Why I Wrote the For-Impact Culture Code

When I decided to write the For-Impact Culture Code I was in my pajamas, isolated in a cabin overlooking the White Mountains in New Hampshire, and I hadn’t seen or talked to another human in four days.

I was in the middle of the most valuable exercise I’ve done as CEO of Possible, a non-profit healthcare company that delivers high-quality, low-cost healthcare for the world’s poor. I spent the first week of 2014 alone—no phone, no Internet—in a place where you couldn’t see a sign of civilization.

My only companions were a stack of mentor-suggested articles and my two top books for the year (Give and Take by Adam Grant & To Sell is Human by Dan Pink).

Part of what I did that week was review a survey I'd asked our leaders to complete. One of the questions was: “How would you describe our work culture to a friend?”

Here is the full, unedited response I wrote to my own question for our team.

"We are getting there. Building a ‘good’ culture is easy. Building a remarkable culture is what only a few organizations ever accomplish. It’s especially hard in our category of work because almost everything we’ve been taught about being a nonprofit is wrong and thus most potential team members come seeking something we don’t really believe in. So we are unlearning that while also trying to understand the value of something foreign and new. I love our team. We have extraordinary potential. And we are going to do great things as long as we treat time as scarce, maximize our learning, and keep focused on punching above our weight class. Growth will be the ultimate arbiter of whether our culture is good or remarkable."

The Motivation: Frustration and a Need for Clarity

In writing that response, the idea for our For-Impact Culture Code was hatched. Why?

First, I was frustrated and tired of defining ourselves by what we aren’t. I think it’s sad the nonprofit sector is the only sector labeled that way. Those of us in this sector don’t wake up and pursue this work to “not make a profit.” We wake up to make an impact, change lives, and bend the arc of the universe towards justice. Nonprofit is honestly a pathetic and uninspiring term. That’s why one of the first slides in our For-Impact Culture Code says this:

Second, when I held our work next to the work of great companies like Netflix and HubSpot that had built transformative culture codes, I realized culture was equally important. Our team is taking on the challenge of making healthcare possible in the world’s most impossible places. Without building extreme clarity around our principles and arguing why they are essential to get remarkable results for our patients, we would risk attracting the wrong talent, the wrong partners, and diluting the culture of excellence our work demands.

The Tangible Benefits of a Clear Culture Code

So what are the benefits of investing in culture?

We launched the For-Impact Culture Code in March 2014. In that short time, it has:

• Become the primary filter for our talent process (every candidate is asked “Which of the 10 principles in our For-Impact Culture Code means the most to you and why?),
• Helped us build partnerships with great companies like Asana,
• Functioned as the constant due north internally that we point to when we need to elevate performance or provide feedback.

We’ve also been humbled to see the principles that drive us to get remarkable results for the poorest patients resonate with leaders in every domain.

Our For-Impact Culture Code inspired First Round Capital’s first-ever feature of a nonprofit in their piece This Culture Deck Power’s the World’s Toughest Work.

And lastly, some guy named Jeff liked it as well. And that’s good for our patients because I hear he’s pretty connected.

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Follow me on Twitter: @markarnoldy