Last month, we celebrated WeLab’s 7th anniversary. Over the past 7 years, we have achieved many milestones together that we are extremely proud of – building the leading online lending platforms in Hong Kong and China, then expanding into Indonesia, getting a digital banking license as the only standalone Hong Kong fintech company. We built a fintech unicorn from what was just a 7-person team cramped into a tiny office the size of a Tokyo ramen shop. However, no single individual can take full credit for any of these accomplishments – it is a team effort! We are extremely lucky to have a team that shares the same intense level of passion and commitment in building and making WeLab successful. Therefore, one of our proudest achievements to date is none of the milestones I mentioned above, but building an amazing team of individuals who are ambitious, team players, results-oriented, innovative and persistent. They come from diverse professional backgrounds, such as banking and technology, different age groups and nationalities. I often get asked by ex-colleagues from traditional banks and business partners, “How do you keep the traditional guys and the tech guys from going at each other’s throats all day long?”
The answer: culture.
Culture is the unspoken norm within a society or organization. When the culture is strong, a new joiner will know exactly how to behave simply by observing the rest of the team. We believe when the culture is strong, it acts as a self-reinforcing mechanism that encourages the right kinds of behavior. Culture, however, is also very fragile and shouldn’t be taken for granted. We first started noticing that we needed everyone to focus on building our culture when we expanded from our first office in Hong Kong to our second office in Mainland China. We had a new team in Mainland China and when the two teams met, it was as if they came from two completely different companies. As a company that started with only a handful of people in one tiny Hong Kong office that has grown rapidly across multiple markets with over 900 employees, solidifying our culture becomes a colossal challenge. With new faces joining the company every week, how do we ensure that we can keep that same level of cultural intensity we had when it was just a couple of us?
A few months back as we began to build our fourth business unit, WeLab Bank – one of the first licensed digital banks in Hong Kong, the WeLab management team sat down to study how great companies promote and strengthen their cultures. We read countless books and articles on building and maintaining high-performance cultures. We formed a new “Culture Committee”, consisting of our strongest culture carriers that represent different functions, age groups and backgrounds, responsible for generating innovative initiatives to reinforce company culture.
One challenge that every fast-growing company will experience is the pressure of hiring a lot of talent within a very short period of time. I often get asked by fellow entrepreneurs, “What happens if you find a candidate who checks all the boxes on experience, technical skills and qualifications, but is the wrong cultural fit? Should we still hire this person and lower the bar on cultural fit so we can meet our resource demand?” For a CEO, this is a tougher choice than you could imagine, especially when you see that the existing team is already spread to their thinnest. Some companies may believe that new hires who are weaker culture fits will miraculously self-correct after joining, but our experience tells us that is untrue. In fact, the cultural weak links will demoralize and confuse the existing, well-functioning team. To prevent this culture-crippling scenario, one of the first initiatives the Culture Committee rolled out was the culture interview process, where every candidate will have to be assessed for cultural fit by a certified culture interviewer from a different function. If you don’t pass our culture test, then you won’t get the offer no matter how great of an engineer, product manager or marketer you are – as simple as that. Because culture is so fragile, we must be strict about protecting and nurturing it.
We also reflected on ourselves as a company on what has and hasn’t worked in the past 7 years. We wrote down a long list of attributes and behaviors that we absolutely loved about our colleagues, and wanted to see more of and more consistently across the company. We summarized these behaviors into 14 catchphrases that we hear in conversations and see in action in our office every day. Taking inspiration from other companies known for distinct and strong cultures (i.e. Netflix, Zappos), we created an extensive 90-page culture guide. (Yes, 90 pages – since we want to be very explicit and comprehensive.) It once took me two hours to present and go through the entire guide to the company! We reference very specific examples so that everyone who steps in through our doors knows what is expected and become culture influencers within and outside of WeLab. We believe that every point is essential to a strong culture that will allow a fast-growing company to scale in this tech age.
By no means are we naïve enough to think that just by writing a culture book our culture becomes magically perfect, but writing things down helps crystallize intangible behaviors and holds us all accountable to demonstrate them. This is just one of many things we have planned to continue to invest in our culture and our people. We believe that by getting the culture right, everything else will follow.
Our culture book is for everyone, with the intention to inspire:
- the new joiners, who may be unsure about how things work and how to interact with their new colleagues on their very first day at WeLab;
- our existing employees, who may need to be reminded about how to continue to be our culture carriers;
- you, the curious soul who wants to take a peek at how we do things at WeLab. Perhaps it can give you some inspiration and motivation in your day-to-day work or make a change to your company.
We want to make sure every person at WeLab lives and breathes the culture book in real life so these catchphrases are not just words plastered on walls, published on our website or stays in a slide deck. These words should come to life every day. In the following weeks, we will be sharing insider perspectives to explain each of these behaviors as well as personal experiences on how we do things at WeLab. We hope by sharing our stories on our cultural journey, we can also help other entrepreneurs and companies navigate the challenges of building and sustaining a strong culture in this tech age.
Building and solidifying culture is an ongoing process, and as a result the content of the book may change and grow over time, expanding beyond 14 behaviors and 90 pages, as we continue to improve and grow everyday as well in this everchanging organization.
Happy reading! Feel free to share with your friends and family, because sharing is caring😊.
The 14 WeLab catchphrases – check out our culture book for details!
- Never “not my job” – We have roles and responsibilities, but no boundaries. There are no boundaries, because it’s everyone’s job to make WeLab better – with more responsibilities, comes more power.
- Grow faster than the company – We embrace a growth mindset and love to learn and tackle new challenges.
- Experience isn’t everything, embrace the change – We love bringing experience andnew, innovative ideas together and when we do that, outer space is the limit!
- Always find a way – We don’t shy away from challenges even when we get a “no”, we always push through. We say we will find a way and we always find a way
- Do something about it – We are the do-ers, not just complainers. We present a problem AND a solution.
- People first – We start with people in everything we do. Happy employees, happy customers!
- Do everything 10x better – Whatever we are thinking, we think BIGGER because we aim to make everything exponentially better.
- “What does success look like?” – We ask ourselves “what does success look like?” in everything we do because we are results-oriented.
- Get sh*t done, but do it right – Coming up with ideas is easy, but execution is everything.
- Say hi & be kind – We want to create a work environment filled with kindness and encouragement for collaboration. Kindness is contagious!
- Data is your best friend – We are obsessed with being data-driven, because data don’t lie!
- Just ask, there is no secret – We believe in transparency because we understand access to information is crucial in an agile, fast-paced working environment.
- Radical collaboration – We collaborate fiercely because we want to get the best outcomes and most unique results.
- Get comfortable with being uncomfortable – We know for a fact magic happens outside of our comfort zones.