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About a year ago, we at Affirm decided to add an OKR to our annual planning titled “High-Performance Culture”, to help shore up the necessary means (for the necessary means) of improving our collective productivity. (Yes yes, big company stuff, whatever – we grew revenue 46% last fiscal year on essentially flat headcount, that’s pretty addictive, and it doesn’t hurt the stock price.)

We measure this OKR by asking every Affirmer a handful of questions about their experience getting work done, eg “do you feel like it’s pretty collaborative here”, etc, scoring it on a 10pt scale, and trying to improve our score quarter to quarter. Generally, our score’s pretty high, and trending gently higher, so all good then?

Maybe, but how do you do better? High-performance culture is pretty easy to define: a culture of individuals doing productive work for the company in the most efficient way possible and helping others do the same, while generally having a good time. But what do you actually do [sir] to have such a culture? And what do you not do? 

So I jotted down a few incomplete one-liners of what that means to me as Affirm’s founder and CEO. This list is neither exhaustive (I reserve the right to add and remove things here) nor is it even especially well-organized, but culture is like obscenity in Jacobellis v Ohio: you know it when you see it. 

So here’s what I see at Affirm. 

mission

morality is a key ingredient in everything we do (and don’t do)

integrity is what got us where we are today, never compromise it

consumers, merchants, and capital partners are who we serve

stay humble and be curious about the needs of each of our constituents

take pride in providing safe access to fair credit; don’t judge what consumers use it for

bleed the colors, the values, the mission

merit

Affirm is a meritocracy: your talent, skill, and willingness to put it all to work define you here

we solve multivariate optimization problems – a certain minimum intellectual capacity is required

demand excellence from yourself and from your teammates, don’t settle

work-life balance tends to take care of itself if you love your work

…remember that this is a marathon – take care of yourself and those you love

if you can’t keep up, we’ll try our best to help, but eventually you may have to leave

if you see that someone can’t keep up, you should step in to help them

leadership

we are a culture of individuals working together as teams  

once someone is a part of the team, fully accept them as one of our own

whom you hire, and how you help them be productive is your top responsibility 

be an owner, not merely an employee

do not allow “us and them” dynamics to foment anywhere at Affirm

run towards a problem; don’t assume someone else will take care of it

be a stress absorber for your team, not a stress amplifier

an occasional heroic act that helps Affirm win is a good thing, not a sign of poor planning

constant heroic acts required for Affirm to survive is a sign of poor planning

lead by example

how we work

we take calculated risks – do the calculating!

make reversible decisions fast

bring the bad news to the team early – we’ll rally to help

use our product and understand its value to our customers

care about how we make things — mind the quality of the invisible parts

…do not let perfect be the enemy of shipping and iterating

time is the scarcest resource we have, be mindful of how you use yours, and your team’s

we are a writing culture, favor short, pithy n-pagers to novels or live rants

post-mortem everything: the successes, the failures, and the near-misses – and learn

we take our work extremely seriously — but not so much ourselves 

how we disagree

if you disagree, you must speak up, even escalate – especially before a decision is made

fear of being wrong is not an acceptable reason for not speaking up

never accept an unexplained “no” for an answer – ask why

challenge ideas! good ones can handle the scrutiny, bad ones need to die on the vine

even the harshest critique of your idea is not an attack on you, don’t take it as such

no matter how brilliant you are, being a jerk is a ticket out of Affirm

know our business well, and know your area of the business cold

argue using facts whenever possible, but give your gut a voice too

once the decision is reached, commit 

Getting a head start