Inspired by the folks at Obvious, with whom I spent a memorable five years, and their playbook in the public domain, Obvious U, I am sharing insights on organisation building.
Entrepreneurs build two systems in parallel. The first is the company — with its regulatory identity, fulfilling investor and customer needs, through contracts, P&L, and systems. The second is the organisation — a tender, living thing that layers learnt resilience with time and consistent actions.
I usually come in at this point to work with leaders who feel that, at that stage of their business, they need HR help. Applying the 80:20 rule, the majority of my energy is spent coaching leaders into the value of amping up their personal power, people navigation, and comfort with ambiguity in working with others.
From an advisory angle, for this conversation to be effective, leaders need to be conversant, if not fluent, in emotional regulation. If they have great ideas, capital-raising ability, and GTM plans but struggle with people navigation, their weakest link is people systems. That is not a problem I can solve for them, nor one automation can help with.
What drives culture?
At first, the founding team’s values and worldviews. Add the expectations of invested folk, the realities of the market, and the passage of time. In 2026, volatility, fatigue and uncertainty are legitimate influencing forces, and many practices, guidelines and policies take their cues from there. A cross-section of culture reveals four layers.
Everything culture starts with safety. Are your people empowered to fail safely in the course of their work? Do they know the boundaries of failure — what could mean running afoul of the law versus what is a solemn conversation in a closed room?
Everything is better with communication, and better still with direct, respectful, candid information made available on time and in the right manner. This lets perceived slights and threats give way to healthy “you and me versus the problem” scenarios, rather than frozen disagreements where the other person becomes the problem.
The kind that you can’t buy. When trust is built and autonomy is rewarded consistently, these become embedded in systems. The need to mandate “going above and beyond” is replaced by fluidity and seamless hand-offs that feel like a well-orchestrated dance.
When the why and how are clear at the level of the organisation-as-a-living-thing, purpose gets off the rhetoric wagon and becomes visible, present and tangible.
Current considerations
Thriving on the decline: work is drudgery for 76% of the workplace in India (Source: Gallup) — a seven-point decrease from the last three-year rolling average. Only 17% feel they are thriving at work. This dovetails with a bearish emotional state worldwide, but it does not take away from the responsibility of People & Culture leaders to move the needle for the people in their charge.
AI as a structural force: can we release enough of the time presently spent on toil to build relationships — checking in with people, giving feedback, having hard conversations in a kind way — without gatekeeping or legacy knowledge staying stuck with tenure or seniority? At the same time, without falling prey to surveillance cosplaying as performance measurement, staying aware of the whiplash of compressed timelines and shifting power structures.
Building a high-trust culture that lets people thrive takes on a different meaning in this reality.
You need someone to drive day-to-day People Ops well, and only then to start layering sub-cultures of appreciation, respect, transparency and safety.
Chapter 2: Why Culture is a system, not a slogan
