Our culture was truly amazing, until it went absolutely toxic
Over the many years which I had my last business, our culture went from truly amazing to absolutely toxic. At one stage, we had a culture so fantastic that one guy literally burst into tears when I told him he could join us. We were the envy of everyone.
I have heard many a story since of founders having similar issues, catapulting from great to appalling. Those dangers come with that otherwise magical word “growth”. This is a cautionary tale.
To understand what went wrong, it is necessary to go back to those early years and look at what was so right that it reduced grown men to sobs of joy. Everyone worked hard. We paid just above the average, so it wasn’t the money. We weren’t doing exceptional, groundbreaking work. We weren’t well known other than on the local grapevine.
There were no glamorous facilities, just a semi-fitted out warehouse with a staff room full of cast-off saggy bottom sofas and the generous facilities of a kettle and a toaster. And if that wasn’t enticing enough, the landlord’s drains ran too shallow, so not only did we have flash flooding on occasions, but the smell wafting from communal facilities could often be more than a little ripe.
Not the normal stuff that dreams are made of. And yet: the culture was nothing short of exceptional. And because of that, people were desperate to work there. They had heard of this Shangri-la of the workplace, where people were actually happy all day.
So, what on earth did the culture go so wrong? Retrospect would make me highlight these six causes.
I started this company in one of the recessions and had seen suppliers and customers go to the wall in droves. To me, getting more customers and more orders meant safety and security.
To the people who worked for me, growth meant change. As they already had a Shangri-La, jobs with above average pay where they worked with great people and had fun, they had no desire to change it — and why would they? But that put us on completely different pages.
