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We’ve spilled a lot of digital ink on different kinds of cultures over the last few months. Coming into this project, I had the bud of an idea informed by my own experiences that I wanted to test through the work of writing-as-exploration of culture. I don’t think we’ve stumbled across anything that undermines the hypothesis, so I want to share it, half-formed as it may be.
Here’s the hot take: There is no such thing as a bad organizational culture.*
Inconsistency is bad. Lack of clarity is bad. Thoughtlessness is bad. But if a culture is well-considered, consistent, and clearly communicated to prospective and current team members, different cultures are just… different, and few choices are unequivocally bad.
This feels similar to the framing we sometimes hear around feedback: There’s no such thing as bad feedback. Even feedback you feel is quite literally incorrect has something to teach you.
That doesn’t mean every manager is good. It doesn’t mean that every person is a good fit at every company at every moment. There are, without question, cultures out there that would make you (or me!) absolutely miserable on a daily basis.
So what? The takeaway that matters here is that organizational cultures should not attempt to be all things to all people. Over the last few decades, we’ve seen a distinct shift toward (and maybe now, slowly, away from) companies framing their work as lofty, heady, world-changing, as a way to lure idealistic, mostly-young employees who truly and deeply do care about doing purposeful work. But too often these cultural expectations set by organizations simply fall apart when put to the test, especially over time, and especially as businesses mature, because leadership teams are unwilling or unable to acknowledge that the culture may need to shift (or that it already has)—and that change is okay.
So if we truly boil it down to a few rules for culture, I don’t think it gets much more simple than:
Be honest.
Evolve when you need to.
When you need to, see number 1.
If you can get these right, there’s not a lot you can’t choose for your company and your culture. There are cultures out there that make incredibly shocking choices among their peers, find incredible success, and are able to flex when needed. Consider:
Netflix’s Keeper test (failure of which results in a “generous severance package”)
Snowflake’s intense performance culture (rigorous beyond most in big tech)
Zappos’ turn toward (and then away from) holacracy (RIP)
Radically different, all three companies know exactly who they are. All have made choices to evolve (or not to) based on the conditions inside of and beyond the company. And all have maintained cultural clarity along the way.
This is as simple as a cultural blueprint gets. It starts with that first principle: Be honest. So, what’s true about your culture today? How clear have you been about it with the people around you? And how would you know if it needed to change?
*With very very few, and mostly illegal, exceptions.