Start Traditions That Won’t Last

My favorite startup tradition I've been exposed to is Twilio's: employee jackets are something you earn, regardless of role in the company, only after you've pushed a Twilio app into production. After you do so -- and they'll coach you on it if you're not in engineering (or I suppose if you are) -- you get recognized at the next all-hands meeting and the CEO drapes the jacket over your shoulders, in a manner similar to knighting.

(They also control distribution of jackets externally, which is one of the reasons I loved my four jackets to death and wore them so frequently that many people were under the impression that I was actually a Twilio developer evangelist.)

I like the fact that he explicitly mentions letting go of traditions. As companies grow, all kinds of things have to change, and this includes informal activities as well.

It's good advice for life too--if you are too afraid of setting up a tradition or trying something because it needs to be perfect and last through the ages (or at least your life), you won't do anything.

The perfect is the enemy of the good.

Letting go of traditions is a hard thing to manage. Employees who've been in a company a long time don't appreciate the change, especially if the traditions are seen as a "perk" for working there that's being taken away, and stopping buying something sends a signal that the company can't afford it any more.

I think most of these things happen when people get along, have fun, and just live life. Traditions in a company like this usually just happen naturally.

Side note: This is nice but it surprises me that an article like this makes the front page.

At the start of our morning team standups, we have a song playing and anyone can add song to the queue (and also re-arrange to put their selection first, if they wish). 80s Thursdays and Metal Mondays have emerged organically. Then there's the unique music like Tuvan throat singing [1] that gets included.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-qn27GOAkwo

At Analytical Flavor Systems[0], we have a ridiculous number of traditions... and as Founder/CEO, I have nearly no control over them!

A select subset of our traditions include:

- Daily: 24 hour goals (what did you accomplish in the last 24 hours? what do you plan to accomplish in the next 24 hours?) every morning as a standing meeting, with pour-over coffee (usually client, sometimes... almost clients). We always discuss our analysis of the coffee and the brewer/barista (which rotates through employees) after 24 hour goals.

- Daily: Highs and Lows. What was the best part of your day? What was the worst part of your day? (confusingly, we start with the low, and end on the high note).

- Monday: we have a modified version of the Rebeca Black Friday song... about how much we like to work/twerk on Mondays... This was created, died, and revived a number of ties has the team has grown and changed.

- Friday: Beverage Exchange: We don't hold official panel tastings on Friday's, out of respect for people who have lives outside of the office (this is totally theoretical) - so we exchange and share rare and interesting products we've collected. Considering the company is building AI for the beer, coffee, spirit, and wine industries... we have access to a lot of rare products to share and taste outside of official panel tastings!

- Hazing of new employees: It takes a long time to become an able barista (coffee tastings during 24 hour goals) or capable beer/wine taster. We're very upfront about how much new employees suck until they get it - experience and trust scores are read out, deviations in perceived quality due to brewing skill is listed, and missing variables that needed to be interpolated are explained (in excruciating detail).

Clearly all of these traditions won't continue as we move from 12 to ~40 employees over the next ~18 months... but the important thing is that we've set ourselves up with a strong culture that cares about our clients and cares about the same things our clients care about (these two topics are very different!)

The best piece of advice that I have for other founders: create the seeds for traditions to form, but allow the employees to decide which to water and cultivate - allow them to decide which traditions get proginated and carried forward from generation to generation. And if possible, record past traditions in your Phabricator[2] Wiki.

[1] www.Gastrograph.com [2] http://phabricator.org/