In other words do not leave culture on autopilot even when your entire team can comfortably fit around a single table. But what decisions do you actually need to make? “If culture feels like an amorphous concept it is easy to leave off the to-do list. It does not seem like there are tangible changes to make or ways you can move things forward as a founder. One reason for this murkiness is that there are many different takes on what culture even means,” she says.

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“There are old tropes like ping pong tables or dogs in the office. Others think of communication, camaraderie, or the amount of fun employees have at work. But at a very basic level it is how you do anything at work,” says Del Beccaro. “Jess Yuen, former Head of People at Gusto and one of Sora's most trusted advisors, distilled it into the clearest definition I have seen:

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Culture is the set of words, actions, and behaviors of a group of people.

With a definition in hand the concept becomes easier to break down. Del Beccaro has distilled this definition into a framework built around the three pillars of words, actions, and behaviors. Use each section to assess how your early company culture is coming together or to define how you and your co-founder want your future team to work together.

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A quick note before we dive in. It is always easiest to implement cultural practices from the beginning. “Change is hard at any company and cultural change can be even harder. But it is never too late and it is always worth it,” says Del Beccaro.

What if you already have dozens, hundreds, or even thousands of employees? “Use this same framework to evaluate your culture. Score your company on each question in the three pillars and make a list of improvements you can implement. Then it is time to pick your battles,” she says.

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“What would it take to create change in a given area? Creating traditions can be as simple as doing something silly in your next company-wide meeting. But getting leaders to take more PTO may take a lot more effort. Just like a product team would, evaluate the impact and difficulty of every item on your list. Tackle high impact and low difficulty items first and work your way down from there.”

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With that, let’s dive into the framework:

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“This first pillar is about communication within teams, between teams, and between individuals - essentially how we treat each other when we interact. The frequency with which we talk, the way we talk to each other, the tone we use, how we communicate good or bad news, whether we communicate certain things at all, and the channels we choose to use — those are all essential pieces of our culture,” says Del Beccaro.

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“We all hope we’re hiring kind and caring people with good communication skills. But especially as the team grows and pressure mounts, things can start to break down. Meetings balloon and become unproductive. Folks start to clam up or avoid conflict. Assessing how you currently communicate and deciding how you want to treat each other in an ideal world will help you thoughtfully navigate the inevitable challenges — instead of letting company culture slowly devolve into an unhealthy dynamic.”

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Startups have a lot of ambiguity and pressure, and different people wear that stress very differently. Be intentional about how you want folks to communicate when they’re at their best — and how you’ll handle it when they’re at their worst.

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Questions to ask yourself as you architect or evaluate:

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• How often do we have meetings and how are they designed? “At Sora, we avoid ‘update’ meetings — the kind where metrics are shared one by one and the entire meeting could have been an email. Instead we share updates ahead of meetings like All Team Meeting and we trust employees to read them. This means we can use the scheduled time for delving into those items that need discussion, or for team traditions or team building,” says Del Beccaro. “More tactically, we use Threads to collect meeting updates and keep them organized. We also have a quarterly exercise where every leader at Sora goes through their calendar and confirms that all of their meetings are actually helpful for every single participant in the meeting.”
   

• How do folks talk to each other in meetings? “One indicator: If someone were to come sit in on your company's executive team meeting, what would they observe about how the team asks questions of one another? There’s a big difference between an accusatory tone: ‘Well, why didn't the sales number go up?’ and a genuine one, where questions are asked to help the asker and others understand something. These dynamics have repercussions up and down the org chart.”
   

• How quickly do we expect someone to respond to a Slack message, an email, or anything else? How often are employees speaking to each other outside of meetings? “At Sora, we try to be available to each other but never expect someone to ‘be online’ at any time of day. Slack responses are not expected immediately. Communicating these norms clearly — and repeatedly — is important, especially in a remote work environment,” says Del Beccaro. “We do create user guides to help document preferences, but we emphasize that it's not on reports to adjust to their manager's style. It's very much a tool for managers to learn about the best ways to work with their reports, from how they like to receive feedback to what hours they like to work and how they can be reached.”
   

• How do people tend to express themselves when they're frustrated by something? “This is a really important one. Obviously, it’s not great if folks lash out when they’re upset. But it’s important to be aware of risks on the flip side as well. We had an issue early on at Sora where we were too afraid to voice frustration or disagree on certain things, so we thought we had alignment when we didn’t,” says Del Beccaro. “Working remotely can make it harder to confront someone with an opposing idea; you don’t get to walk out of the meeting room with them to make sure they didn’t feel it was personal.”
   

• Do you have a shared language to discuss difficult topics? “This one is very related to the above. How do others know when people are upset, so they know to be extra empathetic in those moments? Startups stir up a lot of feelings that are normally hard to articulate. At Sora, we’ve found language like, ‘The story I'm telling myself is X’ or ‘I got triggered by Y’ to be very helpful. Putting the onus on yourself and letting people know you're in a vulnerable state goes a long way — and also helps others get better at working with you in real time,” says Del Beccaro. (Bias interrupters are also another example.)
   

• How do you find out that something has gone wrong? Are people afraid to bring bad news to leaders? “We’ve all seen that leader who has a temper and can’t handle a setback — it has a chilling effect. But it’s not just about how leaders react. Whether or not somebody can even get time with an exec is also part of culture. Some CEOs are incredibly unapproachable. You never know what they're thinking, and you can't say your piece or give any feedback. “When there’s little hierarchy and tons of camaraderie, this is often less of an issue. But at a certain size, many leaders suddenly find they have no pulse on their organization. If you’re evaluating or trying to improve your existing culture, one of the biggest things to do first is establish a culture of listening. You need to create trust and actually ask people what's going on, getting feedback from reports at every single level.”
   

If you’re trying to get a better gauge here as a founder, lean on Del Beccaro’s tip: “Schedule 1:1s with as many individual contributors as you can — I try to schedule at least 30-40 across the company every 6 months or so. It takes time, and may not scale beyond 50 employees, but again, maintaining culture is the most important thing I can be doing. Listening to employees is the best way to try to piece together feedback and spot patterns.”