The Importance of Corporate Culture
The Importance of Corporate Culture
Teambition
Alibaba Work Learning Suite
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Premise: The idea for writing this article has been around for a long time. Having gone through changes at several companies, I have been thinking about many issues, experiencing both success and setbacks. Through after-the-fact analysis and reflection, I can always find an invisible hand manipulating companies through all kinds of changes. An excellent corporate culture can unite employees and direct their efforts toward the same goal, while a poor corporate culture will continuously weaken the company's strength and lead it step by step toward decline.
Important Corporate Culture
"Founder Culture"
The initial manifestation of corporate culture is the founder's habits (including work and life) reflected in work. In the long term, it is the continuation of the company's work style, humanistic environment, and other inertial patterns—a default convention that can be sensed but not easily articulated. Regardless of changes, it always reflects the founder's way of thinking, way of handling matters, and management philosophy. Therefore, every company's culture is unique. A typical case is Apple, where Jobs' philosophy has always flowed through the company. Every success of Apple means the success of Jobs' philosophy.
Corporate culture invisibly influences the development and results of every link in the company. It affects every new employee who joins and continuously permeates the existing veteran employees. As members who cannot adapt to the corporate culture leave, corporate culture repeatedly impacts the remaining members, further deepening the homogeneity of existing members.
Corporate culture permeates every choice and decision of the company, like the blood of the corporate community, inadvertently influencing the trajectory of development and future prospects. The quality of corporate culture, like the quality of blood, determines the vitality and durability of the entire community.
"The Invisible Killer of Enterprises"
The longer the corporate culture takes to form, the larger the snowball becomes, and the more solid its protective shell grows. The cost and difficulty of penetration and adjustment are correspondingly proportional. Therefore, the initial inferior traits and complacency of corporate culture can become a bottleneck during rapid corporate development, hindering further progress and becoming an invisible killer of the enterprise. Of the tens of thousands of companies in the world, very few can truly achieve outstanding results and maintain them long-term.
According to the survival rule of projects, most projects face failure. Corporate culture accumulates a large amount of one-sided cognition and negative emotions, which both promote and constrain subsequent development. If handled properly, the company grows stronger through spiral development; if not, the company sinks into a quagmire from which it cannot extricate itself.
The Genes of Excellent Culture
"The Genes of Excellent Corporate Culture"
An excellent corporate culture requires two genes: openness and respect. A closed culture will fall behind the pace of the times; only openness can ensure permanent youth and vitality. Time will leave its marks, but as long as there is a young heart, vitality will not diminish. The founder or management of a company must have the awareness to respect talent. Respect needs no deliberate creation; understanding and respect from the heart are the most precious gifts. Why is it that so many competitors have imitated Haidilao's culture but few have surpassed it? It is because Zhang Yong genuinely respects and understands employees, filling every person who joins with the enthusiasm of an owner, letting employees believe that the stage is as big as their dreams, and giving every member the opportunity to change their destiny. A good corporate culture has won Haidilao a satisfactory reputation in the industry.
Corporate culture is not a one-time achievement; it must provide corresponding support as the company continuously progresses and personnel continuously develop. It must advance with the times, always maintain openness, actively absorb concepts and cultures that suit the current development of the enterprise, continuously introduce new talent, and keep moving forward through the integration of different ideas and perspectives. Rising stars can play the role of "disruptor" within the enterprise and can sustain that role long-term. The degree to which excellent talent is absorbed and the positive role they play also determines the pace of the company's progress. In quite a few companies, a community of vested interests forms, creating a natural barrier against new members and becoming the "fat sheep" of the enterprise. If the continuous influx of excellent talent cannot be maintained, the company will ultimately become a dead sea, with flocks of fat sheep scrambling to pursue various interests in comfort.
The definition of talent is not one-sided work ability; it also requires matching professional quality and moral quality. Just as an excellent doctor must not only have superb medical skills but also good medical ethics—both are indispensable. I believe no one would choose a doctor with superb skills but poor character, nor would anyone choose a doctor with excellent ethics but inferior skills. The principle for companies to select and respect talent is similar. Be wary of the smooth operator who is everyone's friend, and avoid the lone wolf who goes his own way. Naturally, this is an ideal state—as the saying goes, you cannot have everything. Companies must make trade-offs, know how to use people well, and leverage strengths while avoiding weaknesses.
"The Dilemma of Excellent Corporate Culture"
Excellence is often hard to obtain and easy to destroy; "excellent" requires dedicated effort and careful nurturing. Like the gentleman of ancient times who examined himself three times a day, the creation and maintenance of an excellent corporate culture must be reflected in every small detail. Comparing it to sailing against the current is not an exaggeration—even more so when the waters are turbulent. Maintaining excellence requires the collective effort of all, but since it is a collective, it inevitably contains all kinds of voices, and attacks of various sugar-coated bullets are naturally everywhere. Requiring everyone to possess Sun Wukong's piercing insight and big-picture perspective is naturally not easy. Therefore, how to spread excellence from point to area and control the key checkpoints is very important. Selecting, using, and recognizing people will be the lifelong pursuit of an excellent helmsman.
"Moving Toward Excellence"
Excellence looks beautiful but is like the moon in the water. Although most companies find it difficult to achieve excellence, at least we can strive toward it—even if we only live next door to excellence.
Corporate culture is the founder's culture; only an excellent founder can create an excellent corporate culture. A founder who does not value management but talks emptily about valuing talent is inevitably one-sided. A founder who cannot accept different opinions talking about corporate openness is absolutely empty talk. A founder without breadth of mind talking about valuing talent is mostly deceiving himself.
Compared to diligence in work, a founder's breadth of mind is more valuable. In China's five-thousand-year history, those who can be called wise rulers are few and far between. The reason is that when in a position of absolute power and superiority, human self-inflation tends to make people lose themselves. Few can tolerate a face-to-face critic like Wei Zheng the way Li Shimin did. The founder is the helmsman who builds corporate culture, leading the direction of the company. A slight deviation leads to a huge error, taking the company further from excellence and success and into a quagmire from which it cannot escape. Often, in excellent companies, internal political struggles disappear into thin air; conversely, in companies in trouble, internal friction intensifies. The former focuses more on the matter itself, while the latter focuses on people themselves, with the spotlight on themselves.
"The Importance of Building an Excellent Team"
The Importance of People:
The three elements of productivity: labor, tools of labor, and objects of labor. Among them, labor is the most active factor. The importance of talent is self-evident; an excellent team needs excellent people to support it. A team with cohesion can overcome all kinds of difficulties, continuously achieve victories, and ultimately create miracles. When people are of one mind, they can move Mount Tai. An excellent team is what every founder dreams of, but whether a team is excellent or not is directly related to the founder, especially the core circle he can influence.
The continuity and continuous growth of many multinational companies are directly related to the leaders' choice of suitable successors. For a company, whether the founder can build a combat-ready team is closely tied to the selection of team leaders.
Like ripples in water, cultural influence is transmitted layer by layer, with its effect inversely proportional to distance. The ideal state is like a relay router, amplifying influence layer by layer. Today's internet companies' flat management has created an excellent opportunity for this.
Recognizing People:
As the saying goes, a thousand soldiers are easy to find but one general is hard to come by. Choosing the soul figure of a team is the solid foundation for building an excellent team. Choosing team leaders requires extreme caution, because this is an important continuation of corporate culture and the key starting point for expanding influence and execution from point to area.
Discerning people means listening to their words and observing their actions, knowing the big from the small. The most excellent person is not necessarily the most suitable person. A sense of responsibility and integrity are prerequisites—without responsibility, nothing can be discussed; integrity indicates a person's openness. A lack of character will be continuously magnified in the course of corporate development. Identification with corporate culture and execution capability are two other very important conditions. Even if all team members are excellent, if they cannot pull together in terms of identification with the company, the team will be like a pile of loose sand, with members fighting individually and the workplace full of intrigue.
The selection of talent must be forward-looking—for example, cultivating and observing in advance, giving considerable opportunities in advance and observing, and preferably avoiding one-step promotions. Always pay attention to various behaviors in front of and behind leaders. Be equally wary of flattery heroes and firefighting heroes, because flattery heroes and firefighting heroes are very likely also trouble makers. Through trial-run mechanisms, along with appropriate authorization and guidance, companies can select suitable talent and try to avoid the dilemma of after-the-fact rescue. Similarly, different positions have different requirements for talent capabilities. When selecting talent, the balance between attitude and ability needs to be tilted accordingly. If both cannot be had, for general positions attitude > ability; for key positions ability > attitude. Be appropriately wary of talent that craves great achievements—craving credit implies concealment, and as it grows day by day, they become seasoned actors.
Using People:
Ensure through systems, care through humanistic concern. Systems are relatively well ensured in most companies, because following the rules is the simplest and laziest thing to do.
Humanistic care must be grounded in substance. Birthday cakes and various snack benefits are no match for sincere, down-to-earth care. Give employees customized gifts and honest evaluations on their birthdays; pay constant attention to employees' changing needs in daily life; when employees are ill or troubled by other matters, give them warm care and guidance.
Beyond basic physiological, safety, and social needs, respect and self-actualization are every employee's ultimate pursuit. Give them a sufficient stage and room to exercise their self-worth, allowing them to have continuous room for growth at both the material and spiritual levels. Compared to material grievances, spiritual grievances are more likely to dampen enthusiasm.
"Building a Platform Through Development"
What maintains a company's stability is certainly rapid development. Development is the one beauty that makes a hundred uglinesses fade. Once a company's development stagnates, various conflicts of interest will take the stage one after another, plunging the company into internal friction and leading to decline. The company's genes act as a catalyst when turbulence arises, exerting a huge impact on the company's advance or retreat.
Teambition Corporate Culture
Teambition advocates a clean and transparent corporate culture. The company's dual-ring, fully open office environment fully embodies openness and respect. "Clean to the point of transparency," "rational doers," and "hackers and painters" are Teambition's values. These values attract a group of energetic, excellent talent with the same pursuits, who jointly drive Teambition's development. Of course, most importantly, it is the group of excellent colleagues gathered under Teambition's values—capable but not boastful, individualistic but not ostentatious, possessing craftsmanship while also enthusiastically embracing change. In such a team, everyone can focus their energy on common goals. This atmosphere comes from corporate culture and is constantly influencing corporate culture in turn—they complement each other. Young, full of vitality, and embracing change are the team's main labels. An open and transparent corporate culture will help Teambition achieve higher and more valuable goals for more companies and teams through collaboration.
Author: Di Weihua, Architect at Teambition; Master's in Computer Application Technology from Shandong University of Science and Technology, Information System Project Manager, engaged in software development and related management. Has served as R&D Manager / Backend Development Director / Architect, familiar with backend development architecture and software development management processes, with certain research on corporate management and unique understanding and insights.