Company cultures get formed in the first 9-18 months of their existence. They are very hard to change and morph in most cases 5-10 years later. There are two major dimensions of cultures that I’ve seen :

• Dhandha (a Hindi word meaning Business/Money) vs Experience (Product) company.
• Professional vs Lala (Hindi word used in the context of a single proprietor).

In reality, your company on both dimensions won't be discrete but will be a continuum. That said, I’m using this for illustrative purposes to make a point.

Let us start with the first dimension- Dhanda vs. Experience. When someone in a leadership position in your company gets up in the morning, what’s the first thing they are thinking about?

• If it’s transactions from y'day, the margin, or last week's revenue, etc. and how to make more of it, you are likely a Dhandha company. As Andy Grove says you become what you measure. If you are measuring how much money, transactions, GPM you earn per day, per month or per quarter and everything is calibrated to that, then you are likely a Dhandha company.  It is a good thing, even more so in 2016, but the culture in this company is driven by Sales and revenue numbers.  

  Revenue hides all evil.
  - Eric Schmidt (Chairman, Google)

Net: This is a company which is singularly motivated primarily by the financial opportunity. In a company like this, you can get away with "proverbial" murder so long as you are delivering your numbers.

• If it is an experience you are delivering (product or service) and want to excel at it and keep getting better, then you are an Experience company. If you are willing to do things that makes the product better, even at the possible short term detriment of making money, then you are a product company. In such a company, when a person wakes up, they are obsessing about the details of the product/customer experience. They are probably looking at metrics like selection, price, quality, response time, customer turnaround times, NPS, etc. and trusting that taking care of the inputs will take care of the output (revenue).
  
  Net: This is a company whose primary motivation is to serve a great product or service first and use that as a means to the end to making money.

Don’t get me wrong, every company has to have a goal to do business and make money. And also, every Dhanda company has to provide a product or service that customers are willing to pay for.

What is the mindset in your company: 
Experience first or Dhanda first? 

Now, let’s take the other dimension. This one is a tad bit simpler - are you a Lala Company or a Professional Company.

Lala Company - does the company revolve around a couple of people and does work get done primarily through relationships with those people and by extension coteries of people that are trusted ? Can decisions be arbitrarily overturned by these people? Do commitments get honored based on "who" has requested it or who is copied on the email?

If the answer to any of these is yes, then you are likely a Lala company.

Lala companies are typically led by a strong founder/founding team whose vision is being brought to life by the employees of the company. Decision making happens by what the super “boss(es)” feel is right. Avinash Kaushik calls it the HIPPO (Highest Paid Person’s opinion) culture.

They are probably right many a time but not always. If they are wrong, nobody better question them. Typically, these companies will have concentric circles of trust around the core team and you have to use your influence to get to the “inner” circle.

How do you find out? Ask employee #47 what it takes to get work done in your company!

Professional Company - these companies don’t revolve around individual Kings or Queens but around core beliefs and guiding principles. It is not only okay to disagree with the founders or even the CEO but in fact creative dissent is encouraged. Decisions are made not through influence and relationships but more based on data, merit and experience. These companies while still being founder led are much more resilient to changes in market and people dynamics since they are run on systems and processes, not on whim. 

As Drucker said, culture beats strategy. Culture starts with the founding team. It gets defined by HOW you live it and not fancy words. How decisions get made. Culture gets amplified by the first 10 hires. Culture can be determined by new Employee one month after they join the company - what do they feel? How do decisions get made? Who makes decisions? How do people get recognised ?

Naveen Tewari, one of the stars of a highly innovative, professional company, InMobi,  gave a fabulous talk on Culture [YouTube] a few years ago. Strongly recommend you see it. 

You can pivot your product but not your culture. Tony Hsieh of Zappos says it well, not only will culture define your company culture, but it will also define your company brand. 

Define your Culture. Own it. Don't let it happen to you!

About the Author -

(Amit Somani is a Managing Partner at Prime Venture Partners, an early stage Venture Capital firm based out of Bangalore, India. Prime VP invests in category creating, early stage companies founded by rock star teams. Prior, Amit has held leadership positions at Makemytrip, Google and IBM. He is also deeply engaged with the early stage startup ecosystem in India and actively volunteers with iSpirt, TiE and NASSCOM. He tweets at @amitsomani)

This article was originally published on Linkedin