Inspired by the folks at Obvious, with whom I’d 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 company, with its regulatory identity, fulfilling investor and customer needs. The means of doing this are contracts, P&L, systems.
- The organisation, a tender, living thing that layers learnt resilience with time and consistent actions.
I am usually brought in at this point by 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/ comfort with ambiguity in working with others.
From an advisory angle, for this conversation to be effective, leader(s) need to be conversant, if not fluent, in emotional regulation. If they have great ideas, capital raising ability, GTM plans but struggle with people navigation skills, their weakest link is people systems. That is not a problem I can solve/ automation can help them with.
So, what drives culture? At first, the founding team’s values & worldviews. Add expectations of invested folk, the realities of the market and the passage of time. In 2026, volatility, fatigue and uncertainty are legitimate influencing forces. Many practices, guidelines and policies take their cues from there. If we were to examine a cross-section of culture, we would see:
Layer 1. Safety: 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 (The consequences of their mistakes – what for instance, could mean they run afoul of legislation of the land versus what is a solemn conversation in a closed room)
Layer 2. Candour: Everything is better with communication. It is even better with direct, respectful, candid information made available on time, in the right manner. This allows for perceived slights and threats to disappear and be replaced with healthy “You and me vs. the problem” scenarios, as opposed to freezing disagreements where we consider the other person to be the problem, leading to much weekend teeth-gnashing with friends.
Layer 3. Ownership that you can’t buy: When trust is built, 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.
Layer 4. Purposeful outcomes: When the why and how are clear at the “organisation as a living thing” level, purpose gets off the rhetoric wagon and actually becomes visible, present and tangible.
Present-day realities of organisations
Thriving on the decline: Work is drudgery for 76% of the workplace in India (Source: Gallup). This is a seven point decrease from the last three years rolling average. Only 17% feel they are thriving at work. This dovetails with a bearish emotional state worldwide. It does not take away from the reality for People & Culture leaders to try and move the needle for people in their charge.
AI as a structural force: Can we release enough time presently used in toil, to build relationships (Check-in with people, give feedback, even have hard conversations in a kind way), and not have problems of gatekeeping or legacy knowledge stuck with tenure or seniority. At the same time, not falling prey to the allure of surveilling cosplaying as performance measurement; being aware of the whiplash of compressed timelines; being aware of the shifting power structures.
In this reality, building a high-trust culture that allows people to thrive, takes on a different meaning. You need someone to drive the day-to-day People Ops well, to then start to layer sub-cultures of appreciation, respect, transparency and safety.
Psst. This section is WIP, so expect new elements as it gets built up
Monica Pillai 