#81 - Being intentional with team culture & incentive alignment (Tim Kendall & Sam Corcos)
Mar 4, 2022
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Sam Corcos, CEO of Levels, and Tim Kendall, an early Facebook employee and investor, discuss the importance of team culture and incentive alignment within a company. Topics include building a strong culture, reaching your audience, embracing your uniqueness, screening for adaptability, and the benefits of change and open-mindedness.
Establishing culture intentionally and building it from the conditions created internally is crucial.
The founder's leadership style and values significantly impact the overall culture of the organization.
Deep dives
The Importance of Being a Family Business
Lego attributes some of its success to being a family business, which creates virtue and goodness by being trapped and pushing them to figure things out. However, calling yourself a family when you're not can lead to problems and make it difficult to maintain high performance standards.
The Challenge of Scaling Culture
As companies scale, it becomes harder to get culture right. Founders often express that if they could go back, they would pay more attention to culture during the scaling process. Establishing culture intentionally and building it from the conditions created internally is crucial.
The Impact of Founder/CEO on Culture
The founder or CEO plays a critical role in shaping and embodying a company's culture. Their actions and behavior are often emblematic of the culture, and their influence can shift as they evolve. The founder's leadership style and values significantly impact the overall culture of the organization.
Scaling Communication and Norms
As a company grows, communication channels and norms need to adapt. When there are just a handful of team members, direct communication is easier, but as the team expands, the CEO's communication channel expands to influence hearts and minds of leaders who, in turn, influence their teams. Leaders must find creative ways to communicate norms and values at scale.
Sam Corcos, Levels CEO, sat down with Tim Kendall, one of our investors and one of the earliest employees of Facebook, to chat about the concept around culture and incentive alignment within a company and how to be intentional about it.
Levels helps you see how food affects your health, empowering you with the tools needed to achieve health goals and improve healthspan. Levels Members gain access to the Levels app and continuous glucose monitors (CGMs), providing real-time feedback on how diet and lifestyle choices impact your metabolic health.
Look for new shows every month on A Whole New Level, where we have in-depth conversations with thought leaders about metabolic health
(05:22) – Your core people build your culture
(10:08) – Find out how to reach your audience
(13:39) – Tell the story of your culture
(15:33) – Lean into your weirdness
(20:27) – Screen for cultural adaptability
(22:58) – Family can be dysfunctional
(24:42) – Be a team, not a family
(35:21) – Don’t be afraid of changes.
(36:53) – Reset your calendar
(40:28) – It’s okay to change your mind