Additional Insights

While the interviews predominantly focused on entrepreneurial culture with respect to the proposed multi-dimensional model, the respondents also provided valuable data with their insights into some of the process and implication aspects of culture. This included culture's development and change over time, as well as the importance of having core organizational values. These insights provided useful context for the discussion on entrepreneurial culture by describing more generally where organizational culture came from and how it impacted the organization as whole. For example, the President of Food commented that “organizational culture is an extension of me…there are certain things that really bother me; I don’t like when people say they are going to do something and they don’t do it, and I don’t like my company being represented that way.” Here she was expressing that the organizational culture was not just some abstract aspect of the

company, but rather was seen as an extension of her identity. The core values of the organization, in this case teamwork, customer service, integrity, and respect, were her

values and played an important part in how she wanted the company to act and represent itself.

Table 17 Cohesiveness

Firm Examples

Digi “At the end of the day, everyone sits down and gives a thumbs up or thumb down [about the prospective job applicant]. Is it someone you would want to have a beer with? It’s great that he’s awesome [technically] but if you hate his guts then we don’t hire. Simple step; so important.”

Food “Once we developed the company values, it was really clear if we had what we needed and if people fit.

Because we had some really bad fits for the company and we couldn’t quite figure out why, they looked good on paper but they wouldn’t have the ethical standards or the teamwork was lacking. So our company values are our guiding principles in seeing if people fit.”

Grocery “That has been a conscious decision over the last few years, to bring people together to share ideas to understand what other parts of the business are doing.”

Asset “we are at a point now that with six people who do have some pretty deep relationships and building new ones, we have built that ‘band of brothers and sisters,’ so if we were to bring in someone totally unknown to all six of us, I think we are strong enough at the base to make sure the new person melds in, as opposed to changing the direction of the culture.”

Concrete “I would say that we’ve had times when our teamwork has been excellent and we’ve gone through things and things have been great, and we’ve gone through times where we haven’t been all that great. I think teamwork is something we are constantly trying to develop.”

InfoSec “People typically want to be part of a team; most people I find. I’m not going to say everybody because some don’t, but most people like being part of a team, they like it and those are the kind of people we hire.”

NetMedia “there is a thing about being part of a team and being likeable, not to a point of just being nice, that doesn’t necessarily get you anywhere and you have to be tough now and again when speaking your mind is important, but being able to say ‘OK, I get it, we are all very different and this is a team environment we have to learn how to work together to pursue a common goal.’”

Safety “we are small enough still that people genuinely know each other and genuinely take interest in what’s going on. I think that is definitely part of our organization today.”

Services “in all our relationships with our employees, and I will say this to even the union rep guys, who I feel are our partners…they are my employees, they are not [the union’s] employees….I will invite the union reps to be there but they are not sharing the stage with me; this is me talking to my employees about how important they are to us and what we are trying to do as an organization.”

These feelings were felt equally by the President & CEO of Grocery, who had been responsible for growing a very modest family grocery chain into the organization it was today. He recalled a growth plan proposed about eight years ago which was aggressive. In the family meeting to discuss it "one of the key things that came out was that they were afraid we were going to lose our culture, lose our family feel, lose how we look after each other, customers, etc." This became a hugely troubling issue for him, as "that was a red flag for me, when the family tells me that...I had to consciously figure out a plan that we can maintain that culture going forward." To that end, one of the roles at the company he had created was a Director of Culture and Community. This individual was a very experienced and long-term company employee, whose job it was to reinforce the company's vision, values, and purpose at the store level and in the corporate office. Similarly, the CEO of Services said “I’ve come to terms with the fact that I can’t control culture but what I can do is have a big impact on it…what I can do is demonstrate what I believe is important as values.” The core values of Services were integrity, passion, courage, and entrepreneurship, and the CEO felt that despite his role and feelings on values, that culture is “not something I impose, it’s created…I’m only one part.” These comments, and others like them from the respondents, demonstrated that organizational culture was centrally important to them as leaders but also to what they saw was at the core of their organizations. Virtually all of the respondents acknowledged that their cultures were not perfect and that there were sometimes issues (e.g., office politics, laying off people), but that they cared a great deal about culture.

In a related way, one of the additional insights expressed by the respondents was the implications of the evolving nature of culture in their organization. This was reflected in comments about how the entrepreneurs had perceived the culture as having changed over time or in how they wanted to actively effect change in their cultures. For example, at Digi in the early-2000s they had a satellite office in a different city from their

headquarters. In the middle of a major project it became clear that the satellite office was no longer functioning properly. The President recalled that “it was a nightmare…we had to pull the entire [headquarters team] to finish it off…they are looking at the code and

going ‘how did you guys let it get so bad?’” Reflecting on it, Digi’s President noted that despite the second office having nearly the same number of employees as the

headquarters, the second office team felt like the "B team" and had a combination of low management oversight and inappropriate hiring practices. The President described that “[we] had people that should never have been hired in the first place…they either lied or they misrepresented their skills and the problems with those people were just being marginalized, which was bad for the company culture.” The President sat down with members of the team afterwards for debriefing where several employees asked "how had [the people at the second office] been hired in the first place?" It had been one of the few times that question had ever been asked. As a result of this experience, Digi switched to a different and more rigorous four-phase selection process.

The President & CEO of NetMedia described a similar scenario where he bought a number of smaller companies and amalgamated them under the broader NetMedia umbrella. He described this as a “melting pot of culture” where “the culture became an unknown and then gravitated towards confusion.” The danger, he noted, was because “what can happen in culture…if you have some element of less exciting culture amongst a more exciting culture, even though it is two out of one hundred people, then those two can win out.” However, through a great deal of communication and team building effort, he felt that “a little bit of NetMedia [is] starting to come through instead of those eight companies that existed eight months ago.”

At Printer, when asked about how the culture had changed and what things she was worried about, the President expressed concern that "it's attention management and I believe it's health and energy management...people are coming to work tired, so they are almost beat before they get started." She was worried that her people were under a lot of stress and "working harder to produce the same." An increasing overload of information was also worrying her, where people felt that more information was needed to make a decision, slowing down the whole process. Given the changes in her organization as it moved towards more value-added creative work, these concerns and their impact on culture were growing.

These examples and others like them in the data indicate that even amongst an existing or perhaps growing entrepreneurial culture, issues of culture change and management remained prevalent. Culture was something that needed constantly tending to. While an "entrepreneurial culture" defined in various personal ways by the entrepreneurs was something to work towards and perhaps aspire to, it was challenging and complex work. From small, closely managed firms like Asset and Marketing to much larger and

distributed organizations like Grocery, Service, and Printer, keeping a close eye on culture was something that occupied a lot of the entrepreneur's time. Issues of culture change were very important issues to the entrepreneurs and while not the direct focus of this research, remain an important area for future exploration and development.