The New Culture Code: How to Wire Your Team for Risk-Taking
by Elizabeth Weil, Managing Partner, Scribble VC
This is #5 of 8 “flash content drops” in collaboration with MOMA artist & entrepreneur Paul Budnitz (CEO, Superplastic). We cover The 3 Types of Intelligence, the Future of NFTs, the “Creator Brain”, and How to Stoke Risk-Taking. You can follow me on twitter to get them.
(p.s. SUPERPLASTIC IS HIRING! If you want to join a rocketship or know someone who should, Superplastic is hiring a Director of Marketing, a Marketing Manager, and a Paid Media Specialist.)
“I tell my team — ‘This job is going to work or not work based on who we are. Not who we pretend to be.” — Paul Budnitz, Founder & CEO, Superplastic
- In extreme environments like startups where you’re reinventing how the world operates, it takes the Founders and leaders a tremendous amount of energy to keep people aligned, excited, and willing to take risks.
- For example, we’re making all these insane characters. We’re opening stores with holograms. We’re putting out an animated pop group. We’re making a movie. We’re doing all this crazy crypto stuff, creating tokens. And we’re doing a physical product, a sushi restaurant now in Miami, too.
- So that’s a high stakes environment. Now the question is — what is the one essential thing that will inspire a culture of risk taking?
- It’s Permission. I really think it’s permission to be who you are, the realization that you are not going to succeed pretending to be other than you are.
- In my thirties I was diagnosed with borderline autism. I taught myself to look people in the eye because I never did. I think not giving eye contact had become part of the way I had to defend myself as a kid. Because I was a weirdo. And so for me, creating an environment where people feel safe to be who they are, because who they are is awesome, comes from a very personal place.
- I tell my team — “This job is going to work or not work based on who we are. Not who we pretend to be.”
- The conditions you need for truly innovating is finding the right crazy people, and letting them just be who they are.
Stay Tuned → Coming up at 2pm today — Culture Hack: The Superplastic “Fail Wheel” (1 min read). Follow Elizabeth on Twitter to get this content drop.
Contact Superplastic or Elizabeth:
→ If you or someone you know wants to meet Superplastic, they are hiring!
→ Follow Superplastic on Discord, IG, and Twitter.
→ Follow Elizabeth on Twitter for the content drops, subscribe to her Medium essays, and check out the Scribble team and portfolio.
