How Culture Facilitates Startup Success

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Starting a company is difficult. Only 55% of services companies are still in business after 4 years according to Statistics Brain (Statistics Brain, 2014). I have started a small business to help parents navigate through the healthcare and education systems once they suspect their child may have a learning challenge. Organizational culture is incredibly important to the success of the company, especially in weathering difficult times. Organizational culture is defined as “beliefs, assumptions, and values that members of a group share about rules of conduct, leadership styles, administrative procedures, ritual, and customs” (Akbar Ahmadi, Salamzadeh, Daraei, & Akbari, 2012, p. 287). Assuming the company founders are disciplined managers, establishing common behaviors and rituals early in company formation to facilitate the management and governance for the large and disparate set of startup tasks to flow smoothly may help. Because starting a company will be difficult, it is important to understand how establishing culture early in a startup company will enable the intense focus required to successfully launch a new consulting services company.
The tasks to create a company start with deciding what problem needs solving for a specific market, then choosing a business structure, performing direct market research, strategy development, determining how to finance the company and most importantly, who will be on the founding team. Businesses with multiple founders are more successful; entrepreneurship is a team effort. (Aulet, 2013). Finding co-founders with similar values is a key component to company success. From there, the founders set rules of engagement frameworks between them to act as a guidepost in how to work wi...

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