The Cutshort Culture Guide 2022 (first cut)

A sneak peek of what makes us tick and how we get stuff done at Cutshort

At Cutshort, we believe in this.

Build a capable team and set them off on a grand mission. Everything else will fall in place.

And a company’s culture plays a key part in doing this. Of course, this is no secret. Companies know this and try to “create a culture that sounds cool”.

The problem with trying to “manufacture a culture” is that it is not going to work. Culture isn’t a set of keywords or fancy values painted on the company walls — it’s actually a living, breathing experience of everyone that works at, interacts, or comes across the organization.

Peter Thiel put it best in his book Zero to One when he said:

Company culture” doesn’t exist apart from the company itself: no company has a culture; every company is a culture. A startup is a team of people on a mission, and a good culture is just what that looks like on the inside.

How we think about culture at Cutshort

At Cutshort, we don’t pretend that we have it all figured out. Like everyone else, we are a work in progress but what separates us from most other organizations is that

• We don’t try to please everyone. Instead, we discuss and arrive at core values and attributes that all of us strive for.
• We don’t believe in “top down” culture where so called “management” decides the values and everyone else toes the line. The culture at the company has been and will continue to be shaped by everyone who makes Cutshort work — our employees, clients, and our advisors who work day in and day out to keep us growing.

Making everyone understand what we value as a team

If not written down, everyone may have a different understanding of what culture means.

So, we decided to do something radical. Yet again. After deciding to not negotiate salaries in the spirit of fairness and transparency, we are now making our culture deck public. This is the deck that we recently used in our company meeting. It is a living document that’s as much work in progress as the organization. It’s by no means complete or exhaustive but it definitely is real and honest.

The idea behind making this public is that any partner or candidate that considers working with us has a clear idea of not just our goals but where we come from. Not just our ambitions but how we work to achieve them. Not just our decisions but how they come into being. Not just the perks but also our working styles and how we prioritize our decisions.

For instance, in our current phase of explosive growth, we prefer growth over cost savings — instead of chasing a $1500 cost saving, we’d rather have our team $1000 of new revenue. We are hardwired to create value, improve the experience of our clients and candidates and at the same time, be 1% better than we were yesterday.

So here it is, the first cut of our new Cutshort culture deck:

P.S. If the slides are not visible above, you can view them here: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1T8KqUfnql7ISto-1_ZvR5YpxCL6TRflL4xYkTtBdNJc/edit?usp=sharing

We request you to go through it patiently and be kind enough to help us become even better. Do write to us with your thoughts. Every idea is welcome as long as it is constructive and if you are leading a cultural revamp at your own organization/team, we would love to exchange notes and learn from your experience.

This post wast first published on our blog: https://cutshort.io/blog/about-us/the-cutshort-culture-guide