Financial results are a downstream outcome. The true upstream driver is a company's culture—its talent density, hiring practices, and incentive systems. A strong culture creates a reinforcing feedback loop that attracts talent, improves decisions, and fuels compounding for decades.

To prevent values from becoming empty platitudes, integrate them into your company's core operating system. At Applied Intuition, managers are assessed, compensated, and promoted based on their adherence to values. For example, "decisiveness" is a key metric evaluated under the value of "speed."

To solve the persistent issue of sales and marketing misalignment, structure executive compensation around shared company revenue goals. When leaders' bonuses depend on overall revenue attainment rather than departmental metrics like pipeline or MQLs, it forces genuine collaboration and a unified focus on winning.

To ensure its team-oriented culture is more than just talk, Gryphon ties 25% of employee performance bonuses to subjective factors like soft skills, personal development, and cultural contribution. This is supported by 360-degree reviews to standardize evaluations and prevent "grade inflation" among different teams.

To make culture tangible, it must be a core component of performance management. Plaid evaluates who gets promoted, raises, or more equity based not only on results but also on their contribution to and enhancement of the company culture.

Elf uses a unique compensation model where every employee's bonus (from 0-200%) is tied to the same company-wide adjusted EBITDA metric. This aligns operations, sales, and marketing on a shared financial fate, fostering cross-functional collaboration and a strong sense of ownership.

To truly build a people-first culture, give the head of HR (rebranded as 'Chief Heart Officer' to change perception) more political clout and decision-making power than the Chief Financial Officer. This organizational structure ensures that employee retention and happiness are prioritized over pure financial metrics, leading to long-term stability and success.

To align teams with strategy, compensate them for performing specific activities you hypothesize will lead to success (e.g., discovery calls), not just the final outcome (e.g., revenue). If the activities don't work, it's a leadership failure, not an employee one.

Seamless's marketing team is compensated on NRR and profitability, not just net new revenue. This financial incentive shifts the team's focus from pure acquisition to the entire customer lifecycle, ensuring marketing remains invested in customer engagement, education, and retention post-sale.