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Startup Founder Lessons: Jason Fried On Company Culture

  • Thomas Oppong
  • Apr 14, 2011
  • 2 minute read

Jason Fried is the co-founder and president of 37signals , a Chicago-based company that builds web-based productivity tools. Fried is the co-author, with David Heinemeier Hansson, of the book “Rework”, about new ways to conceptualize working and creating. 37signals’ simple but powerful collaboration tools include Basecamp, Highrise, Backpack, Campfire, Ta-da List, and Writeboard.

Jason’s thoughts and lessons on company culture. You could sum up Jason Fried’s philosophy as “less is more.”

# You don’t create a culture. Culture happens. It’s the by-product of consistent behavior.
# We always try to hire people who yearn to be master craftspeople, that is, designers who want to be great designers, not managers of designers
# 37signals has always been a flat organization. In fact, flatness is one of our core values.
# Real cultures are built over time. They’re the result of action, reaction, and truth. They are nuanced, beautiful, and authentic. Real culture is patina.
# People go to work and they’re basically trading in their work day for work moments
# Instead of rewarding high performers with managerial responsibilities—which often drives people further away from the job they are actually good at—we reward with responsibilities closer to the work.
# Cancel your meetings. Things will still get done!
# Replace active communication, like conversation, with passive forms such as email, IM and collaboration tools.
# Nearly everyone at 37signals touches our products at one point or another.
# Groups that manage themselves are often better off than groups that are managed by a single person.
# What we learned is that adding a dedicated manager and creating a hierarchy is not the only way to create structure. Instead, we decided to let the team be entirely self-managed.
# I don’t believe in the 40-hour workweek, so we cut all that BS about being somewhere for a certain number of hours. I have no idea how many hours my employees work — I just know they get the work done.
# “Rework” is our recipe for doing business.
# We rarely have meetings. I hate them. They’re a huge waste of time, and they’re costly. It’s not one hour; it’s 10, because you pulled 10 people away from their real work.
# Moving ambitious people upward tends to lock down other capable people on the team.

Thomas Oppong

Founder at Alltopstartups and author of Working in The Gig Economy. His work has been featured at Forbes, Business Insider, Entrepreneur, and Inc. Magazine.

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