David Cummings on Startups

Category: Corp Culture

  • Herb Kelleher + Richard Branson Primary Attitudes

    I just started reading Richard Branson’s new book Business Stripped Bare and am enjoying learning about his approach to business. Richard Branson exudes such a passion for creating new products and businesses, while ensuring an outstanding customer experience. In the book he mentions that he believes in Herb Kelleher’s primary attitudes espoused at Southwest Airlines. Here are those attitudes:

    1. Employees are number one. The way you treat your employees is the way they will treat your customers.
    2. Think small to grow big.
    3. Manage in the good times for the bad times.
    4. Irreverence is OK.
    5. It’s OK to be yourself.
    6. Have fun at work.
    7. Take the competition seriously, but not yourself.
    8. Think of the company as a service organization that happens to be in the airline business.
    9. Do whatever it takes.
    10. Always practice the Golden Rule, internally and externally.

    These are strong primary attitudes and I believe in them as well.

    Do you agree? What attitudes would you add?

  • Thinking About the Perfect Office

    We’re a little over nine months out from finishing our current office lease. You see, historically, we’ve always done subleases, and we plan on continuing to do so. The big difference this time is that we plan on heavily customizing our space, unless an awesome creative space comes along, which isn’t likely in the financial district of Buckhead in Atlanta.

    A sublease usually only needs to be negotiated 3-4 months before assumption of the lease. But, when building out or modifying an office, it’s usually good to add another 3-4 months for pulling permits, doing construction, etc.

    Now, if you had a clean canvas and could paint a perfect of the perfect office, what would it look like? That’s a question we’ve been debating for a few days now. Here are some of the initial ideas:

    • Open, collaborative space with no cubes or individual offices
    • Lots of conference rooms and phone booths for privacy
    • Awesome kitchen with free food
    • Bright colors and modern decorations
    • Lounge area with sofas for hanging out
    • Multi-purpose area that can host events, all hands meetings, etc
    • Balcony or patio outdoors
    • High in the sky with great views or a loft style space with tall ceilings
    • Shower and relaxation room

    What else? What should we add to the list? Do you have any good examples?

  • Breaking Bread as a Team

    For the first six years at my company we’d recognize birthdays, or a big customer win, by taking the whole office out to lunch to celebrate as a team. After a while, this became such a frequent occurrence that I decided to have catered lunches delivered to our office every Friday, 52 weeks a year. We’ve been doing it for over three years now and it is one of the best things we do. Here are a few reasons why it is so beneficial:

    • We do it on Fridays, giving everyone a chance to end the week on a good note and talk about what’s going on in their lives
    • Breaking bread with team members is a great way to get to know each other on a more personal level, leading to stronger relationships and more trust
    • We encourage team members to bring in their spouses or kids, creating a family atmosphere
    • People love free food and to debate which places are best to order from (we usually rotate between a few different places, and change up those places every quarter)

    I didn’t know how successful it would be when we started, but having “Free Food Fridays” has been great and I highly recommend doing something similar. You won’t regret it.