The first section of this book spoke mostly about companies. This second section speaks mostly about you, the company’s leader.
Entrepreneurs don’t often have an issue with assuming responsibility and spearheading new ideas. That’s what makes them entrepreneurial to begin with. But when it comes to company culture, it’s not always easy for the founder to be brutally honest with themselves—to see that whatever happens in a company is most often a reflection of themselves, much like looking into a mirror. But if you want to create the kind of culture you’ve envisioned, the mirror is exactly where these contributors say you have to begin.
When a company grows to mammoth proportions, culture is diffused more. It’s more difficult to effect change at that size (but not impossible). But your company is most likely still at the size where your own behavior carries substantial impact. Indeed, that flexibility and agility is usually one of the primary advantages smaller companies have over their market-dominating peers.
That means that the advice you’re about to read about leading a great company culture—much of it virtually free to implement—is advice that you can use and see results from immediately.
Isn’t that the exciting part about being an entrepreneur? That you can have an idea in the morning and put it into action by that afternoon? That there are worlds of possibilities? That the future is not some place you’re journeying to, but a reality that you shape with every decision?
The writers you’re about to read believe that, too.