Yesterday I shared my thoughts on how a focus on culture is propelling Atlanta start-ups to success. Today, someone asked me how to build and reinforce a great culture. Here are a few things I’ve seen work:

• Ask for examples regularly – It’s one thing to know and be able to repeat your core values. It’s another thing to live them. During reviews (quarterly, monthly, etc.), ask team members for examples of how they’ve exemplified the company’s core values. Knowing this will be asked will prompt people to think about ways to live these values.
• Celebrate – When someone does something outstanding that aligns with your core values, recognize them and make sure the whole team hears about it.
• Publicize your values – Post them on the wall. Write them on employee key cards. Whatever it takes for people to see them regularly. It’s an effective reminder.
• Office Vibe – This is a great tool to gauge the health of your culture. You can send weekly pulse surveys to your team and receive anonymous feedback. And the team knows they have an outlet for communicating any concerns that could affect culture.
• Best places to work – Building a great culture takes time and energy. Once you’ve done it, publicize it. Many cities publish an annual list of best places to work. You have to enter to be considered, and they’ll rank you based on your team’s feedback. If you’re recognized as a top place to work, people will notice and want to come work for you.  

There are tons of other things you can do to create and maintain a great culture. This is just a quick list of things that can help.

I had a great conversation with a good friend today. We talked about traits we’ve noticed in successful entrepreneurs. He shared some insights from his time in entertainment, while mine were from my time and relationships in tech. Interestingly, they overlapped.

• Learners – Successful people are learners. They’re aware of their gaps and actively seeking to fill them. Sometimes that involves taking on a role in someone else’s organization to set themselves up for future success . . . and perhaps more future success via their own vehicle. They set their ego aside to gain the knowledge they need for the future.
• Partnership – They recognize that they can’t do it alone and actively seek to partner with others who can help them succeed. Both bringing the right people inside their organization and partnering with the right outside people can work.
• Accountability – Successful people want to be held accountable and want their teams to be held accountable. They create cultures and put processes in place that reinforce this.

I always enjoy catching up with people in other industries and picking their brains. Today was no different. It reinforced that there are clear patterns and habits that contribute to success!

Decision-making is one of the main responsibilities of leaders (all leaders, not just entrepreneurs). When you lead a team, others look to you for guidance. Making decisions that affect only you is one thing. Knowing that you’re affecting other people’s lives is quite another—and it makes decision-making more difficult.

I’ve had the good fortune to spend time with great entrepreneurs, and I’m always curious about how they approach decision-making. From what I’ve seen, everyone’s style is different and there’s no wrong way to go about it. However, I’ve noticed one pattern: they’re not afraid to change their mind. I didn’t know what to make of this at first. Was it indecisiveness? Lack of focus? Eventually, I figured it out: none of the above. They were learning. They allowed their thinking to evolve based on new information. They were unafraid to admit they’d been wrong and change their mind.

Some people struggle with making decisions that affect other people. And rightly so. There have been times I’ve worried about making the wrong decision, and I still struggle with it from time to time. Over the years, though, making decisions has become easier. I remind myself that they usually aren’t set in stone, and it’s OK for me to change my mind. It’s even OK to admit that I was wrong!

The next time you have to make a decision that affects others, make the best decision you can with the information available to you. That’s all anyone can expect of you. And remember: it’s OK to change your mind as you learn.

When people say they want to start a company, I’m not sure they realize what they’re signing up for. Crazy hours and limited resources, yes. Less obvious but more important, perhaps, is the responsibility to lead. Your team will believe in you and your vision. They’ll be the ones who execute and turn your vision into reality. Many will walk through walls to make that happen. They do it because they have faith in their leader. They trust their leader.

As CCAW grew, so did this responsibility. In the early days, my decisions affected me and maybe a contractor. Later, they affected an entire team and the families they provided for. At times it was stressful, to say the least. But this responsibility forced me to think beyond myself so I could do right by my team and lead them in the right direction.

I’m a huge proponent of people starting companies. Entrepreneurship is a big part of how we innovate as a society. But entrepreneurial success isn’t an exercise of individual contribution. It takes a team. Aspiring founders should know that they’re taking on the serious responsibility of leading others. They’ll have an outsize impact on the lives of their team and their team’s families. It’s a responsibility that should never be taken lightly.

In the early days of a startup, the founders are the glue. The vision for the company is in their head. They understand better than anyone how all the pieces fit together. With minimal resources, they’re usually involved in all aspects of the business because the team is so small, junior, or part-time (e.g., composed of contractors or interns). Founders are holding it all together and driving it forward. Founders are the duct tape and the bubble gum. If they aren’t around, things go sideways or screech to a halt. Fear becomes ingrained in their head: if they don’t do it, it won’t get done or it won’t get done right.

This is normal and can be beneficial in the early days. It can be the key to finding product–market fit. Being involved in everything allows the founder to get feedback directly from customers and adjust the entire business quickly. They can continually do this until product–market fit is achieved. Achieving product–market fit before the company runs out of runway is many times harder if the founder isn’t around.

Once product–market fit is achieved, though, this quickly starts to work against the company. Once you’ve fine-tuned your solution and your customers see its value and readily pay for it, it’s time to scale. As you scale, or try to, everything gets bigger. The team, number of customers, and initiatives all grow. With this complexity, the small startup that once relied on its founders is now it’s own living thing. It becomes impossible for the founders to have their hands in everything. There’s too much going on for it to all flow through founders. There aren’t enough hours in the day. If founders insist on continuing to be the glue, they become a bottleneck. Decision-making and growth slow drastically. Team members may become frustrated and leave.

Lots of founders don’t realize their insistence on being the glue is thwarting growth. It happened to me at CCAW and to many other founders I know. Once a founder figures this out, they should adjust quickly. I did this at CCAW, putting my trust in direct reports to make the right decisions to achieve our metrics. I was relieved. It was hard to not know everything, but I soon realized that it freed me up to think more strategically and see the business through a different lens. I was no longer in the weeds. I wasn’t even worried about the trees. I was looking at the forest!

If you’re a new (or newish) founder, you should understand that being the glue for your company is important. But when the company has entered its next phase, you need to put the right people, systems, and processes in place to allow the company to grow. It’s OK if you don’t know everything, and you’re not involved in everything. It’s means you’ve done a good job and your baby is becoming an adult!

I shared my thoughts on people’s bandwidth the other day. Today, I want to elaborate on this a bit. I neglected to mention another tactic that helps founders get more done: delegating. It’s something I struggled with early on. Lots of other first-time founders do too.

Early founders often think they’re the only ones who can do something right. It’s the “if I don’t do it, it won’t get done right” mentality. The opposite is often true. Early founders are generalists: to get the company off the ground, they have to know how to do everything. They’re usually just okay at most things—meaning someone else can do them better. Most don’t recognize this, though, and are reluctant to give something up. They won’t let go until they’re forced to.

As I encountered new challenges, I rose to the occasion. I grew. And I learned to delegate. I thought through the best uses of my time and what others could handle. If a task wasn’t a good use of my time and someone else could do it, I’d train them and turn it over to them. This usually meant accepting that they were going to make mistakes at first and that they probably wouldn’t do it exactly the way I did it. This was hard at first, but I got over it. In the long run, it empowered our team and allowed me to focus on the things that mattered most. It increased my bandwidth—and the company’s, too.

If you want to be an entrepreneur (not a solopreneur), delegation is important. The quicker you embrace it, the quicker you allow yourself, your team, and your company to grow!

One of the things I had trouble with for a long time was making a personnel change when someone wasn’t a good fit for their role. Once I hired someone, I’d invest time getting them up to speed and getting to know them as a person. When goals weren’t being met or performance wasn’t up to par, I struggled with what to do. The data and other facts were telling me one thing and my personal connection with the person was telling me something else. In most instances, the personal connection prevailed—often to the detriment of the team member.

Looking back, I was prolonging the inevitable. Most of these team members were great, smart people; they just weren’t good fits for the roles they were in. The more we tried to pound a square peg into a round hole, the more frustration swelled on both sides. When I recognized this and made a change, things started to go better for them and the business. Sure, there was short-term discomfort, but they transitioned to a position they were better suited to (with CCAW or another company).

I see now that my emotions have sometimes hindered me from making tough decisions. Subtracting feelings from the process is difficult. It requires taking a situation at face value, deliberately ignoring what you’re feeling, and reaching the appropriate decision. That’s no easy task, especially when the decision affects others and isn’t popular.

This is something I’ll probably never master, but I can aim to get better at it. I do a better job now of identifying when it’s happening—the first step. When I think it is, I get input from credible people (sometimes writing down my decision-making process and sharing it) before making a decision.

As I was talking with a friend about mental toughness, he mentioned “The Last Dance” documentary about Michael Jordan a few times. I hadn’t watched it, and my interest was piqued even though I usually read in my downtime. (Side note: I share a birthday with MJ, so I’ve been a fan since childhood.) Today I watched some of the documentary. I was impressed. As can be expected when someone is striving for greatness, he had many behind-the-scenes struggles that most people never saw.

Jordan was the best player in the NBA in the late ’80s and early ’90s. NBA Scoring Champion, Defensive Player of the Year, All-Star . . . he won pretty much every individual accolade. Yet his team had yet to make it to the NBA finals. The strategy was to get MJ the ball and he’d make something happen. It worked, but it wasn’t enough to win a title.

The Bulls changed coaches and the strategy started to change. The legendary Phil Jackson wanted to play a triangle offense, but Jordan wasn’t a fan of it. He was used to having the ball, and Jackson’s offense would take it away from him. The triangle offense involved moving the ball around to everyone in a strategic manner, giving everyone a variety of scoring opportunities. Jordan reluctantly embraced it and they made it to the NBA Finals the next year, 1991. In game five, instead of forcing shots, MJ repeatedly passed to his wide-open teammate, John Paxson. Paxson rose to the occasion each time and lifted the Bulls to a victory and their first NBA championship. This game was pivotal in many ways. Most importantly, Jordan finally learned to appreciate team ball.

After the title win, Jordan focused on becoming a better leader. He was determined to win another title. He realized the Bulls could be great with team ball—and they could be elite if they all consistently played at a high level and with a high level of confidence. Jordan focused on making his teammates better. He led by example, giving 100% in every practice and demanding the same from his team.

The Bulls went on to win six NBA championships in three-peats in ’91–’93 and ’96–’98. Many still consider Jordan the best player of all time.

Jordan was an incredible player for many years. But in my opinion, when he started focusing on leading by example and making his teammates better, that’s when he began to achieve greatness.

Teamwork is dream work!

Lately I’ve been looking for ways to have more efficient meetings. Especially with new entrepreneurs. I’m spending half our time trying to understand what problem they’re solving and how their product or service solves it.

At CCAW, I held weekly one-on-one meetings with direct reports. My days were full, so I kept them to a strict 30 minutes. I spent most of that time peeling back layers and asking questions that would get the other person to reflect on what they wanted to talk about. That meant that the meeting was almost over before I understood what we should be talking about. In the end, the meetings were of little value.

Over time, I started using software to help. The day before each meeting, the software prompted my direct reports to answer these questions:

1. What have you accomplished since the last time we met?
2. What roadblocks have you encountered since we last met?
3. What do you plan to accomplish before our next meeting?
4. What are you most worried about today?

If they didn’t answer them, we wouldn’t meet.

This was powerful. Their preparation made our meetings more effective. They could see their previous responses, including what they’d committed to being responsible for. Formulating their answers required reflection and planning and instilled accountability. All of this made our meetings richer.

My own preparation was equally as helpful. I reviewed the answers beforehand. I compared actual accomplishments to planned accomplishments and made a point of discussing gaps. I set expectations and helped my people prioritize. I learned about challenges early and was usually able to address them before they turned into bigger issues. I went into each meeting ready to discuss the things that mattered most to that person and to CCAW’s objectives. The tone of my meetings changed, and people looked forward to them.

Consider preparing for your meetings more effectively and asking or requiring (depending on the context) the other person to do so too. Your meetings will be more productive and helpful.

I once listened to a founding executive of a publicly traded Atlanta company speak. Bob helped scale the company from a five-man team to an IPO with thousands of employees. He was sharp and reminded me of a startup founder. He always believed the impossible was possible. When asked what the secret to his company’s success was, Bob said his team didn’t blindly trust anybody or anything. Their motto: “prove it.”

As it scaled to an enterprise-size organization, his company was pitched tons of products and services. Often, when he asked why ABC product or XYZ service was the best, the answer was, “All the big companies are using it.” This never made any sense to him. His team learned to give that rationale zero weight. They tested everything to find out for themselves if it was the best. Often, they found that big companies were not using the best—far from it. They’d find competitors with superior offerings. And knowing the shortcomings of other companies gave them insights on how to differentiate themselves to customers.

This approach ultimately produced their competitive edge. Bob and his team did the tedious grunt work of vetting everything that underpinned their technology. Their competitors had chosen the lazy way, piggybacking on big companies’ decisions. Over time, using the best of the best made Bob’s company’s platform lightning fast. Once customers discovered how fast it was, the company developed a cult following.

My big takeaway from his story was to trust but verify. You can’t lean on someone else all the time. You have to dig in and put in the time yourself.