You might have read that headline and thought to yourself that those four companies actually have a lot in common:
- based in Chicago,
- tech- or tech-enabled,
- growing like mad.
You’d be right.
But what you may not know is that each of these companies also has a Director of Talent (aka People, aka HR) who is incredibly passionate about building culture at their companies, and who understands that people are a company’s biggest competitive advantage.
At Startup Institute, we tend to agree.
Last month we convened these “People” people – Elissa Beckman from Belly, Jim Conti from SproutSocial, Katie de Voto from ContextMedia, and Vaiva Vaisnys from Rightpoint – to talk about the toughest issues that Chicago tech companies face when experiencing explosive growth. A few of these companies have plans to grow their teams between 50-100%; two of these companies have relocated, or are relocating to spaces over 3x the size of their last locations.
None of these professionals had been in a room together, and most had never met one another. That’s not surprising, given their separate industries within tech – loyalty & rewards, social media, customized content platforms, design & development, education.
But as we began to come up with a common definition of culture, and brainstorm our goals and challenges, we realized we have much more in common than you’d imagine. We identified four areas where we’d like to delve deeper, and over the next few months, we’ll meet as a group to discuss:
- Everyone Owns Culture: How do you get everyone in the company to “own” culture?
- Culture in New Geographies: How do we create continuity of culture across new geographies and offices?
- Growth and Professional Development: How do we develop real career pathways for employees?
- Culture & High-Growth Settings: How do we help people feel comfortable with culture evolution in a high-growth setting?
These are the topics we surfaced, and this week, we’re meeting again to dig into the first.
As you think about culture at your company – what are the biggest challenges or areas you’d like to improve and address? Let us know by commenting below!
