How Can Startups Define Their Culture?
Trends Shaping The Market in Lebanon
In today’s series, we examine the challenges facing the workplace environment within Lebanese startups.
While many definitions talk of culture as similar people coming together, it is a lot more complex than simply being alike or different. Good company culture has people that are alike in a manner that distinguishes them from the crowd but are, in themselves, individually brilliant & complete as a team. Many founders struggle to define the culture of their startups in the beginning, before later realizing – painfully – that it actually has a big impact on their business. Today we ask the question: “How can Lebanese startups define their culture? “
Mohammad Mortada ? LinkedIn Profile | Website
Startup culture management is a tricky playground for fresh entrepreneurs and it’s usually underlooked as the CEO turns his/her focus on development and meeting deadlines. A loose culture would increase morale but may not be effective in terms of advancing the company. It should be clearly written and communicated from the beginning while keeping open bottom-up communication channels to encourage honest feedback. One thing I learned from reading “The 7 habits of highly effective people” is championing collaboration above all; even incentives can be tricky because they turn the performance into a competition.
Charbel Ghanime ? Linkedin Profile
Internally, start ups need to shift away from rigid corporate structures today more than ever. With the economic situation comes a shortage of qualified individuals. If you can’t pay amazing salaries in the current economic landscape, at least create a culture that promotes individuality, encourages creativity, and creates a sense of family within the company. While you might think money is the most important resource for any start up, it is actually not. The most important resource that start ups need to foster and maintain is the human resource. By creating an environment where employees can feel like partners, decision makers, and valued members, we become less likely to lose these qualified and talented individuals to companies in the GCC who have been benefiting from Lebanese minds for decades now
Rony El Hashem ? Linkedin Profile
Define a clear mission and company goals.
Kamal Chelhot ? Linkedin Profile
The main challenge is funding. As many clients would want to have credit for their activity, start-ups have to be secure in terms of funding to have a margin of risk available.
Nasri Messarra ? Linkedin Profile
Bad infrastructure, incompetence of the competition and price-based competition, lack of awareness, lack of awareness in new technologies and lack of strategic thinking of customers
Abdul Rahman Alieh ? Linkedin Profile
One of the most important factors that define any startup’s culture is the synergy of its team- a group of individuals with similar capabilities and identical focus. What I learned is that entrepreneurs should not hire people and persuade them to believe in their dream; Entrepreneurs need to hire people who share their dream. When this happens, they win, their clients win and the team wins- because happy, motivated people do great work.
Stay tuned as we discover in the next series the one challenge Lebanese startups are facing everyday? as narrated by our group of digital marketing experts. See you next week!
