Culture Club
I’ve been thinking about Culture this week and it always perplexes me. Part of me thinks it’s all bollocks and yet part of me thinks it is important. I think the problem, as with most things, is we use the word very inexactly. What exactly are we talking about?
Culture clearly exists. We sense it, we can discern it and evaluate it. But when we try to describe it … I mean, we just end up blathering away. If there was ever a topic for ‘Pseuds Corner’, then it’s culture. We say things like “It’s the way things are done around here” or “It’s the buzz, the vibe” or, as I heard this week “It’s what people do when no-one is watching”. These are all OK, they’re not wrong exactly - but they’re not right either. For example, one is describing actions, one is describing a feeling and the other is describing behaviour.
It’s a mess, isn’t it? But there’s still value in thinking about culture and talking about it and trying to make it a positive thing because it can make a huge difference to peoples’ work experience and to their lives.
I think there are some problematic issues about the way that culture is talked about and dealt with today.
First up is the idea that an organisation has a single culture. If it is any size, it just doesn’t. When I worked in BT, I experienced three very different cultures and I only worked in a small bit of it.
Organisations are complex, adaptive systems, full of variety and constantly changing. They often contain numerous fiefdoms that almost operate separately from the rest of the organisation and do their own thing their own way, protecting their power. The idea that there’s a single, uniform, over-arching culture is just silly.
Secondly, the idea that the culture can be ‘created’ or ‘set’ by the senior team, and then cascaded down through some vision and value statements, is nonsense. As I’ve said before, this plays into the conceit of the bosses that they are in control and they can pull the levers and make things happen - and that in turn supports a very big army of consultants, who perpetuate the idea. So we get these culture change projects that roll over the organisation (yes, over, like a steam roller) and attempt to flatten out the differences to create a uniform way of doing things. It’s ridiculous to think that is going to work. After 18 months, the old ways have resurfaced, the flattened bits have popped up again, and they go off on the culture merry-go-round again.
Thirdly, we think it is desirable to recruit people to ‘fit’ the culture, because … well, I’m not sure. To ensure conformity and that people get on? To make it easier to manage people? To remove friction, make sure there aren’t any trouble-makers or any arguments? To keep out the mavericks, rebels and lone-wolves? I think those are the reasons but they don’t seem like good ones to me.
Here’s what I think about culture.
Firstly, it is emergent. You have a culture, whether you want one or not. You can try to influence it by creating the conditions that will encourage a positive culture to emerge (we see the opposite all the time, where leaders’ unthinking behaviour creates the conditions for toxic cultures to emerge). It’s more like gardening than engineering, though.
Secondly, culture sits in teams and in the relationships between people. It’s how people are and how they behave towards each other. It will vary across the organisation and over time. You can have a good team in a broader toxic culture (been there), and you can see the culture deteriorate in a team over time (the opposites are also possible!). I realised I’ve just contradicted myself by talking about a broader culture - in fact, there are multiple cultures that operate at different levels and across different groups of people. But the most important is at the team level because that directly shapes an individual’s experience and is the most powerful.
Thirdly, the best cultures are born of diversity. You want a wide array of people, life-experiences, opinions and talents. You want collisions, synthesis, creative friction to create something new. Culture arises from the people in the organisation and, by drawing upon all the elements, you have endless possibilities for the type of culture that emerges, and greater potential for it to adapt and evolve as circumstances change.
A lot of the culture stuff we see now is just performance. Empty slogans painted on the wall that people play along with but don’t believe in. What really matters is behaviour. It’s not the talk you talk, it’s the walk you walk.
It’s important to have a ‘good’ culture but it needs to approached with a lot more humility. It’s a bottom up process, you can set the conditions to grow a good one but you can’t be sure how the plants will grow or which flowers will bloom. You also might get a few pests to deal with.
So, it is real or it bollocks? Well, it’s both. But one thing is for certain - it’s a very human thing. So let’s start with the humans.
The A Team
We know culture is ‘important’ because a lot of organisations like to tell us how great theirs is. One that is often is touted is Apple, and it certainly had an almost cult-like status back in Steve Job’s time when it was the place everyone wanted to work.
Jobs used to talk about ‘only working with A-Players’ and he attributed Apple’s ability to punch above it’s weight to this policy. It’s always rankled with me because it smacks of elitism and social selection. It’s funny how often these ‘A-players’ happen to be white males who come from MIT or Stanford. What are the chances, eh?
What this does is create a monoculture. That can be great for a while but it’s not a long term strategy. It’s a recipe for groupthink, self-aggrandisement, division and all manner of arseholery. It also becomes inflexible and ultimately limiting. The logical end-point is the ‘Tech Bro’ culture that has spectacularly blown-up in the case of Uber, WeWork and countless others.
It’s also not an option for every organisation. In fact, it’s not an option for most organisations because they don’t have the resources to bid for ‘A-players’. But that’s actually a benefit because they can develop the connection and cohesion that encourage a good culture and draw upon the diversity and unrealised potential in their workforce. Because that’s the real route to success.
Karma Chameleon
Why are organisations so interested in culture anyway? It wasn’t even recognised as a thing until the 1950s and didn’t really take off until the late 1980, after the publication of “In Search of Excellence” by Tom Peters and Robert Waterman and the subsequent deployment of McKinsey’s 7S Framework (the source of all evil, according to my friend Geoff Marlow).
[as an aside, when I was in Prestel (part of BT), we got a new boss who had a reputation as a hard-nosed turn-around guy and forward thinker (he wasn’t, but that’s another story). He mushed us together with some other ‘struggling’ business units and we were all summoned to this presentation by these management consultants (who I now assume were McKinsey’s). They presented ‘In Search of Excellence’ and everyone came out enthused, full of ideas and wanting to change things. This fervour was carried on into team meetings and funnelled up to the new boss. This was NOT what he had anticipated and it was made clear it was not welcome. Word came down that there would be no significant changes, we were to stop making suggestions and to never talk about that presentation again! It was as if it had never happened - except we were now all thoroughly demotivated and the culture went through the floor.]
Peter Drucker is famously quoted as saying “Culture eats strategy for breakfast” and that has helped drive an obsession with culture today. But why? Is it just a fashion? The product of the marketing power of the big consultancy firms and their symbiotic relationship with the C-suite cadre?
One reason is that culture appears to be another silver bullet. What Drucker meant was that whilst strategy is important, a great culture is a surer route to organisational success. So, get the culture right and everything else will fall into place, right? And to do that, we just have to pull a few levers … oh and look, there’s all these clever guys in smart suits to tell us which ones to pull. If it works, we’re heroes and if it fails, it’s their fault.
There’s also a second, deeper reason. Culture is a way of corralling effort and commitment that is beyond the reach of a transactional agreement. If you are trading labour for money, you will do the minimum to get the job done. You may put in some discretionary effort because it benefits you but it’s your choice. Your commitment is to the pay packet, unless it’s a vocational role like caring or teaching, in which case you may be emotionally committed to those you serve and put in more effort for their sake.
But culture is a means to encourage people to become emotionally committed to the organisation and willingly contribute their discretionary effort. It’s a way to enlist your soul for the benefit of the organisation. Think of all the free work and emotional labour you can get people to contribute to the bottom line. What self-respecting capitalists wouldn’t want to do that?
Too cynical? Look, I want people to have great experiences at work and that means cultures that are positive, nurturing, caring and inclusive. I want those cultures to be created because they are good for the people, because it’s the right way to treat human beings. But I’m not sure that’s what’s behind most culture initiatives right now. Are you?
Blood Brothers
I was listening to the Eat Sleep Work Repeat podcast today, in which James Kerr (author of Legacy) was talking about culture (how timely!). He said that culture is demonstrated by the language, symbols and rituals that are used; and that these represent the principles and behaviours of the culture, which in turn embody the underlying values.
And this is why I love the Pirate Code.
You see, I think talking about values is another thing we get massively wrong about culture, because they are just talk. You can’t point at them (unless they are in a vacuous statement on a wall), you can’t touch them, you can’t smell them. They are abstract concepts - it’s all just mental masturbation, as my old mate Nick would say in his typically blunt northern way.
They also mean a different thing to each person, and each person prioritises them differently. Culture really becomes apparent when two values are in conflict, and people who say they hold the same values may draw different conclusions depending on which they hold most strongly.
So what really matters is how we live those values. Through our way of being, through our behaviour, through the walk we walk. And we define those through language, symbols and rituals.
There are no values in a Pirate Code, there are just principles and behaviours. They are expressed in simple, clear, memorable ways. They are relevant and lead to action. The code is lived and breathed.
The Pirate Code is developed collectively (co-created, to use the jargon) and democratically agreed in a vote. Everyone is consulted, has a voice, and commits to what is agreed. They own it.
Legend (according to Hollywood, at least) says that Pirates of the Golden Age would sign in blood, although that would probably breach health and safety regs today, so some other meaningful ritual can be created to publicly demonstrate agreement.
Culture is complex and ethereal but a Pirate Code is real, tangible and actionable. You can even write it up on the wall - and people will actually read it, refer to it and live it.
And as for symbols, who doesn’t love a skull and crossbones?
Do you agree with me or am I talking bubbles? I’d love to know your thoughts on Culture, so drop me a line or leave a comment.
Great post Colin 🙂
One minor correction: McKinsey’s 7S model isn’t the source of *all* evil - just responsible for a lot of the mess around “Culture”, which it distils down to “Shared Values”. As you point out above, “values” are useless because they’re interpreted in such different ways. But worst of all (back to McKinsey’s toxic legacy now) they allow the conceit that just because we’ve published our “Values” we’ve somehow “fixed” the culture.
Remember McKinsey’s value of “Hjgh ethical standards” didn’t help them avoid being fined $600,000,000 for abysmal ethics in “turbocharging” (their word) opioid sales and contributing to the deaths of 50,000 US citizens per year.