{"id":109115,"date":"2019-05-02T13:58:30","date_gmt":"2019-05-02T17:58:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/techvibes.com\/?p=109115"},"modified":"2019-05-02T17:59:12","modified_gmt":"2019-05-02T21:59:12","slug":"culture-by-gensler-authenticity-bridges-the-startup-to-scaleup","status":"publish","type":"magazine","link":"https:\/\/brainstation.io\/magazine\/culture-by-gensler-authenticity-bridges-the-startup-to-scaleup","title":{"rendered":"Culture by Gensler: Authenticity Bridges the Startup to Scaleup"},"content":{"rendered":"

Being a part of\u00a0a small company’s success story can be one of the most rewarding professional experiences in any career.\u00a0Founder or not, there is nothing quite like the sense of accomplishment when a company sheds the ‘startup’ label and accelerates into long-term viability. When\u00a0considering that 95 per cent of all startups fail,\u00a0it’s no wonder why everyone loves\u00a0a success story and wants to know every detail about the accomplishment; the business model, the technology stack, the model of desks they use, and even the snacks in the kitchen.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s lost in those feel-good growth moments is the dedication required to ensure\u00a0a new startup carries forward the most important cultural traits that\u00a0allowed it to become a successful company.\u00a0Be it\u00a0a tech\u00a0company, clothing store\u00a0or\u00a0coffee shop, it’s clear that roles and responsibilities can change dramatically between the startup, scaleup, and later phases.<\/p>\n

The reality is that there is\u00a0no magic formula to bridge those gaps. The closest thing might be someone like Kevin Katigbak, a senior workplace consultant with Gensler. He works with companies that are looking for a new space, whether that means moving into a larger office or redesigning an old one. Katigbak\u00a0meets with executive teams through every part of the process, from pre-design and blueprints to smashing walls down and following up with occupancy reports.<\/p>\n

Katigbak may work for a design firm, but his experience in finding new spaces for companies eager to grow and expand has made him an expert in all things scaling up. His job is to explain what a company’s current experience entails, and how to translate that experience to a new space with more square footage and more employees. Growing a company is not simply hiring more people and buying more desks. There is a nuanced approach to scale the culture required to achieve massive success.<\/p>\n

\u201cTen years ago, strategy<\/em> was not really something mentioned in an RFP,\u201d Katigbak says. \u201cWhen a client wanted a new space, workplace and architecture strategy did not show up in those requests. Only in the last 10 years did people realize it’s an integral component. As people start to understand that we\u2019re all fighting for the same talent, strategy becomes a huge component. It’s less about gut feelings and more about showing the evidence.\u201d<\/p>\n

The \u201cevidence\u201d Katigbak is referring to comes from things like Gensler\u2019s annual Workplace Study, a touchstone resource<\/a> that turns qualitative measures like workplace effectiveness and belonging into quantifiable stats that founders and designers can\u00a0lean on while building a new space for employees.<\/p>\n

\"Scale-Up\"<\/p>\n

Katigbak\u2019s role is to carefully convert those gut feelings held by eager executives into real results. He is a scaleup champion, using his skills to familiarize himself with businesses and recognize not only what the strongest\u00a0tenets of a company\u2019s culture are, but how to\u00a0scale them as they grow from 20 employees to 100 to 1,000.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen working with scaleups, it’s a bit educational up front,\u201d says Katigbak. \u201cWe want to make sure they keep an open mind. When you’re a three-person gig, that’s very different from a 10-person. And that is very different from 100-person.\u201d<\/p>\n

Katigbak is in the middle of scaling up an active client. As an example of this specific case study,\u00a0the client is\u00a0currently\u00a0hovering around 100 employees and believe they will grow to over 700 within a few years. Right now, the company has a cafeteria in its one-floor office. As they scale, should they build seven floors with a cafeteria on each floor?<\/p>\n

Amenities\u00a0like communal spaces can be invaluable to fostering a\u00a0culture of community\u2013they provide a joint space for meals, social events, workshops, and classes. Unlike a desk,\u00a0scaling the\u00a0function of communal space isn’t as\u00a0straightforward as adding more of them.\u00a0Gensler approaches this problem by getting at the client’s original\u00a0intention behind that\u00a0amenity. In this case, it was because the client\u00a0believed in the value community, so replicating the kitchen on each floor didn’t accomplish the value. For them, the answer was to build one large kitchen so that all\u00a0employees\u00a0would come together and the secondary effects are still present.<\/p>\n

\u201c<\/strong>It’s no longer solely about getting your space ready to be productive,\u201d says Katigbak. \u201cThat’s one of the first things we instill in clients, to make sure\u00a0they\u00a0understand that there is more than one objective for a space when you’re getting to a certain size.”<\/p>\n

The first thing Katigbak tells clients during the scaleup process is that they need to think about space very differently. It will always have more of an effect than they think. This is where a point of realization usually sets in. They need to let the experts do their jobs, explains Katigbak, and that often means understanding that culture is not a static part of a company.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen part of who you believe you are is being an agile company that can make anything work, the reality is, once you become large enough, there’s process and protocols that all scaling up comes with,\u201d says Katigbak. \u201cThere will be things that are going to restrict that agility. It\u2019s about reassessing what you will become and highlighting that culture.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"TextNow-KillerSpaces-Techvibes3\"
TextNow’s Waterloo office, a company in the middle of scaling up.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Friday afternoon drinks will look different for a company of 50 than one with 500 employees. It\u2019s up to Katigbak to find different ways to engage a company and bring them together\u2014”It’s talking about how your culture can be scaled in different ways,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

\u201cJust because you’re growing up in certain ways, doesn’t mean you need to change who you are.”<\/p>\n

Scaling up is growing up. During that\u00a0rapid growth, the culture a company built in the early stages will not, and cannot, be the same. That\u2019s why the search for a new office offers a great chance to shift how people think, work, and behave. In the startup phase, employees will often wear many hats in order to grow a company. The culture\u00a0at that point is usually\u00a0an organic by-product\u00a0created by the\u00a0first few individuals on the team, and it might not be ideal.\u00a0Katigbak\u00a0claimes that as scaling happens, there is a fresh shot at defining company culture through the space that the company is in.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe question is about change management,\u201d says Katigbak. \u201cIf you think this change is huge, how are we going to address it? And how should we help you and your employees adapt to this new space and what it will be like?\u201d<\/p>\n

Culture, especially in early-phase tech startups, is often defined by long working hours and perks like parties and ping pong. These are indeed manifestations of a company’s culture and can be very helpful\u00a0for a startup to engage young employees and meet important milestones. As they grow, however, the definition of culture needs to broaden: younger employees mature, families are starting, and the company needs to attract a broader range of individuals to accomplish the new goals.<\/p>\n

Deriving a\u00a0feeling of inclusivity\u00a0can be a challenge. There is\u00a0no\u00a0magic formula, but Katigbak offers a magic word.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt’s all about authenticity… and the ping pong table is just an example of what a social space could be. We have a lot of clients who say we\u2019re not the ping pong table crowd, and that could be accurate\u2014but what kind of crowd are you? I don’t think that a ping pong table needs to be everywhere, or really anywhere, but sometimes that is the most authentic example of the kind of culture you’re trying to demonstrate. The best example of that being the right choice is if people are using it. If no one is, you missed the mark.\u201d<\/p>\n

The definition of a scaling company’s culture\u00a0has to be a bit more refined. Office amenities like\u00a0a shared kitchen or ping pong tables are tools for engagement that\u00a0can influence the culture, but\u00a0not define it. Culture then becomes a confluence of shared values, each of which is\u00a0characterized by the individual company. The success of that culture\u00a0hinges on leadership’s ability to foster a collective commitment to those values through any possible means, be it the snacks in the kitchen, the types of desks they provide, or the layout of the office itself.<\/p>\n

Techvibes is a Media Partner of Gensler.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Being a part of\u00a0a small company’s success story can be one of the most rewarding professional experiences in any career.\u00a0Founder or not, there is nothing quite like the sense of accomplishment when a company sheds the ‘startup’ label and accelerates into long-term viability. When\u00a0considering that 95 per cent of all startups fail,\u00a0it’s no wonder why […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":76244,"featured_media":106142,"menu_order":0,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[376,3370,3371,1353],"magazine-region":[],"magazine-series":[],"magazine-topic":[],"class_list":["post-109115","magazine","type-magazine","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-News","tag-design","tag-gensler","tag-scale","tag-scaleup"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brainstation.io\/wp\/api\/wp\/v2\/magazine\/109115","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brainstation.io\/wp\/api\/wp\/v2\/magazine"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brainstation.io\/wp\/api\/wp\/v2\/types\/magazine"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brainstation.io\/wp\/api\/wp\/v2\/users\/76244"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/brainstation.io\/wp\/api\/wp\/v2\/magazine\/109115\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brainstation.io\/wp\/api\/wp\/v2\/media\/106142"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brainstation.io\/wp\/api\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=109115"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brainstation.io\/wp\/api\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=109115"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brainstation.io\/wp\/api\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=109115"},{"taxonomy":"magazine-region","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brainstation.io\/wp\/api\/wp\/v2\/magazine-region?post=109115"},{"taxonomy":"magazine-series","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brainstation.io\/wp\/api\/wp\/v2\/magazine-series?post=109115"},{"taxonomy":"magazine-topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brainstation.io\/wp\/api\/wp\/v2\/magazine-topic?post=109115"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}