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The problems that actually blow up in teams under twenty
Organizational culture is not about putting good sentences on the wall; it is an agreement about how decisions get made.
The fewer people you have, the more roles overlap, and where they overlap accountability blurs. The founder makes every decision until, at some point, they become the bottleneck — and from then on the team spends its time waiting for decisions.
Three things to decide first
- Decision rights: who makes the final call on what, and which areas the CEO does not decide
- Scope of information sharing: how much of revenue and runway to disclose
- Feedback style: when and in what setting problems get raised
Conflict itself is not the problem. Having no place to handle conflict is.
Process
- Check the facts. Start with what happened, not with how people feel
- Check with each person individually — before seating them together
- Recheck the criteria. If there were no rules, write them now
- Share the outcome. Make the whole organization work from the same standard
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