Houston expert: How to build a strong people culture from day one

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Put in the effort to create a strong people culture from the start — it can make all the difference for your company. Photo by Tom Werner/Getty Images

Entrepreneurs are driven and tenacious when building a business. However, the laser focus on making a business profitable, from logistics to taxes and everything in between, can sometimes cause one important element to be missed, the people.

The best business plans cannot work without people to implement the details. When a strong people culture is established from the very beginning, the employees who help build the company from the ground up, stay engaged and can become an integral part of the company’s success for years to come.

Below are a few items to help entrepreneurs concentrate on their most precious asset, their people, pinpoint their motivations and learn how employees can enjoy what they do every day, which can take any business to the next level.

Share values

The onus falls on the business leaders within a startup to create a work environment that encourages employees to succeed and enjoy their career. Nurturing a culture rooted in a shared mission and values allows the company to easily build a desirable workplace where employees are eager to return.

When communicating a company’s values, they are more influential when they are lived by leadership. For example, if curiosity is a key value, leadership should encourage teams to ask questions and not be afraid to try to speak up when there may be a more effective path for the business.

It is also important for business owners to look for candidates to fill roles in the growing business who embody their key values. This may mean looking beyond the job description for like-minded people who align with the values and who then bring a positive outlook to the position, are more apt to collaborate and are fully engaged.

Offer unique benefits

Small businesses have the upper hand when it comes to unique benefits because they are a much nimbler organization. When an organization intentionally creates a people-first environment, there is near immediate access to leadership, rapid advancement opportunities are more plentiful and the impact employees at every level can have on the organization is monumental. This is an exciting prospect for so many who share an entrepreneur’s vision.

There are also the traditional benefits that are essential to a strong people culture. This may seem like a daunting prospect, but it can be simple to provide employees, while also competing with large-company benefits, with the help of a professional employer organization. What will strengthen a people culture’s foundation is offering the traditional benefits along with the benefits many enjoyed during the pandemic, which may have been cut by other organizations, such as mental health programs, expanded sick-leave, financial wellness programs, care benefits and others.

When deciding what benefits to offer, it is important to ask employees what benefits mean the most to them. Every benefit may not be feasible, but employees having a say in their benefits further strengthens the people culture.

Communicate

It sounds simple but establishing a culture with transparent communication, within reason, is conducive to a strong people culture. However, for many entrepreneurs, communicating without a plan often leads to not communicating at all.

Set the stage for clear, consistent communication from the very beginning. For example, establishing a standing meeting, whether it is once per week or every morning, allows leadership to share updates, make announcements and point out team wins. For employees, it is an open forum to ask questions. Also setting the standard to talk to employees before making any major policy changes builds trust in the organization, even if the policy change may not be the most desirable for everyone. By surveying staff before a policy change, leadership can clearly communicate the reasoning and have a fully prepared team before implementation.

In a growing business, it is easy to put your head down and grind forward, but engaged employees are essential to making an entrepreneur’s dream come to fruition. Putting in the effort to create a strong people culture from the start will help ensure you have employees who want to be a part of the organization and contribute to its success.

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Jill Chapman is a director of early talent programs with Insperity, a leading provider of human resources and business performance solutions.
While Facebook and Google have invested in fun work environments, there are other ways to fuel creativity in the office. Getty Images

Why fueling creativity at work is crucial to success

Houston Voices

Walk into Facebook's New York City offices and you'll see what a 21st century creative culture looks like. There's the complimentary coffee and snack bar. There's free sushi and room to sleep. There are nooks where workers tap on their keyboards in solitude, and couches where others chatter animatedly in groups. The whole complex is designed to offer the warmth of a home away from home, if your house happens to be tidy, stocked with brain food and full of pleasant spaces to optimize productivity.

Facebook, Google and similar companies all know that creativity is critical to beating the competition. But what exactly makes imaginations at work come alive? Is it enough to hire the most brilliant workers? Does it matter if the workers toil in a cubicle or a café? What about attitude?

Rice Business professor Jing Zhou recently joined up with colleagues Dong Liu, Christina E. Shalley and Sejin Keem of the Georgia Institute of Technology and Kaifeng Jiang of the University of Notre Dame to study the true source of workplace creativity.

To reach their conclusions, they combed through the psychological literature on creativity, looking at 191 independent samples covering some 52,000 people in primary studies.

One of the most important mechanisms of creativity, the scholars knew from past research, is motivation. The more motivated workers are, the more likely they will be creative. Intrinsically motivated workers delve into their work more deeply, work harder to find facts, grasp the elements of a problem more firmly and hatch inventive solutions.

One of the best ways to encourage this drive, Zhou and her colleagues found, is to give workers more autonomy. A cascade of studies now shows that employees who feel less constrained by rules and restrictions have more self-motivation.

Yet motivation alone isn't enough. This is because the creative process is not, contrary to romantic notion, a burst of inspiration ignited like ether. It's instead a dense sequence of trial and error, fueled by incessant learning. By their nature, Zhou and her colleagues write, creative people challenge established norms. In workplaces that frown on such challenge, creative employees sense their gifts are a risk, not an asset. Environments like the ones so carefully curated at Facebook signal that rethinking norms is welcome.

Along with talent and a welcoming environment, Jing and her team found, workplace creativity demands selflessness. To use their creativity well, employees need to be pro-social. That is, they need to value a goal beyond self-interest. Appreciation of the common good is the fuel that turns one person's creativity into a force that's transformative.

Powering creativity, in other words, is not just a matter of finding the sparkiest resume. Neither is it exclusively about offering conversation nooks, caffeine and artisanal snacks (though those can't hurt). Instead, Zhou and her colleagues argue, it's about assembling force multipliers that find each person's spark, protect it, and encourage it to light up the communal culture. Fanning individual imaginations, Facebook and other innovators know, is more than a romantic whim for firms that can afford to offer free sushi. It's an ongoing strategy to keep the company's lights on.

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This article originally ran on Rice Business Wisdom.

Jing Zhou is the Houston Endowment Professor of Management and Director for Asian Management Research and Education at Jones Graduate School of Business at Rice University.

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Intuitive Machines forms partnership with Italian companies for lunar exploration services

to the moon

Houston-based space technology, infrastructure and services company Intuitive Machines has forged a partnership with two Italian companies to offer infrastructure, communication and navigation services for exploration of the moon.

Intuitive Machines’ agreement with the two companies, Leonardo and Telespazio, paves the way for collaboration on satellite services for NASA, a customer of Intuitive Machines, and the European Space Agency, a customer of Leonardo and Telespazio. Leonardo, an aerospace, defense and security company, is the majority owner of Telespazio, a provider of satellite technology and services.

“Resilient, secure, and scalable space infrastructure and space data networks are vital to customers who want to push farther on the lunar surface and beyond to Mars,” Steve Altemus, co-founder and CEO of Intuitive Machine, said in a news release.

Massimo Claudio Comparini, managing director of Leonardo’s space division, added that the partnership with Intuitive Machines is a big step toward enabling human and robotic missions from the U.S., Europe and other places “to access a robust communications network and high-precision navigation services while operating in the lunar environment.”

Intuitive Machines recently expanded its Houston Spaceport facilities to ramp up in-house production of satellites. The company’s first satellite will launch with its upcoming IM‑3 lunar mission.

Intuitive Machines says it ultimately wants to establish a “center of space excellence” at Houston Spaceport to support missions to the moon, Mars and the region between Earth and the moon.

Houston hospitals win $50M grant for ibogaine addiction treatment research

ibogaine funding

The Texas Health and Human Services Commission has awarded $50 million to UTHealth Houston in collaboration with The University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston (UTMB Health) to co-lead a multicenter research trial to evaluate the effect of ibogaine, a powerful psychoactive compound, on patients suffering from addiction, traumatic brain injury and other behavioral health conditions.

The funding will establish a two-year initiative—known as Ibogaine Medicine for PTSD, Addiction, and Cognitive Trauma (IMPACT)—and a consortium of Texas health institutions focused on clinical trials and working toward potential FDA-approved treatments.

The consoritum will also include Texas Tech University, Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center El Paso, The University of Texas at Austin, The University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio, The University of Texas at Tyler, The University of Texas Rio Grande Valley, Texas A&M University, The University of North Texas Health Science Center, Baylor College of Medicine and JPS Health Network in Dallas.

Ibogaine is a plant-based, psychoactive substance derived from the iboga shrub. Research suggests that the substance could be used for potential treatment for patients with traumatic brain injuries, which is a leading cause of post-traumatic stress disorders. Ibogaine has also shown potential as a treatment for addiction and other neurological conditions.

UTHealth and partners will focus on ways that ibogaine can treat addiction and associated conditions. Meanwhile, UT Austin and Baylor College of Medicine will concentrate on using it to treat traumatic brain injury, especially in veterans, according to a news release from the institutions.

The consortium will also support drug developers and teaching hospitals to conduct FDA-approved clinical trials. The Texas Health and Human Services Commission will oversee the grant program.

“This landmark clinical trial reflects our unwavering commitment to advancing research that improves lives and delivers the highest standards of care,” Dr. Melina Kibbe, UTHealth Houston president and the Alkek-Williams Distinguished Chair, said in the news release. “By joining forces with outstanding partners across our state, we are building on Texas’ tradition of innovation to ensure patients struggling with addiction and behavioral health conditions have access to the best possible outcomes. Together, we are shaping discoveries that will serve Texans and set a model for the nation.”

The consortium was authorized by the passage of Senate Bill 2308. The bill provides $50 million in state-matching funds for an ibogaine clinical trial managed by a public university in partnership with a drug company and a hospital.

“This is the first major step towards the legislature’s goal of obtaining FDA approval through clinical trials of ibogaine — a potential breakthrough medication that has brought thousands of America’s war-fighters back from the darkest parts of depression, anxiety, PTSD, and chronic addiction,” Texas Rep. Cody Harris added in the release. “I am excited to walk alongside UTHealth Houston and UTMB as these stellar institutions lead the nation in a first-of-its-kind clinical trial in the U.S.”

Recently, the University of Houston also received a $2.6 million gift from the estate of Dr. William A. Gibson to support and expand its opioid addiction research, which includes the development of a fentanyl vaccine that could block the drug's ability to enter the brain. Read more here.

Tesla no longer world's biggest EV maker as sales fall for second year

Tesla Talk

Tesla lost its crown as the world’s bestselling electric vehicle maker as a customer revolt over Elon Musk’s right-wing politics, expiring U.S. tax breaks for buyers and stiff overseas competition pushed sales down for a second year in a row.

Tesla said that it delivered 1.64 million vehicles in 2025, down 9% from a year earlier.

Chinese rival BYD, which sold 2.26 million vehicles last year, is now the biggest EV maker.

It's a stunning reversal for a car company whose rise once seemed unstoppable as it overtook traditional automakers with far more resources and helped make Musk the world's richest man. The sales drop came despite President Donald Trump's marketing effort early last year when he called a press conference to praise Musk as a “patriot” in front of Teslas lined up on the White House driveway, then announced he would be buying one, bucking presidential precedent to not endorse private company products.

For the fourth quarter, Tesla sales totaled 418,227, falling short of even the much reduced 440,000 target that analysts recently polled by FactSet had expected. Sales were hit hard by the expiration of a $7,500 tax credit for electric vehicle purchases that was phased out by the Trump administration at the end of September.

Tesla stock fell 2.6% to $438.07 on Friday.

Even with multiple issues buffeting the company, investors are betting that Tesla CEO Musk can deliver on his ambitions to make Tesla a leader in robotaxi services and get consumers to embrace humanoid robots that can perform basic tasks in homes and offices. Reflecting that optimism, the stock finished 2025 with a gain of approximately 11%.

The latest quarter was the first with sales of stripped-down versions of the Model Y and Model 3 that Musk unveiled in early October as part of an effort to revive sales. The new Model Y costs just under $40,000 while customers can buy the cheaper Model 3 for under $37,000. Those versions are expected to help Tesla compete with Chinese models in Europe and Asia.

For fourth-quarter earnings coming out in late January, analysts are expecting the company to post a 3% drop in sales and a nearly 40% drop in earnings per share, according to FactSet. Analysts expect the downward trend in sales and profits to eventually reverse itself as 2026 rolls along.

Musk said earlier last year that a “major rebound” in sales was underway, but investors were unruffled when that didn't pan out, choosing instead to focus on Musk's pivot to different parts of business. He has has been saying the future of the company lies with its driverless robotaxis service, its energy storage business and building robots for the home and factory — and much less with car sales.

Tesla started rolling out its robotaxi service in Austin in June, first with safety monitors in the cars to take over in case of trouble, then testing without them. The company hopes to roll out the service in several cities this year.

To do that successfully, it needs to take on rival Waymo, which has been operating autonomous taxis for years and has far more customers. It also will also have to contend with regulatory challenges. The company is under several federal safety investigations and other probes. In California, Tesla is at risk of temporarily losing its license to sell cars in the state after a judge there ruled it had misled customers about their safety.

“Regulatory is going to be a big issue,” said Wedbush Securities analyst Dan Ives, a well-known bull on the stock. “We're dealing with people's lives.”

Still, Ives said he expects Tesla's autonomous offerings will soon overcome any setbacks.

Musk has said he hopes software updates to his cars will enable hundreds of thousands of Tesla vehicles to operate autonomously with zero human intervention by the end of this year. The company is also planning to begin production of its AI-powered Cybercab with no steering wheel or pedals in 2026.

To keep Musk focused on the company, Tesla’s directors awarded Musk a potentially enormous new pay package that shareholders backed at the annual meeting in November.

Musk scored another huge windfall two weeks ago when the Delaware Supreme Court reversed a decision that deprived him of a $55 billion pay package that Tesla doled out in 2018.

Musk could become the world's first trillionaire later this year when he sells shares of his rocket company SpaceX to the public for the first time in what analysts expect would be a blockbuster initial public offering.

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