Which characteristics of the startup culture really lead to its promising prospects?

What is the Startup Culture?

The term “startup culture” often resonates with the informal, lively atmosphere, along with attractive perks and activities associated with a startup. Startups generally operate within limited force of funding and resources, which comes with its own advantages. Characterised by flatter hierarchy, transparent communications, and a match between the company’s mission and employee personalities, startup culture has begun attracting attention from its much larger competitors as well.

One can say that the culture of an organisation defines the manner in which interactions take place – firstly among the teams and colleagues, further with stakeholders and eventually customers. This is where startups lead the way, with employee personalities synchronising with the mission of the company so effortlessly, that the outcome is a smooth-functioning, lean organisation.

Kaizen and its relevance to startups:

The Japanese term “Kaizen” would be an appropriate way to describe one of the fundamental characteristics that sets the startup culture apart from its competitors. Kaizen, when translated, means ‘continuous improvement’.

This process has been adopted universally to improve operations and include feedbacks from workers at all levels within the organisation.

With its measured, coherent process, the inculcation of Kaizen has shown improvements in the overall productivity, irrespective of the size of the company.

Yet, the process of continuous improvement holds a different importance for startups. From their inception, startups lay emphasis on:

• personal development,
• transparency in teamwork,
• working in smaller teams to maintain quality of work,
• easier access to executives, and
• feedbacks from employees to improve work-life balance

These, also happen to be 5 main elements of Kaizen.

Hence at the heart of it, startups begin their operations, relying on the process of continuous improvement.

What are the Benefits and Challenges of Startup Culture?

Are larger corporations imbibing the startup culture?

Larger corporations know the recipe for sustenance in a competitive market. Over a period, many of them have learnt and adapted through enough situations to know when it’s time to modify.

Yet, as seen in more cases than we would have liked to, a rigid hierarchy makes the channelling of voices and fresh ideas a tedious process. This, inevitably affects the decision-making capacity of an organisation, slowing it down, and setting it back from where it would have wanted to be.

But due to the observations made by many Human Resource leaders, their respective companies have begun changing their ways, adapting to the need of the hour.

Communication has started to bear emphasis when it comes to motivating employees (departmentally and across the organisation). Creating a link between the employees and the company’s leadership, gives the employees a sense of ownership, terms of impacting decisions. With such personal interests vested in the company’s future, alignment of individual’s goals with the bigger mission becomes relatively smoother. Major corporates have now shown changes in the ease of flow of ideas, which makes the retention of quality employees an evident factor in their competitive future.

But, most importantly, what large companies need to focus on, when trying to imbibe startup culture, is the ability to strike a balance between fresh talent and their experienced counterparts.

There is no denying the importance of fresh talent within any organisation, irrespective of the size. Freshers not only add to the resource pool but are a mouldable tool in the arsenal of their organisation. They are forged into their respective roles, as per the need of the departments within the organisation, until they have a specialisation with a few years of experience.

Within a startup, the fresh talent has room to grow, alongside the growth of the company. While the company takes risks, so do the freshers within their roles and responsibilities. Being in similar situations, the understanding fits right.

On the other hand, larger companies, with established structures, need to understand the essence of capability that room for growth brings with it. Expecting freshers to conform to the “corporate culture”, especially when they join in straight out of universities, is unfair, and to an extent far-fetched.

And this is where many companies are introducing a variable culture at smaller, departmental levels. This allows them to test what characteristics work in their favour, and how they can include employee feedbacks at all levels within the department.

Is the startup culture a changing trend, or is it here to stay?

With a rise in the number of startups around the world, also arise a few questions – what happens when startups grow into larger corporates? Does the culture change as well? Do they imbibe some characteristics from corporate culture, or is it just the latter imbibing from the former?

Truth be told, as per various studies conducted on startups who made it into the scaling stage, the successful ones have shown that retention of a large portion of the characteristics they began with. As they scaled up in size, productivity, and market share, they adopted some quality traits from their larger counterparts.

In order to sustain in a competitive market, only the ones who exhibited an intent to transition into a larger status, thrived.

In conclusion, though the startup ecosystems may have a long way to go to attain a nearly perfect balance, we can certainly state that their culture is here to stay. For either side (startups and corporates) to derive a balance, there need to be two opposing cultures at the extreme ends of the spectrum.