4 ms·
Companies are a means to an end. That end isn’t making employees lives endlessly blissful. Of course, miserable employees lead to lots of problems but nonethele
by bradleyjg 6y ago
Companies are a means to an end. That end isn’t making employees lives endlessly blissful. Of course, miserable employees lead to lots of problems but nonetheless it is mistaking the proxy for the outcome to say that employees are the only relevant judges of company culture.
- alex_g 6y agoWho else should be judging a company’s culture?
- jlund-molfese 6y agoCustomers should definitely be part of it. A company might be a great, egalitarian place to work, but have a predatory business model.
- birdyrooster 6y agoHow do customers learn about the corporate culture? Do they have a complete enough picture to focus on their voice? Employees are often customers of their company and have a more wholistic view of the culture.
- bradleyjg 6y agoThere’s no vote to determine whether or not a company’s culture is good. We have to look at outcomes and then work backwards. Customers play a key role in those outcomes, and therefore determining whether a culture is good or not, despite not knowing anything about it.
- j4yav 6y agoCouldn’t you have a quite terrible culture that delivers results through illegal means or coercion that would pass this test?
- bradleyjg 6y agoI personally don’t think such a system would be competitive over the long term. I look at the most totalitarian countries, that use widespread coercion to encourage productivity, and notice that they aren’t wildly successful from an economic output point of view.
- theevilsharpie 6y agoAs a customer, I can tell a lot about a company's culture by: - Their sales process. (Is it high pressure? Do they know what they're selling? How do they handle aspects of their product/service that is weak relative to competitors?) - Who is actually targeted by the sales process. (Do they actively try to court technical individual contributors, or do they try to bypass them and pitch directly to leadership?) - Their support process. (Do the support reps know the product? Are escalations handled quickly? Are conversations organic, or is it so scripted that you may as well be talking to a robot?) - General product development. (Are product iterations delivered to market in a timely and consistent manner? Is it a quality product [i.e., does it work as advertised]? Does it seem like there's a consistent vision and design language for the product?) - General employee sentiment? (Do you have a long-term company contact, or does it seem like your contact changes on a monthly basis? What's the general mood of the people you interact with [i.e., one person may just be having a bad day, but a consistent coldness suggests something more systemic]? Are high-level people generally leaving or joining the company?)
- prepend 6y agoCustomers, shareholders, competitors. The goal of good culture, I think, is to create great products. If the employees are all ecstatic and the products suck for customers then I won’t buy them. Similarly if capital returns or poor then as a shareholder I won’t invest.
- asdfasgasdgasdg 6y agoIt seems to me like the goal of any particular culture -- by which I mean the effort of trying to create any particular culture -- will necessarily be in the eye of the beholder. Owners will be looking to maximize profit. Employees will be looking to enjoy their jobs. Customers will be looking for good service.
- bradleyjg 6y agoIf the customers don’t buy anything eventually the company goes under and there’s no pie for owners, managers, and workers to divide up. Well, at least unless a government endlessly bails it out, but then the government is de facto the customer.
- asdfasgasdgasdg 6y agoSure, but there are many different configurations that are sustainable and yet maximize different goals subject to the goal of sustainability.
- Grustaf 6y agoWho decided what the end is? It would seem that when society accepted the legal construct of the corporation, it was not because the man in the street felt that there had to be a way for capitalists to get even richer. And still to this day, if you ask the man in the street why we have corporations, I don’t think the answer will be that. But you are right, many executives tend to agree with your point of view. That’s probably the single largest problem in society today.
- kardianos 6y agoLiterally the owner(s) of the company decide.
- ramphastidae 6y agoThe purpose of a business is to make money. Corporations are a type of business with basically the same goal. I think this is pretty well understood by the general public.
- neolog 6y ago> The purpose of a business is to make money. A business does a lot of things. No need to restrict the "purpose" to just one thing.
- bradleyjg 6y ago> That’s probably the single largest problem in society today. What an amazing world where the single largest problem isn’t war, famine, or pestilence. We dun good.