{"id":184,"date":"2010-06-10T11:00:50","date_gmt":"2010-06-10T18:00:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.danshapiro.com\/blog\/?p=184"},"modified":"2010-06-10T00:52:39","modified_gmt":"2010-06-10T07:52:39","slug":"your-company-culture-is-a-meaningless-platitude","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.danshapiro.com\/blog\/2010\/06\/your-company-culture-is-a-meaningless-platitude\/","title":{"rendered":"Your company culture is a meaningless platitude"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Johnny<\/a>In this envelope, I have your Company Culture.<\/p>\n

We work hard, but value work\/life balance. <\/em><\/p>\n

We’re a team culture and we believe in individual empowerment. <\/em><\/p>\n

We give back to the community, and have strong ethics. <\/em><\/p>\n

We hire only the best people, support diversity, and promote growth and leadership in our employee ranks. <\/em><\/p>\n

And more than anything we value our customers, our stockholders, and our employees.
\n<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

That’s right – you’re GE<\/a>! Or Wells Fargo<\/a>.\u00a0 Or Zillow<\/a>…<\/p>\n

Company Culture is a very serious matter, put together after much employee feedback and deliberation, and carefully designed to capture the key things that make your company great.\u00a0 It’s also a load of well-mixed fertilizer.<\/p>\n

The Rule of Company Culture: It’s what makes your company different, not what makes it great.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Hire the best, teamwork, ethics… all meaningless platitudes.\u00a0 Real company cultures are made of four things:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Polarizing decisions<\/li>\n
  2. Excesses<\/li>\n
  3. Quirks<\/li>\n
  4. Dysfunctions<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    \"Firmly<\/a>Polarizing decisions<\/strong> are what happens when a company decides not to compromise between two equally compelling but opposing imperatives.\u00a0 Every company strikes a balance between work and play; that’s not company culture.\u00a0 Company culture is investment banking’s mandatory 95 hour work weeks<\/a> or Jackson Fish Market’s 12 weeks of vacation<\/a>.\u00a0 Every company has a balance of teamwork and individual contributorship – culture is ruthlessly pitting your people and teams<\/a> against each other, or firing your best people<\/a> because they’re not effective team members.\u00a0 Other balances include great benefits versus lean operations, customers versus stockholders versus employees, and cheap products versus innovative quality products.\u00a0 If you find yourself saying “we can do it all”, that’s great!\u00a0 And you’re right, sort of.\u00a0 Your attempts at balance are admirable and may be successful, but do not constitute a corporate culture.\u00a0 That only comes from taking a stand on one end of the see-saw.<\/p>\n

    Excesses<\/strong> are aspects of culture that happen when companies take an indubitably good thing to its extreme.\u00a0 For example, every company tries to hire great people.\u00a0 But some will leave a position open for nine months, miss deadlines, and work its existing employees in to borderline revolt before hiring someone who’s even the tiniest compromise.\u00a0 Every company should give back to the community, but there’s a line between a matching gifts program and Ben & Jerry’s that’s not easy to miss.\u00a0 “Openness” is great – do the employees see the detailed company financials, and get notified when cash reserves are running low?\u00a0 Corporate culture is what occurs in the margins when someone asks – “Well, I know that’s good, but isn’t it a bit much?”<\/p>\n

    Quirks<\/strong> are the safe, friendly, harmless, and most companies screw them up too.\u00a0 A quirk is some point of weird distinction, neither wonderful nor terrible, that is distinct to the company and integral to the employee experience.\u00a0 Casual fridays are policy; Dress Like Raymond Day<\/a> is a quirk. When the company picks up your nighttime MBA, that’s a great benefit – but when Teachstreet (a company that helps people find local and online classes<\/a>) gets its employees together to learn how to build kites<\/a>, now that’s a quirk.\u00a0 It’s not to say that corporate mandates can’t make great quirks, although the best ones often arise spontaneously from the teams themselves.\u00a0 But great quirks take their power from the team, their distinctiveness, and the culture itself.<\/p>\n

    There’s one more aspect of corporate culture that’s important if you’re measuring rather than designing: the Dysfunction<\/strong>.\u00a0 A dysfunction is the mirror image of an excess – not enough of something that’s important.\u00a0 Every company has problems, and most of the problems are present to some degree everywhere.\u00a0 Those aren’t dysfunctions.\u00a0 A dysfunction creeps in to the corporate culture when it’s distinctive and impactful – much like a positive culture trait.\u00a0 Typical dysfunctions include management and employee antipathy, severe lack of ethics, and disregard for customers.\u00a0 You know them when you see them. One thing that may not be obvious – sometimes a dysfunction is a direct causal result of the company culture.\u00a0 Backstabbing and rumor-mongering may be the price you pay for rewarding individual initiative and achievement.\u00a0 A general lack of spending discipline may be the unwanted side effect of generous benefits and an employee-first culture.<\/p>\n

    The great corporate cultures are a simple mix: a few polarizing decisions or excesses, with a handful of quirks mixed in.\u00a0 Preferably quirks that reinforce the rest of the culture.<\/p>\n

    Later, I’ll post a bit about some examples of company cultures and guidelines on how to be deliberate in creating one.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    In this envelope, I have your Company Culture. We work hard, but value work\/life balance. We’re a team culture and we believe in individual empowerment. We give back to the community, and…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-184","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-startups"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danshapiro.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/184","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danshapiro.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danshapiro.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danshapiro.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danshapiro.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=184"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.danshapiro.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/184\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":190,"href":"https:\/\/www.danshapiro.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/184\/revisions\/190"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danshapiro.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=184"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danshapiro.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=184"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danshapiro.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=184"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}