Joanne Cleaver 2025-01-23 05:24:14
CORPORATE CULTURE IS ABOUT MORE THAN POOL TABLES AND OTHER FLASHY AMENITIES — IT’S OFTEN ABOUT DOING HARD, FOCUSED WORK TO DETERMINE WHO TO HIRE AND HOW THOSE HIRES WILL WORK TOGETHER. WE EXPLORE WHAT MAKES AN ALT-MEAT COMPANY A GREAT PLACE TO WORK AND WHY IT MATTERS.
Move fast and break things.
The infamous Silicon Valley mantra wouldn’t take alternative protein startups very far.
Moving fast, heedless of regulations and protocols, is counter to food safety and could tee up a collision course with well-established consumer preferences. And food had better be whole and safe — not broken — when it heads to customers.
But the product and process standards that put the brakes on some of the tech-adjacent dynamics for alternative protein startups also set them up to cultivate smart workplace cultures that buoy steady, consistent growth.
Culture drives collaboration, productivity and a company’s ability to deliver on its promises to investors and customers, says Christopher Bell, a workplace culture consultant, president of Creativity Partners and executive in residence at the College of Media, Communication and Information at the University of Colorado.
“Culture-driven companies are more innovative,” he says. Ideally, culture is the dynamic that converts shared purpose into action that delivers promised results, ultimately fulfilling the company’s mission.
It is one of the first gears that founders use to show investors how they’ll win the talent they need to design and build the products that fulfill their vision.
And when a company brings its product to market, its reputation — based in no small part on what consumers know about its culture — becomes part of the brand story that helps attract consumers.
Culture is not synonymous with mission, a distinction sometimes lost in a strongly values-driven industry like alternative protein. Saving the world one bite at a time is an irresistible clarion call to those with deeply held views about animal welfare and environmental protection. But culture enables founders and initial employees to put that mission into action.
CULTURE IN ACTION
Doni Allen joined The Better Meat Co. with a pragmatic perspective on how corporate mission translated to culture. She rose through the ranks at Goodwill, learning how to mesh the nonprofit’s commitment to its workers and thrift-seeking consumers with the directive to make money to keep the organization afloat.
When she learned about Better Meat, which engineers ingredients for meat analogues, she realized that its mission resonated with her deeply held values to “do things that will benefit others and the planet. I thought, if I don’t do it now, I might never have a chance to have a true impact on how a company grows, from the bottom up,” Allen says.
As employee No. 4, she was immediately faced with a dilemma common to many alternative protein startups: how to deal with potential hires who introduced themselves in terms of their commitment to the mission but not on the basis of their skills and experience.
Allen and other alt-meat managers say that enthusiasm for the mission serves as a conversation opener that must quickly be put in the context of job requirements.
Mission is a talent magnet but the magic of a good cultural fit comes with someone who shows that they’re willing to work within the constraints of a startup and who can prove that, in the past, they were energized by their values to deliver results.
“We’re looking for people who want to do something that’s bigger than who they are,” says Kristie Middleton, chief relationship officer with Rebellyous Foods. She knows a bit about merging mission with mechanics, having come to the alternative protein industry from the Humane Society.
Rebellyous initially had to find mechanical engineers with the experience and enthusiasm to mechanize the production of its poultry analogue to meet the needs of high-volume foodservice customers.
Now, as it expands its sales staff, the Rebellyous culture translates to hires who are willing to channel their commitment to the cause into the gritty, unglamorous tasks integral to trade show presentations and on-site product demonstrations, Middleton says.
Passion might get people going, but it’s attitude and aptitude that create corporate results.
The tension between mission and new employee expectations is typical for any organization with high-profile goals, says Kelsey Joseph, chief brand officer for Barvecue, which makes plant-based “comfort foods.”
“If people resonate with the mission, often they come in thinking, ‘oh my gosh, this is Disney World,’ but when you work there, you realize, ‘oh, I’m the one making the magic happen’ by doing the job,” she says.
“Ultimately, I’m interested in how potential hires expect to grow,” says Allen, of Better Meat. “There is so much innovation and new technology here, I want to know: What are your interests? What do you want to learn?”
INNOVATION + BEST PRACTICES
The alt-protein industry has a compelling hiring advantage in its mission, says Pia Voltz, founder of industry recruiting firm Tälist, based in Berlin.
“Those who seek alt-protein jobs believe in the potential for the industry to have a positive impact and that’s what motivates them to work in this field,” she says.
But while hires might come for the mission, they stay for culture, Voltz says, and that’s what investors want to see, as talent retention sustains product development and commercialization.
Founders often salute culture as important, but indicate it with superficial benefits, like free coffee, instead of doing the harder work of building a company grounded in mutual respect.
Startup consultants and academics who study new companies agree that strong corporate culture doesn’t happen by accident — and shouldn’t.
“You have to create that environment intentionally,” Bell says. “If people aren’t your primary focus from Day One, your culture will suffer and your innovation will suffer.”
The company might be starting from scratch, but employees arrive with expectations about how the company’s mission plays out in everyday life.
Idealistic new grads will take their cues from the example of seasoned managers and co-workers. And experienced hires may not even realize they hold assumptions and hopes for the company they join.
Culture needs to be both caught and taught: Caught by employees as they follow leaders’ examples, and taught through explicit training, accountability and communication from the top down, the bottom up and sideways between coworkers.
The founding management team can’t assume that culture will happen on its own, according to Bell and academic studies about startup culture. It has to be deliberately established, then consciously nurtured and evaluated.
Finally, the first generation of leaders need to be cognizant of culture as a lens for growth — as a mode of putting the company mission into action; as a mode of accountability; and as a frame for earning the trust of external business partners, investors and customers.
PAY, POWER OR PERKS?
While their missions might be irresistible, startups typically have limited budgets that cap the compensation they can offer even the most coveted, mission-critical talent. That’s when culture rides to the rescue.
Researchers at the University of Illinois have found that an “in-demand tech worker would prefer to join startup firms despite the lower pay and riskier prospects for the company’s long-term survival because they’re attracted to the startup culture and environment.”
Beyond the company mission, talent craves bragworthy, resume-building challenges, solving knotty problems and building things from scratch.
Further complicating the culture scenario, young companies sometimes confuse style with substance, according to experts at Built In, a startup community.
From the sophomoric (Friday beer blasts) to the pragmatic (gym memberships and subsidized child care), benefits are sometimes mistakenly used by company founders as “culture.”
A survey conducted by venture capital firm Sequoia found that low-deductible, broad-coverage healthcare is the most important benefit for new companies to offer. In a complementary trend, wellness programs are one of the most popular types of new benefits, with 61% of startups offering wellbeing benefits.
With only 10 employees right now, Barvecue leadership is keenly aware that they are setting precedents, says Kelsey Joseph, chief brand officer.
“Our goal is to create great-tasting food that happens to be plant-based,” she says. “But that also means better jobs for those who work for us. We strive to make it a happy place to work.”
Distribution jobs are designed to be a good “for the time being” fit for parents who want to work during the school day, she says, with potential for lateral movement later.
And Barvecue earned its certification as a B Corp to signal to potential hires and business partners that it’s aligning with the greater good through that accountability protocol.
Barvecue translates its corporate values into a 32-hour work week that enables all staff to “have sufficient time to relax, enjoy their passions and be with family and friends,” Joseph says. That’s especially important as the company expands its production and distribution staff — jobs that are integral to winning customers.
BUILT FOR DISTANCE
Academics who study corporate culture say that the key is to plant and nurture corporate culture so it evolves as the company grows.
A common pitfall is to assume that culture will be absorbed by osmosis, as first hires work alongside company founders. But as a company grows and layers of management are added, culture becomes parochial to each department or team.
It’s much easier to build culture as a deliberate gear than to try to fix it retroactively, they say.
Shelby Kesselheim is head of people at Vow, a Sydney firm in pursuit of commercialized cultured animal protein.
As Vow shifts gears from early- stage R&D to production and marketing, her mandate is to build a high-performing culture. Vow learned early on, Kesselheim says, to hire for the ‘magic mix’ of skills and cultural fit, not based on commitment to a social mission. With that lesson internalized, she is deputized to merge mission with mechanics.
“Companies that have good mission cohesion typically can achieve their goals faster,” Kesselheim says. “But we need to make sure we optimize for skills and bring in the right people. We’re objective in what we’re looking for, from a culture and skills perspective.”
The technical challenge of creating cultivated meat in volume is catnip to engineers — a dynamic the industry can turn to its advantage, Kesselheim says. “Mission alignment can mean solving complex, cool challenges,” she says of Vow’s appeal to quants. “That helps us attract people from all kinds of backgrounds, like aerospace.”
At Rebellyous, Middleton has built career pathways to show employees how their careers can grow along with the company, taking a cue from corporate best practices that the most valuable employees want to direct their own advancement.
And it’s a human resources truism that strong peer relationships are the superglue of retention. For startups infused with aspirational missions, transparency is a powerful catalyst for building trust.
That’s especially important for food products. One bad batch can ruin a startup, Middleton points out. When product quality and safety is everybody’s responsibility, everybody has a stake in fulfilling the company mission.
Kesselheim says that is all about accountability and transparency. Culture is a deliberate byproduct when company leaders apply the mission to operational decisions, and explain why.
Leaders, she says, need to “be good at explaining the ‘why.’ We talk about our goals every week, in writing, and every other week in an open Q&A. We talk about long-term strategy and how things are tracking. That helps make sure everyone is aligned with the mission,” Kesselheim says. “Employees should always know what’s most important to the business.”
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MERGING MISSION WITH MECHANICS
https://library.alt-meat.net/articles/merging-mission-with-mechanics