Love this diagram from Boston Consulting Group. I’ve worked at a number of companies at this point, and every companies has its strengths and weaknesses when it comes to this chart. Luckily I’ve had the chance to work at some digitally progressive companies that are willing to embrace many of the ideas on this chart.

Customer Centricity

I’ve worked at a lot of companies where there is a firewall between many employees and the customers they are trying to market to or develop for. I think it is critical that all employees of a company understand their customers, otherwise their is a fundamental shortcoming.

Experimentation

At HubSpot we did a daily standup as well as monthly science fairs. At XebiaLabs we were dedicated to experimenting with new tactics, and we had a very informal culture that allowed everyone to bring ideas to the table. In order to innovate you need to have a very informal and open culture that facilitates change.

Agility

when you speed things up, downsize teams, and hold people accountable they become more engaged and responsible. Startups are great at this; more established companies not so much. Perhaps this is why I always function a little bit better in the startup culture.

Collaboration

Not such a fan of gaming people to have to work together as suggested in the bonus structure, but I’m sure it helps glue a team together in a weird sort of way. I also don’t think firing is the right decision in 90% of situations, especially in the case of non-collaboration. Much of the time there is a reason why employees don’t collaborate. Perhaps they are overworked, perhaps they are angry about something completely unrelated to their team, or perhaps they simply don’t know how to work with their team effectively because there is a lack of structure.  Either way, consistently firing doesn’t sound like a good idea to me.

Continuous Innovation

Hack days, innovative side projects, and everything else here is great. Big supporter of innovation, and I think this ties in highly with experimentation.