Ask HN: How do I inspire my fellow employees and change company culture? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: How do I inspire my fellow employees and change company culture?

7 pointsonetimecharlie12 comments

I work for a small (~20 employees) start-up and our main product is a CRM. Our CRM is functional but very poorly designed. The overall sentiment is as long as it works that's good enough. We aren't in the Valley, Boulder or NYC but a smaller city in the Midwest. Your typical design driven, disrupting, build for the future and change the landscape start-up mentality is definitely not present. We have the potential to have an excellent product, we have customers, we have had investors interested in us and we have had international businesses really interested in our product but my fellow employees have no drive, no desire for excellence and have no problem with throwing .asp code at the screen and seeing what sticks. Our CEO is extremely knowledgeable about the industry but he isn't a designer or a software engineer, yet every feature comes from him. Up until about two months ago, every design decision came from or went through him.

I believe our start-up has a lot of potential to create something amazing but from what I have seen, the employees don't have the drive do it. I want that to change. I believe it actually must change for our company to continue. How do I change this? Can one or two people actively change and influence a company culture? In the words of Aaron Levie, "Take the stodgiest, oldest, slowest moving industry you can find. And build amazing software for it." I believe we have the found that industry but we aren't building amazing software for it. I want to inspire, influence and excite people but I don't know how.

Thanks for any advice, book recommendations or general comments.

For people to be inspired, they need a vision. You want to give them a vision of a better:

1. Product 2. Process ('design-driven') 3. Mindset ('disrupting, build-for-the-future')

You need to start with #1 as it is the easiest. People won't be inspired unless they can see something.

(A) Can you completely redesign the product and prototype it? (B) If so, could you get your coworkers excited? The CEO?

If your answer to (A) is no, or to (B) is "neither", you should give up now.

If you can answer yes to (A) and can target one of the constituencies in (B), craft your strategy accordingly.

Inspiration is overrated.

Demonstrate value, instead.

You don't need anyone's permission to go do customer development. Take a few days off. Talk to your current customers. Shadow them in their workday. Talk to prospective customers. Shadow them in their workday. Find something on your current roadmap that isn't quite right based on what you learned.

Then, give a short talk about it to the CEO. Hey, this great idea of yours, I talked with some customers about it and I think it's a little off and we'll have to rework it if we roll it out as-is, OR we can do it this way up front and save a bunch of time later.

If they say sure, great. Do it again for a feature that's even more off-kilter. Continue until you're correcting large portions of the roadmap.

If they say no, stand by your idea. Ask to build your version and A/B test it with 50% of your customer base. Instrument both versions heavily so you can see usage. Conduct follow-up interviews. See which one is really better.

Now, it's possible you won't find much to fix, if your CEO really is "extremely knowledgable." You may already be hitting the 80% sweet spot, all the low-hanging fruit. Further disruption may be a long, hard slog for only 20% more value and your CEO may already recognize that.

But you won't know that for sure until you do the research yourself.

This is a great comment and I appreciate your view on the subject. It might be a little difficult to shadow prospective customers but actually getting out and opening up dialogue with individuals in the industry we are targeting is a great idea.

An employee has little chance of changing company culture when their attitude is that all their peers are doing it wrong. They have no chance. when it's that plus their boss is doing it wrong, too.

I'll add that the beliefs expressed sound more like the voice of theory than of experience. If the company is profitable, why should the owner invite outside investors to share the pie? Collecting money across international borders is historically fraught with difficulty for small companies, and even large corporations segment international markets. Finally, technical debt is no worse than borrowing from investors - it creates leverage at the price of repayment.

My advice is to look, listen and learn. Your boss and coworkers are as smart and rational as anyone else. Figure out why their behaviors make sense from a business standpoint.

Thanks for the comment and the suggestions. I was exaggerating, not all of the employees lack a drive and desire to build a great product but the majority of the developer do. When the lead developer tells me he doesn't care how anything looks as long as it works, when another developer tells me he wants an image for a button instead of figuring out how to create the button in .asp (literally a 45 second Google search) and another developer tells me he can't modify the look/layout of html tables because they are using specific .net UI controls, my faith in our product is shaken and I do in fact believe they are "doing it wrong".

I'm not quite sure what you are talking about regarding investing. As far as I know, we haven't taken any outside invested but we have had interest. I am more than happy to leave that up to the directors and CEO :).

More mud is consistent with the big ball of mud design pattern and the big ball of mud is a time tested architecture.

I have worked in a similar environment. First, question your assumption that your coworkers have no drive or desire for excellence. You may find a few (or many) coworkers that agree with you and are willing to join your movement to varying degrees.

Secondly, understand that you are in a long bet scenario. Your goals may not be achieved until several years after you leave. You may need to anchor conversations towards extremes to make your recommendations seem more reasonable. This will feel unrewarding. Having a partner or two in mindset drastically helps your outlook and staves off fatigue.

Company culture can definitely be changed, either by a handful of motivated team mates or by one effective leader. For an example of the latter approach, read this book: "American Icon: Alan Mulally and the Fight to Save Ford Motor Company" by Bryce G. Hoffman.

You can't, unfortunately, unless your CEO trusts you a LOT and you talk to him about this. (Be ready to quit your job before you do this though.)

Culture comes from the top down.

It is possible that your CEO realizes this and would welcome a conversation about the topic.

Rework and other books from 37signals team might be influential. Also you must be continuously involved in an open dialogue with the CEO or whoever takes decision on the direction you are heading. If they are strictly against the change, time to escape, then.

I have heard a lot of great things about Rework but haven't read it yet. I'll definitely look into it, thanks.

Why bother? If the CEO is a lame duck, just move on.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com