These slides were used for a talk I gave to MBA students at the Carroll School of Management at Boston College, in the "Managing People in Organizations" class. The lecture was on culture, and my task was to provide them with the perspective of creating a culture at a startup, and the unique challenges that come with that along the way. I gave them a little framework, called the "Three Ps", to help the think about the key issues in culture creation. The bottom line here is that culture matters, and at a startup its especially hard to create and maintain.

1. Rishi Dean
rishi@rishidean.com
www.rishidean.com
[ Three practical tools to help you ]
Boston College Carroll School of Management
September 15, 2010

2.  Been
on
the
ground
floor
of
three
startups,
shaping
Founding
Team
and
growing
them
 Been
in
big
companies
and
little
ones,
and
involved
in
Employee
/
Consultant
different
capacities
with
all
Involvement
types
 Seen
the
good,
the
bad,
and
the
ugly
Advisor
/
Mentor
 Made
some
many
mistakes,
which
I’ll
share,
so
you
don’t
have
to
Timing
Past
Present
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Dean
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4. Facebook
HP
LinkedIn
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12. http://bit.ly/karaokecreativity
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19. Coordination
/
Attachment
Selection
Control
Star
Work
Potential
Professional
Engineering
Work
Skills
Peer
/
cultural
Commitment
Love
Fit
Peer
/
cultural
Bureaucracy
Work
Skills
Formal
Autocracy
Money
Skills
Direct
*Burton,
M.
D.
(2001).
The
company
they
keep:
Founders'
models
for
organizing
new
firms
[Electronic
version].
In
C.
B.
Schoonhoven
&
E.
Romanelli
(Eds.),
The
entrepreneurship
dynamic
(pp.
13-­‐39).
Stanford:
Stanford
University
Press.
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Dean
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21.  Pink’s
motivating
factors
for
knowledge
workers:
 Autonomy
 Mastery
 Purpose
 [+
Camraderie]
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Dean
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22. http://bit.ly/startupevals
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25.  Keeping
regular
meetings
 Celebrating
the
small
stuff
 Remote
teams
 Tough
hires
 Tougher
fires
 Personnel
issues
 Winning
a
deal
 …
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Dean
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26.  Startup
culture
is
unique
 Starting
from
zero
(it
just
doesn’t
happen)
 Driven
by
few,
shaped
by
many
 Lots
of
external
factors
 Can’t
cut
&
paste
/
cherry
pick
–
must
fit
your
situation
 Three
tools
of
culture
creation
(must
be
internally
consistent):
1. Purpose:
what
you
value
2. People:
who
you
recruit
&
retain
3. Process:
what
systems
you
build
 Hard
to
build,
easy
to
break
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Dean
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27.  E-­‐mail:
rishi@rishidean.com
 Blog:
rishidean.com
 Twitter:
@rishidean
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Dean
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