a lot of people astray but also leading people who aren’t fully equipped or aren’t aware into this kind of lifestyle. You have to learn. Quickly. There is little time to focus on yourself or how you’re perceived and you have to be prepared to make immense sacrifices. Alongside this, the biggest mistake young start-up founders make is believing that you can do everything. Behind a great business is a great team, and I’d say the key to building a great business is hiring people that are better than you are. Leaders become great not because of their power, but their ability to empower others.
