What Brooklyn’s Small Businesses Can Learn From WeWork’s Troubles #MakerBusiness #NYC #Brooklyn
Some quick business insights from watching WeWorks rise and subsequent troubles. Broken down the lessons can be summarized: be inclusive, harbor community and be careful with growth. The author has a similar, much smaller, business; so they have been watching closely.
When you’re building a company, culture and people are the twin pillars supporting growth. Yet, for all WeWork’s talk about community and consciousness, the company’s corporate culture was notoriously bro-y. Until just earlier this year, the board of directors was comprised exclusively of men. Likewise, the company faced a boatload of sexual harassment suits, along with a raft of wage-and-hour suits. If you want to build a resilient, durable team and a healthy corporate culture, try building a diverse leadership team and a healthy corporate culture. According to a recent study by the Boston Consulting Group, companies with diverse management teams had revenues that were 19 percentage points higher than those of companies with below-average leadership diversity.
Brooklyn’s startup community should think long and hard about the risks of hyper growth, even if it means turning down funding. Better to outlast the competition through disciplined and steady growth. That’s how you build a durable business and a resilient economy.
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