What

The company culture is about how we behave when no one is watching.

What behavior do we prioritize, and why? Culture has to be nurtured and might be the single most important aspect of the success of a company after the people that work in it long term. It’s how we scale. We need to be carefully thinking about it.

When in doubt, you can refer to our Values & behaviors as a guideline on how to move forward.

How would you describe the culture?

‣

Examples of living them

(Living MUI’s culture)

Decision making

Idea meritocracy

Success is a factor of two things according to Ray Dalio, which we optimize for:

1. The ability to know what are the best decisions. To reach this, we need:
   1. people to put their honest thoughts out there (”Focus on better options”). It’s why we have ‣. A lot of people have problems doing this. We need others to welcome hearing about opposite perspectives. We also need individuals that can successfully distance themselves from their ideas, this takes maturity. In the best case, we need people to gain a deep sense of joy when others help them realize that their own idea was wrong. There are noBad ideas, only options.
   2. people to have quality back and forth on opposite perspectives. This requires the same as above, somebody with a strong ego attachment to an idea would never work. However, it also requires a safe work environment, a place where it’s the ideas that are challenged, not the person behind them. It’s also a place where we express how we feel rather than giving judgment values. What works really well is to act as a devil's advocate for our own ideas.
   3. have fairways to get past disagreements. At this point, most people get stuck. Either org goes with the autocratic decision-maker which doesn't work because it leads to arrogant leaders. How can you know you are right? Or org goes with the democratic decision-maker, but this doesn't work either because all people don't have the same merit (can be by large amounts).
2. The courage to take these decisions. Courage: means being willing to go through the pain of handling its consequences.

1.c. Getting past disagreements

There are a few methods to get past disagreements:

• Merit based. Bill Campbell getting the knowledge experts to make the decision. Then have everyone rally behind it.
• Talking through it, Steve Jobs: Get everyone in a room, and figure out some sort of a majority (not a consensus). Believe that “Disagree and commit” doesn't truly work, soon or later, that misalignment will merge. Talking through it allows for a strong implementation.
• Disagree and commit, Jeff Bezos: Only works if everyone on the team moves in the same direction, you can’t be pulling in different directions. Saves a lot of time.
• Escalation. Move the decision to the N+1.