As your team grows, you inevitably have to start thinking about scaling your culture. We recently sat down to think hard about what makes working at Toggl special.

I’ll get into the details after the jump, but for those who prefer a more visual explanation, here are the values that guide Toggl, in a handy infographic form:

We’ve got some interesting things planned for the future, and we’ll be needing more amazing people (check out our open job tests to see if we have something for you!) to help us get them done.

Toggl wouldn’t have come this far without an extraordinarily well-oiled team. A lot of the success can probably be attributed to great chemistry.

But how do you scale good chemistry?

To help us be better at finding the best fitting people for the team, we had to think about the values that have served us well so far – and write them down.

1 – People create value

Every successful startup has a “secret sauce” – ours is people.

The key to letting people do great work is to give them the freedom to decide what they work on and how they go about doing it. Our teams operate with quite a bit of autonomy so independent types who don’t expect to be spoon-fed will thrive at Toggl.

But as we’ve learned from Spiderman – with great freedom comes great responsibility (or something to that effect). Togglers are smart about planning their own work and are able to keep themselves engaged without needing someone to crack a whip.

2 – Great People Do Great Work Everywhere

If you’re a talented individual, you don’t need to sit in an office to do amazing work.

It’s been two years since we embraced a remote working culture, and we haven’t looked back. Remote work gives us the ability to hire the best people for the job no matter where they might live – without having to branch out to new cities with expensive offices.

At the same time, remote work is not about slashing costs – in fact, we do a lot of traveling to make sure people get some face time. Communication is absolutely crucial if you’re running a globally dispersed team, and nothing beats a handshake and a conversation.

You can expect a few bigger get-togethers every year, with smaller team trips in between the bigger meetups.

3 – Get Things Done

Ideas are nice – but the execution is a thousand times better!

If you never take the first to actually start working on something, you’ll spend an eternity on trying to come up with the perfect idea. And while you’d be thinking, somebody else would be busy doing.

You simply cannot plan for absolutely every contingency – what happens when your perfect, carefully constructed plan starts falling apart the second it meets real world? It’s best to run with the first solid idea you get and put all your energy into getting it made.

4 – Communicate. And Over-communicate.

Did you know the Titanic received two ice warnings before it struck an iceberg, but her radio operator let them slide? Yeah, that did not end so well.

Communication is super important, especially with a remote team. Consequently, we believe there are no dumb questions – nor is there such a thing as “over-communication”.

Talking is a magical thing that helps avoid a lot of misunderstandings down the road. Also, to keep communication open and honest, Toggl is a judgment-free zone. When s**t happens, we move on. Doesn’t matter if you fail – the important thing is whether you can learn from your failures.

5 – No know-it-alls

People who innovate are never happy with the status quo.

Encouraging people to keep an open mind is important to us. You can’t make great things unless you’re willing to experiment. Technology and the world around us are always changing – so why hang on to dogmas? If you have an idea for doing something in a new way, then just go for it!

6 – Keeping it Human

There’s something really wrong with a job if you wake up every day dreading to pick up your laptop.

There’s no reason you shouldn’t have fun and enjoy life with the people you work with. Also, it’s a lot easier to cope with challenges when you know you can always talk about them. Expect cake. Expect friendly faces. Expect work sessions that casually turn into pub crawls.

Even if you work remotely, you’ll probably find a fun channel to follow in our Slack. And as mentioned before, there will be traveling – we don’t want anyone to feel left out so keep your suitcase at the ready!

Mart Virkus

Mart has a background in anthropology - a discipline which has turned people-watching into a science. He most enjoys working on projects that make you go from “that’s stupid” to “hmmm”.