Building a “Culture of Money”: A Powerful Engine for Business Success
Winning in the marketplace. Building a winning team. Executing a plan with laser focus. Attracting and retaining the best. Instilling a “We cannot be stopped” sense of urgency and effectiveness. Creating an exciting, dynamic, high-energy environment. These are simply some of the benefits resulting from building and nurturing of a “Culture of Money.” I’ve been discussing this concept with some of my team members at my technology start-up, some of whom have Wall Street backgrounds like me. A Culture of Money at a technology start-up? Doesn’t this sound crass and, well, Wall Street-like? Surely this is anathema to the principles of complex software development, where the goal is solving difficult, ground-breaking problems with creativity, elegance and outside-the-box thinking? I mean, everybody wants to make money, right, but a Culture of Money? It sounds so base.
My contention is that instilling such a culture is not only an asset, but a necessity for getting the most out of people as individuals and the team as a whole. But in order to make this point, I need to more clearly define what I am talking about and how it applies to people and groups across a wide range of activities.
So what, exactly, are the elements that reflect a Culture of Money?
- Knowing that the team is building something of real economic value (“EV”) and that the market is willing to pay for it.
- Understanding the linkage between one’s efforts, regardless of where one sits in the organization, and the creation of EV.
- Confidence that the team has the leadership, vision and access to the market to monetize EV.
- Knowing that one’s efforts towards the realization of EV will result in real, tangible rewards, and that one’s performance and sharing in EV are closely correlated.
- Waking up thinking about the creation of EV, obsessing about the creation of EV during non-work time, and falling asleep thinking about the maximization of EV. In short, regardless of whether you are a developer, a product manager, a sales person or the President, it is all EV, all the time.
- Having fluid, effective, cross-functional communication with laser focus on the customer to best understand both product requirements and product delivery in order to maximize EV.
- Celebrating both team and individual successes giving recognition of the achievement of EV.
- Sharing stories about those who have successfully generated and realized tremendous amounts of EV, and drawing parallels between those success stories and the story that you are trying to write in your own company.
- Generating EV as often as you can, because even small wins do wonders for both morale and learning about customer requirements. “Tasting blood” can be a very powerful motivator for solidifying and intensifying the institutional focus on EV generation.
Do these things seem at odds with building and running a successful start-up, or even a mature company? I don’t think so. They certainly worked on Wall Street, where it is all money, all the time. But I’m not sure that these same principles shouldn’t be instilled in each and every start-up and established firm, profit and not-for-profit alike, as the EV concept can be modified to reflect the “package of benefits” an entity is delivering even if it is not economic. I think it is actually a pretty robust, generalizable model that can be effectively deployed any where, at any time. Because at the end of the day it is all about vision, people, teamwork, market opportunity and focus. It just depends on what gets you off. It just so happens that in the worlds in which I’ve operated the main “high” is derived from cold, hard cash. And as I’ve cited in many posts before, in the presence of a compelling economic motive, almost anything is achievable. And that’s what I like to see. Achievement. With a commensurate sharing of rewards. This is the Culture of Money. It is a winning culture.
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COMMENT:
AUTHOR: Rajesh Shakya
EMAIL: rajesh@rajeshshakya.com
URL: http://www.rajeshshakya.com/golden-mantras-of-effective-email-communication-part-2.htm
DATE: 05/16/2007 02:22:45 PM
Starting “Culture of Money” in in start-up is easier than introducing in matured companies. In start-up you can set the “Culture of Money” for every thing you start and continue to do with economic values (EV). On the other hand, in matured companies, not only the “Culture of Money” but culture of many other things are set and rooted strongly.
Rajesh Shakya
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COMMENT:
AUTHOR: Bernard
EMAIL: Bernard@evenbetteryet.com
URL: http://www.evenbetteryet.com
DATE: 05/17/2007 08:54:22 PM
Interesting blog Roger. I have grown with companies that are very large, and can tell you that while the EV culture may work to get you through the early ‘do or die’, ‘teamwork’, ‘blood-sweat-and-tears’, ‘holy crap we need to clothe our kids’ stage, once your employee pool grows to a point where you dont know everyone’s name and function as you pass them in the halls, the EV culture thing starts to lose its luster - especially at the front lines.
An uberfocus on EV starts to eat away at employee morale and, especially if they are EV focused, other employment opportunities start to become more appealing. While we want to force the feeling of ownership down to the front-lines, even when we succeed, its often times short lived. Sometimes its a leadership thing - but it wouldnt be right to say its all in the leaders control.
Add the demographic shift problem to the mix and all you have is a group of EV pros looking at the increasing number of employment options (especially over the next 15-20 years) hopping from opportunity to opportunity, losing the focus on the baby you and your imediate team created.
My view is that we’d be smart to make sure that leaderships focus on EV is balanced with a healthy focus on the feeling of achievenent (non-economic) and camaraderie. Check out the white-paper from ‘Sirota’ in the employee section of my website. Their perspective and experience taught me a lot.
Thanks again for the neat blog. I’ll keep watching and chatting f no one minds. Bernard
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COMMENT:
AUTHOR: Ted Bailey
EMAIL: info@aursi.ca
DATE: 05/18/2007 09:02:49 AM
I completely agree with the above comments. In my own company, our core team was completely focussed on the “Culture of Money”. Over time, we lost focus on our other core values and goals and began to completely focus on this culture. While we felt we were on the right tract, there seemed to be an underlying feeling of discontentment within our principles. It took some time before we realized it, but I think changing from the “Culture of Money” philosophy has helped us progress, at least for now.
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3 years ago
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