No one really knows what the future holds. At a start up, we are all taking a position on what we think it will look like, and what tools we will need. It’s an informed bet, but with any prediction there is risk. Even for the smartest futurist among us, there is always the chance that your position is wrong.

That is why it is incredibly important that start ups be low ego, high trust environments. If someone has a thesis they want to try out, they should feel comfortable playing around with it without fear of judgement. If the thesis is disproven, they should drop it quickly so they can move onto the next iteration, the next new idea. Eventually one of the iterations will strike, and that’s how you win.

If people are always scared of being wrong in front of their coworkers, we will never achieve innovation. Discovery is a messy, wasteful process. Some of the shots we take are going to miss, but that doesn’t mean we don’t take them.

People are human and operating with this much uncertainty feels really scary. Challenging the status quo requires a lot of cognitive dissonance which is not what evolution designed our brains to do. Oftentimes from the moment you have a new idea, you also know why it would fail– but you have to pull the thread anyway to find out. Working at a start up and taking risks like these everyday is an uncomfortable emotional state to live in.

This is why team culture is so important. Some of us are wired to play around with the future, but to do so we need to feel like our position in the social group is safe. Risk and emotional security are two sides of the same coin; to take risks, people must feel like the downside of being wrong is not insurmountable. If people are scared of being wrong, we will play it safe and never innovate.

It’s all about the narrative dealing with the unknown. It’s not “I don’t know so I’m not even gonna try” or “I’m not sure so I’m not going to speak up” it’s “no one knows what the future holds, so let’s try this idea out” and “this is what I do know and what I don’t know, can anyone fill the gap?”.

So how do we create team cultures like this? It seems like collectively a better state, who would not want to work in an environment where everyone was safe taking risks?

Humility is the key emotion here, and you have to find it inward before you can express it outward. The only healthy way to express an early prediction is “I’m not quite sure yet, but here’s what I think…”. Accepting the fact that you don’t know everything and pushing through that scary fact to still express insights is the breakthrough feeling.

Then once everyone has a low threshold to try out new ideas, we can riff off each other. Sometimes as soon as you say something out loud, you realize it’s a bad idea. But someone else may hear that and it triggers something in their brain that is a great idea, but they never would have gotten there without the lily pad of your bad idea. Good idea generation is a collaborative activity, and is more possible in a room without egos.

There are a million little ways to create social capital and trust in a group that people pass up everyday. Compliment someone on a risky fashion choice, welcome them back after a vacation, ask about their weekend. Everyone wants to be in an environment where they feel seen and anyone can make that happen. Never keep a kind thought trapped in your brain, express yourself and grow trust.

People do not remember what you said or what you did, they will remember how you made them feel– Maya Angelou

The same applies to the work that people do, compliment them on it. Acknowledge the risk and effort they put into creating something, even if it didn’t quite pan out. If you lead a project and are getting flowers for it, pass them around to all the people who worked on the project with you. This creates more good vibes and trust within the organization (and makes you look great). While maybe you didn’t single handedly save the world, others want to work with people who will give them credit when it’s due.

Everybody makes mistakes - Hannah Montana, “Nobody’s Perfect”

Making mistakes is ok, not learning from them is not. For me at least, making a mistake just feels like confusion and not knowing what’s going on. Usually I need someone else to come in and tell me what happened there, so I can learn from it and be better in the future. Appreciate when someone takes the time to give you constructive feedback; don’t shy away from the fact that you did something wrong and miss an opportunity for growth.

All of what I’m talking about is a lot of emotional labor. For some of us, living these values everyday is unattainable. The act of running a company is so demanding it doesn’t leave much gas in the tank for fostering culture. Appreciate the people on your team who take this work on, and look out for them when you are hiring.

There are so many important new tools to build right now; the future cannot arrive fast enough. Because of this urgency, we must remember that people don’t build good products, teams build good products. The culture of the team you put together directly leads to the quality of the products you will build. Make sure your team is low ego, high trust so you can innovate and iterate to get to the best products as soon as possible.