A sneak peek of what makes us tick and how we get stuff done at Cutshort
Build a capable team and enable them to work together on your mission. Everything else will fall in place.
-Jack Welch.
Actually, no, it’s Nikunj, our founder who says this. 🙂
And culture is what enables people to make their maximum impact. Of course, this is no secret. Companies know this and try to “create a culture that sounds cool”.
The problem with trying to manufacture a culture in retrospect is that it’s likely to be a little more than a rebranding exercise and isn’t going to change things by a whole lot. Culture isn’t a set of keywords or fancy values painted on the company walls – it’s actually a living, breathing experience of everyone that works at, interacts, or comes across the organization.
Peter Thiel put it best in his book Zero to One when he said:
Company culture” doesn’t exist apart from the company itself: no company has a culture; every company is a culture. A startup is a team of people on a mission, and a good culture is just what that looks like on the inside.
How we think about culture at Cutshort
At Cutshort, we don’t pretend that we have it all figured out. Like everyone else, we are a work in progress but what separates us from most other organizations is that
- We don’t try to please everyone. Instead, we discuss and arrive at core values and attributes that all of us strive for.
- We don’t believe in “top down” culture where so called “management” decides the values and everyone else toes the line. The culture at the company has been and will continue to be shaped by the entire ecosystem around us – including employees, clients, and our advisors who work day in and day out to keep us growing.
Making everyone understand our values and how we work – our culture deck is here
Cultural fitment is one of the biggest reasons behind candidate drop-off or bad hiring decisions that affect most companies. We noticed that it’s largely due to the opacity and the difference between what’s sold in interviews and marketing to the lived experience of the people at a company after they join.
So, we decided to do something radical. Yet again. After deciding to not negotiate salaries in the spirit of fairness and transparency, we are now making our culture deck public. This is a living document that’s as much work in progress as the organization. It’s by no means complete or exhaustive but it is honest.
The idea is that any partner or candidate that considers working with us has a clear idea of not just our goals but where we come from. Not just our ambitions but how we work to achieve them. Not just our decisions but how they come into being. Not just the perks but also our working styles and how we prioritize our decisions.
For instance, at Cutshort, we prefer growth over cost savings. Instead of motivating our associates to save $1500 in costs, we’d rather have them generate $1000 of new revenue. This is how our DNA functions. We are hardwired to create value, improve the experience of our clients and candidates and at the same time, be 1% better than we were yesterday.
So here it is, the Cutshort culture deck.
We request you to go through it patiently and be kind enough to help us become even better. Do write to us with your thoughts. Every idea is welcome as long as it is constructive and if you are leading a cultural revamp at your own organization/team, we would love to exchange notes and learn from your experience.
