The Cultureship Blog

Yesterday evening I was trying to help one of a group of incredibly capable  postgraduates from Manchester Business School who have been working with us to refine his research questions for the next assignment in his master’s programme.

Ab is from Kazakhstan. With his formidable intellect, drive and ambition, you suspect that one of his future visits back to the UK might be to acquire one of our leading football clubs.

For the time being, however, he is attempting to learn all he can about venture capital and private equity.

Kazakhstan is one of those emerging places where fabulous venture plays can still be made in relatively basic utilities and processes – Ab seeks the knowledge to be such a player.

Last night he was showing me the questions he intends to ask of a series of financiers and put them to me as a trial; I ran my own equity matching and raising boutique for several years in Dublin at the height of the Celtic Tiger.

Ab was keen to examine the relative merits of innovation and management competence. Whilst I agreed with him that both were important, I warned him that he was in danger of losing sight of the whole picture the more he micro-focused on individual components of the mix: by all means he should look at ingredients such as innovation and management as heuristics but the total recipe needed to be one of growth and returns – and he must never lose sight of that.

“So, it’s just like your corporate culture model?” he asked and I invited him to elaborate.

“You always say that it’s about creating magic – Cultureship – which is greater than the sum of the parts. That’s a core mix of Community, Contribution & Recognition adding up to something much bigger.

“With equity finance you are saying that Growth & Returns are universal major parts but without a sense that something magical is going on with the total mix, the investment potential is not compelling.”

Yes, he’s a quick learner Ab.

You can break things down too much. With corporate culture, one needs to remember that the human urge to seek involvement in an excitingly productive project is instinctive – we need to search for any ways in which that desire may be stifled. Wanting to be creative is natural – we need to look for reasons why it might be suppressed. Needing to feel valued is utterly basic to our natures – we need to clear away obstacles and reluctance to be unstinting in support and praise.

We don’t need to be putting our efforts into creating these things – they are already there. Our need is to clear away barriers to setting them free.

And, going back to financing opportunities for organisations, it all comes back to the same basic questions as with the corporate culture – is this outfit going places, is it something I’d like to get involved with, is there a buzz around here, does it excite me and thrill me?

You can indeed over-complicate these things: I’m not specifically looking for an innovation culture, it doesn’t all come back to a performance culture and I’d certainly not be looking a culture that emphasised inclusiveness or development or, in fact, any one thing over another.

When it comes to backing an organisation with hard cash, I’ll just have a good one, please.

And when it comes to corporate culture, I’ll just have a good one, please.