What’s Culture These Days?
I just spent 4 days in the first year of the Entrepreneurial Masters Program (EMP) at MIT’s Endicott House. It’s a three year exec ed program put on by the Entrepreneurs Organization (EO). The program brought together 60 entrepreneurs from around the world: Philippines, Germany, South Africa, India, and even some people from Texas!
First, a plug for our country. While they might not love everything about America, I got overwhelming feedback that coming to the US to talk business is like going to the big leagues. We remain a beacon for entrepreneurship and there are worse things to be known for. Thank you, Elon1.
Amidst the all day sessions on customer experience (and even love2), 10x-ing your business, process improvement, and life planning, there were two sessions on culture. Culture is of course important but what it is and what makes a good or a bad one have always been vague to me. Nothing in those two sessions change my opinion and in fact I walked about wishing we could redefine what corporate culture means and with three main issues I want to address so that we can talk more sensibly about culture.
First Issue-Silly Hats
I’ve always had a bit of a problem with how culture is presented in business books and trainings. While no one would ever say it, it mostly boils down to some version of wearing funny hats for special occasions and serving employees ice cream. I know culture really isn’t just that but that always seems like what people want to highlight. See, we are fun and silly! We work hard and play hard! Puke.
Look, I’m plenty fun but I’m not silly except with young children3 and I don’t like hats. Forced office fun is terrible. Why do we subject people to this kind of thing? Sure there are people who like it and that is one kind of culture but it isn’t “culture.” So let’s skip the perks and fun talk.
Second Issue-That’s So 2019
Beyond the silly hat version of culture, I didn’t hear anything about the modern reality of the post pandemic workplace. At least up in the Northeast, you can’t get an employee within 50 yards of an office without a lot of special pleading. Maybe if you pay people $300,000 bonuses on Wall Street you can have more success but I don’t have that option.
How do we manage in this environment? It’s fine to say people need to be in the office to learn from each other and form a culture but they aren’t coming. Maybe a recession comes along and everyone comes back to save their job but that doesn’t exactly seem like an optimal outcome. The dirty secret is I’m the boss and I also don’t want to commute downtown and sit in an office all day. I need some new ideas.
Who is doing good work on culture in the modern American virtual workplace? Maybe its time to dust off the old Buffer blogs. I’ve started thinking how we can organize smaller events or opportunities for employees to be physically present with each other but that’s a lot of work and burden on the resources asked to do the organizing.
Third Issue-There’s Some Kind of Correct Culture
Culture is also a value neutral thing. You can have a culture focused on thrift where executives share hotel rooms on travel like Walmart or one that focuses on design like Apple or one that focuses on customer service like Zappos. Those are all great cultures but I don’t want to work at any of them. The only person I’m sharing a hotel room with is my wife or one of my kids. I suck at design and shoes are a necessary evil and not something I want to talk with other people about.
My sense from the presenters was that being fun is “correct,” and that might be true for them but I don’t think that’s any better than being smart or curious or driven.
Definition of Culture
My experience at EMP got me thinking what culture actually is. I’m not sure I’m right but here is my first attempt: culture is a set of norms that people tend to follow in the absences of policies, rules, and orders. For example, if you have a culture of team work, people aren’t going to stab each other in the back to get ahead even if you don’t explicitly tell them not to. If you have a culture of being the smartest person in the room, people are going to be pretty obnoxious4. A culture in the end should weed out people that don’t fit with it and attract those that do.
I do think culture can be explicit but if people don’t tend to behave the way your values or other cultural artifacts indicate, it’s pretty meaningless. I’m interested in observing more how our people act when the rules aren’t written and someone isn’t watching. That to me is the test of whether the culture I want is in fact in place.
Let me know if you have better definitions. That’s it for this week,
Alan
And Steve Jobs and Henry Ford and Thomas Edison, etc.
This sounded dangerous in our litigious modern world.
I’m hoping none of these are employees
They also might cure cancer so its value neutral