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First Team Culture Setting

Values tested against real decisions, a written working agreement, weekly all-hands, monthly retros and pulse checks, and the founder habits that decide what a tiny startup team becomes.

Free · Mac (Apple silicon) and Windows · v1.0.0 · Other platforms

Then open the Marketplace in the app, search for First Team Culture Setting, and click Install. It goes into your own files, and works offline from then on.

What it installs.

1

Pillar

1

Area

50

Projects

200

Starter tasks

🚀 Founding & Startups

First Team Culture Setting

Shaping the habits, values and norms of a tiny startup team deliberately, before the culture sets itself by accident.

  1. Snapshot of the culture you already have
  2. Founders' culture intent conversation
  3. Founders' first draft of team values
  4. Values tested against five past decisions
  5. Team working agreement version one
  6. Channel map for where conversations live
  7. Team decision norms beyond the founders
  8. Meeting norms and a default agenda
  9. Culture document for new joiners
  10. Psychological safety baseline survey
  11. Friday all-hands with the real numbers
  12. Monthly retro on how the team works
  13. Weekly one-to-ones with every team member
  14. Weekly thank-you and recognition ritual
  15. Quarterly values check-in
  16. Team-wide written decision log
  17. Blameless reviews of mistakes and outages
  18. Monthly anonymous team pulse
  19. Culture buddy for every new joiner
  20. Yearly rewrite of the working agreement
  21. Practising direct, kind feedback
  22. Learning to facilitate a team retrospective
  23. Running decision meetings that end in decisions
  24. Building a writing-first habit
  25. Disagree and commit in practice
  26. Reading list on early team culture
  27. Facilitating hard conversations in the team
  28. Inclusive habits in meetings and chat
  29. Founder behaviour audit against the values
  30. Choosing remote, hybrid or office as the default
  31. Deciding how open to be about money
  32. Sustainable pace and after-hours rule
  33. Handling a values breach by a strong performer
  34. Pruning rituals that have gone stale
  35. Deciding on titles in a team of eight
  36. Spending autonomy limits for the team
  37. First team offsite on how we work
  38. Welcoming the first non-founder employee
  39. Marking the first big customer win together
  40. Values workshop with the whole team
  41. Culture check before the team doubles
  42. Remote team culture across time zones
  43. Culture when the team is mostly contractors
  44. Shaping culture as an early team member
  45. Process for anyone to propose a new norm
  46. Holding the culture through a hard quarter
  47. Culture across nationalities and languages
  48. Culture debt register
  49. Culture carriers beyond the founders
  50. Behavioural signals of a healthy culture

Where it starts.

Each project arrives with its purpose, milestones and first tasks written out. Here is how the first three read.

Snapshot of the culture you already have

Every team of three or more already has a culture, made of who speaks first, when messages get answered, what gets praised and what gets quietly ignored. Writing down what actually happens over two normal weeks, before deciding what you want, stops you designing values for a team that does not exist.

First tasks

  • Start a private note titled culture observations and add three things you noticed this week
  • Ask each team member for three words that describe working here
  • Sort your observations into habits to keep and habits that worry you
  • Write the one-page snapshot and share it with your co-founders

Founders' culture intent conversation

Founders usually assume they want the same culture until a hiring call or a missed deadline shows otherwise. A two-hour conversation about the company each of you would be proud to work at in three years, and the one you would hate, surfaces the differences while they are still cheap to resolve.

First tasks

  • Send your co-founders the same five culture questions to answer in writing
  • Book two hours away from the office for the conversation
  • Compare answers side by side and mark where you differ
  • Write the culture intent statement and get each founder's sign-off

Founders' first draft of team values

Values become useful when they help someone choose between two reasonable options, and useless when they read like a poster: honest, innovative, customer-focused. Drafting three to five values that each name a real trade-off, such as speed over polish on internal tools, gives the team something it can actually use on a Tuesday afternoon.

First tasks

  • List every value-like phrase from the snapshot and intent statement
  • Rewrite each candidate as a choice between two good things
  • Cut the list to five or fewer and attach one real example to each
  • Mark the document as a draft and save it where the team can read it

Make it yours.

Install First Team Culture Setting, then tell Aurum the date you're aiming for. It checks whether the plan fits the weeks you actually have.

Free · Mac (Apple silicon) and Windows · v1.0.0 · Other platforms

Blueprints are general information to help you organise your own work. They are not medical, financial, legal or other professional advice. See the Terms.