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I wonder if this is just a strong contrarian streak in me, but I've always been extremely suspicious of "company culture" anywhere I've worked. Almost any real

I wonder if this is just a strong contrarian streak in me, but I've always been extremely suspicious of "company culture" anywhere I've worked. Almost any real culture is implicit; it's not designed. I think it's because growing up watching a lot of cable news, I've learned to be sensitive to narratives that don't have a lot to do with reality, and frequently "culture" and "values" are used to try to suggest a narrative to employees that also has very little to do with reality. I don't need a culture of "integrity" not to do evil things, I have a conscience. Nor do I need a cultural value of "innovation" to come up with new ideas -- a lot of times the pleasure of doing something well is more than enough. It makes me also think about how uncomfortable I felt during high school rallies. I mean, I didn't even particularly choose to be in that place, why should I have "pride" to be part of that institution? And why do I need to express that "pride" by yelling in a mob? I always found it somewhat creepy how easily people went along with all of that. I guess it's better than being lonely.

krapp 12y ago
I have always assumed that one of the reasons for "company culture" is an attempt to foster a cult of personality around the founder(s), as if emulating Steve Jobs or some other hero. A 'culture' you can be fired from is not a culture in any real sense.
- Turing_Machine 12y ago
  Virtually all cultures have mechanisms for "firing" people, ranging from shunning to exile to imprisonment to execution.
  - krapp 12y ago
    Those are ways to remove people from society, or existence, but not necessarily culture. Plenty of groups consider themselves to still be a part of cultures (be they national, or religious, or what have you) from which they've been excised or shunned or geographically isolated. My point was that culture tends to be emergent as much as, if not more than, imposed - in a corporation, the decision of whether or not you belong is binary, either you're hired or you're fired. With culture, the lines can be a lot more vague.
AVTizzle 12y ago
Thinking about it from the perspective of an entrepreneur, even though it's just my co-founder and I and a couple outsourced assistants, I did write down a list values that I wanted to exhibit as a leader in my company. As I see it, it's like writing down your goals. Having them written down isn't the end-all of the matter. But if you write them down, it makes them much more tangible and achievable. Looked at that way, having aspects of "company culture" doesn't mean much on its own. The test is whether the influential people (CEO, vets, etc...) embodying and practicing those points on a daily basis.
- medius 12y ago
  When writing values, it's better to write very concrete examples as well. e.g. If you value "trust", mention that an employee can leave work anytime to attend to their personal matters without showing any proof. The company trusts employees not to abuse this. Write as many examples as possible. I can visualize examples. I can't visualize "trust" or "integrity" or "innovation". Examples help everyone make decisions. Platitudes cannot.
- mempko 12y ago
  Leader isn't a position, it is a role someone plays at a given time. You won't always play that role.
brandonbloom 12y ago
A dirty little secret of HR is that "values" can be a defense against wrongful termination lawsuits. Firing people can be very risky with modern anti-discrimination and employment laws. I've heard a number of horror stories: one from a private dental practice and several from a chain restaurant. Both stories come from individuals I trust when they say the problem employees needed to be fired... but they sue anyway. In the case of the medical practice, the settlement could have been avoided by a 4 page "employee handbook" plus a few written notes about handbook violations. In the chain restaurant stories, some notes citing which "values" the employee failed to personify made for easy dismissals of cases about race or age discrimination.
- perlpimp 12y ago
  Per article I agree that ideological approach to this smells to me like communist/facist and should have no place in it world. I sense these things crop up when you don't have a strong leader who is guiding a company.... my 2c
IgorPartola 12y ago
Depends on the people that are pushing this culture, and how phony the culture is. If the culture is "we always take care of our employees" and the company follows through (think people landing on hard times and the company helping out) or "we never work you into burning out", that can be pretty genuine. If it is "we let you nap in the break room" while underpaying and overworking you or "we provide free soda" while screwing you out of profits, then it is phony. Avoid the phony and be genuine. Best bosses I've had were genuine and took care of their own and those are the places I enjoyed working the most. The CEO that didn't show up for work more than 4 hours a week, then talked about how we are the thought leaders was phony.
afandian 12y ago
What is a high school rally? Do I want to know?
- groovy2shoes 12y ago
  Wikipedia explains it better than I could: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pep_rally http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pep_rally I always found them rather unnerving as well.
- krapp 12y ago
  In my experience, and probably the experience of most high school students who weren't on the football team or dating cheerleaders, it amounts to a free period where you have to jump around and yell and pretend to care about your school's team winning an upcoming game.
  - Crito 12y ago
    In my experience, the whole thing was even more negative for people who were on sports teams, but not in the particular sport who's team was being diefied (almost always American Football, and the corresponding cheerleading team). It was like school administration was explicitly calling out the students that they decided should be popular. Very strange; made even stranger by football not actually being particularly popular in my school (the games always struggled with attendance, the basketball team was far more popular).
pekk 12y ago
If the "real culture" is toxic, what do you suggest? Just saying "oh well"? Firing people until moral improves? This is the kind of reason why companies intentionally try to foster certain traits in their professional culture. Maybe you are a great person and don't need any culture but does that mean that doing nothing is enough?
- dspeyer 12y ago
  I haven't tried it, but http://www.forbes.com/sites/micahsolomon/2013/11/02/quick-truths-for-improved-patient-satisfaction-and-customer-service-from-consulting-in-hospitals-and-healthcare/ http://www.forbes.com/sites/micahsolomon/2013/11/02/quick-tr... seems plausible. You can also shape culture using rules. For example, at Google SRE, there was a rule that after any outage a post-mortem was to be written. It described why the problem happened, why that happened, etc. and how to prevent each level from re-occurring. Things like "it was person X's fault" or "we will be more careful" were forbidden. Fault and fixes had to be in technology or procedure, not people. It helped shape a culture of coming forward with problems and of looking for solutions. It didn't work perfectly, but it helped.
  - marvin 12y ago
    This is incidentally also how air crash investigations work, at least in Europe. Placing blame is never the intention. Focus is always on finding ways to improve the process. This seems like a superior approach in most situations.
amirmc 12y ago
> " I've learned to be sensitive to narratives that don't have a lot to do with reality, and frequently "culture" and "values" are used to try to suggest a narrative to employees that also has very little to do with reality." This is the crux of the problem and the reason it's difficult to talk about organisational culture (and how to foster a healthy one). I suspect many people's first experience of it is the jarring disconnect between purported company 'values' and the actual behaviour that gets rewarded within an organisation (whether that be high-school or the workplace).
calibraxis 12y ago
A corporation's culture isn't defined by its bosses. They attempt to, and have the most power to shape it. But culture is also, "My job sucks, the managers are deluded fucks, and they're fairly successful at hiring obedient-yet-arrogant weasels." It's not defined by the propaganda, though propaganda is part of it.
LordHumungous 12y ago
It's because all too often the "company culture" is a bunch of horse shit designed to keep naive employees working extra hours and accepting low compensation.

krapp 12y ago

I have always assumed that one of the reasons for "company culture" is an attempt to foster a cult of personality around the founder(s), as if emulating Steve Jobs or some other hero. A 'culture' you can be fired from is not a culture in any real sense.

Turing_Machine 12y ago
Virtually all cultures have mechanisms for "firing" people, ranging from shunning to exile to imprisonment to execution.
- krapp 12y ago
  Those are ways to remove people from society, or existence, but not necessarily culture. Plenty of groups consider themselves to still be a part of cultures (be they national, or religious, or what have you) from which they've been excised or shunned or geographically isolated. My point was that culture tends to be emergent as much as, if not more than, imposed - in a corporation, the decision of whether or not you belong is binary, either you're hired or you're fired. With culture, the lines can be a lot more vague.

AVTizzle 12y ago

Thinking about it from the perspective of an entrepreneur, even though it's just my co-founder and I and a couple outsourced assistants, I did write down a list values that I wanted to exhibit as a leader in my company. As I see it, it's like writing down your goals. Having them written down isn't the end-all of the matter. But if you write them down, it makes them much more tangible and achievable. Looked at that way, having aspects of "company culture" doesn't mean much on its own. The test is whether the influential people (CEO, vets, etc...) embodying and practicing those points on a daily basis.

medius 12y ago
When writing values, it's better to write very concrete examples as well. e.g. If you value "trust", mention that an employee can leave work anytime to attend to their personal matters without showing any proof. The company trusts employees not to abuse this. Write as many examples as possible. I can visualize examples. I can't visualize "trust" or "integrity" or "innovation". Examples help everyone make decisions. Platitudes cannot.
mempko 12y ago
Leader isn't a position, it is a role someone plays at a given time. You won't always play that role.

brandonbloom 12y ago

A dirty little secret of HR is that "values" can be a defense against wrongful termination lawsuits. Firing people can be very risky with modern anti-discrimination and employment laws. I've heard a number of horror stories: one from a private dental practice and several from a chain restaurant. Both stories come from individuals I trust when they say the problem employees needed to be fired... but they sue anyway. In the case of the medical practice, the settlement could have been avoided by a 4 page "employee handbook" plus a few written notes about handbook violations. In the chain restaurant stories, some notes citing which "values" the employee failed to personify made for easy dismissals of cases about race or age discrimination.

perlpimp 12y ago
Per article I agree that ideological approach to this smells to me like communist/facist and should have no place in it world. I sense these things crop up when you don't have a strong leader who is guiding a company.... my 2c

IgorPartola 12y ago

Depends on the people that are pushing this culture, and how phony the culture is. If the culture is "we always take care of our employees" and the company follows through (think people landing on hard times and the company helping out) or "we never work you into burning out", that can be pretty genuine. If it is "we let you nap in the break room" while underpaying and overworking you or "we provide free soda" while screwing you out of profits, then it is phony. Avoid the phony and be genuine. Best bosses I've had were genuine and took care of their own and those are the places I enjoyed working the most. The CEO that didn't show up for work more than 4 hours a week, then talked about how we are the thought leaders was phony.

afandian 12y ago

What is a high school rally? Do I want to know?

groovy2shoes 12y ago
Wikipedia explains it better than I could: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pep_rally http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pep_rally I always found them rather unnerving as well.
krapp 12y ago
In my experience, and probably the experience of most high school students who weren't on the football team or dating cheerleaders, it amounts to a free period where you have to jump around and yell and pretend to care about your school's team winning an upcoming game.
- Crito 12y ago
  In my experience, the whole thing was even more negative for people who were on sports teams, but not in the particular sport who's team was being diefied (almost always American Football, and the corresponding cheerleading team). It was like school administration was explicitly calling out the students that they decided should be popular. Very strange; made even stranger by football not actually being particularly popular in my school (the games always struggled with attendance, the basketball team was far more popular).

pekk 12y ago

If the "real culture" is toxic, what do you suggest? Just saying "oh well"? Firing people until moral improves? This is the kind of reason why companies intentionally try to foster certain traits in their professional culture. Maybe you are a great person and don't need any culture but does that mean that doing nothing is enough?

dspeyer 12y ago
I haven't tried it, but http://www.forbes.com/sites/micahsolomon/2013/11/02/quick-truths-for-improved-patient-satisfaction-and-customer-service-from-consulting-in-hospitals-and-healthcare/ http://www.forbes.com/sites/micahsolomon/2013/11/02/quick-tr... seems plausible. You can also shape culture using rules. For example, at Google SRE, there was a rule that after any outage a post-mortem was to be written. It described why the problem happened, why that happened, etc. and how to prevent each level from re-occurring. Things like "it was person X's fault" or "we will be more careful" were forbidden. Fault and fixes had to be in technology or procedure, not people. It helped shape a culture of coming forward with problems and of looking for solutions. It didn't work perfectly, but it helped.
- marvin 12y ago
  This is incidentally also how air crash investigations work, at least in Europe. Placing blame is never the intention. Focus is always on finding ways to improve the process. This seems like a superior approach in most situations.

amirmc 12y ago

> " I've learned to be sensitive to narratives that don't have a lot to do with reality, and frequently "culture" and "values" are used to try to suggest a narrative to employees that also has very little to do with reality." This is the crux of the problem and the reason it's difficult to talk about organisational culture (and how to foster a healthy one). I suspect many people's first experience of it is the jarring disconnect between purported company 'values' and the actual behaviour that gets rewarded within an organisation (whether that be high-school or the workplace).

calibraxis 12y ago

A corporation's culture isn't defined by its bosses. They attempt to, and have the most power to shape it. But culture is also, "My job sucks, the managers are deluded fucks, and they're fairly successful at hiring obedient-yet-arrogant weasels." It's not defined by the propaganda, though propaganda is part of it.

LordHumungous 12y ago

It's because all too often the "company culture" is a bunch of horse shit designed to keep naive employees working extra hours and accepting low compensation.