Summary

When we leave cultural characteristics open to interpretation, we run the risk of creating toxic cultures. The loudest voices usually undermine diversity. It makes more sense for distributed organisations to do the boring work of defining culture. It isn’t as sexy as a secret sauce, but writing things up fosters a consistent and healthy culture.

In recent years, I’ve become sceptical about the notion of corporate culture. To be clear, I see value in cultivating a healthy culture. However, most companies I’ve observed from the inside or the outside, relegate culture to brochureware. Sometimes this is by design, sometimes by accident, and most often through a lack of care and rigour.

For the most part, it needn’t make a difference. Work is work and many of us can look at our employment as good enough jobs. The trouble is, that when the idea of culture is limited to brochureware, it inevitably also becomes a weapon. Back in the day, Samuel Johnson famously said, “Patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel.” I wouldn’t go as far as to say that about culture. But when cultures go rotten, culture becomes the last refuge of both the naysayer and the salesperson. If you have an influential voice, then you can stop anything from happening, in the name of culture. You can also push any change you like, using an argument about culture.

This week I spent some time thinking about why cultures go rotten. I have a theory I want to share with you.

The layers that define culture

There are many models to explain organisational cultures. Edgar Schein’s iceberg model is a popular one. The model breaks culture down into three layers. It’s most visible layer is that of practices - the things you do. The middle layer includes values; i.e. the things that companies consider important. And in theory, the bottommost layer holds the company's underlying beliefs about how the world works. The higher levels of this pyramid are more visible than the lower layers. That’s also why we call this the iceberg model - there’s often more to an organisation’s culture than meets the eye. The lack of visibility is also why cultures go rotten.

If we can’t see it, we imagine it

In theory, Schein’s model is benign. However, when we accept that a majority of cultural characteristics aren’t tangible, culture becomes open to interpretation. As companies get bigger, everyone interprets values and beliefs as they find convenient. This is fine if you have a sufficiently diverse organisation, and everyone has a voice. Diversity is usually a perfect antidote to extreme, toxic, regressive and fringe viewpoints. 

But regardless of whether we like it, every organisation has power asymmetries. Invariably, the most powerful voices push their interpretations of values and underlying assumptions. Sometimes these interpretations are fair. Often, such interpretations can be self-serving and myopic. Before you know it, interpretations of culture become weapons and the work environment turns toxic. This is as true of corporations as it is true of politics.

Leave nothing to imagination

Defining your culture in as much detail as possible is less sexy than calling it your “secret sauce”. So I’ve found Clay Christensen’s model of defining culture, more tangible than that of Edgar Schien’s. You can imagine Christensen’s model as three layers, similar to those in Schein’s model. However, Christensen’s model includes:

• resources or assets that a company uses to do business;

• processes that use these resources;

• and values that help people decide when they execute their processes.

You’ll notice that this model loses the “underlying beliefs” that form the foundation of Schein’s theory. That takes away a huge, invisible part of the way we understand culture. But that still isn’t the end all. Values are equally open to interpretation. Let’s say your company values “transparency”. You could interpret it as “sharing all information openly”. Someone else could interpret it as “giving feedback in as open a setting as possible”. The latter behaviour can create a toxic, unsafe place to work. 

Distributed organisations gain from clarity. I spoke about this on a recent podcast episode with Pilar Orti - intentionality is the key to running distributed organisations. If you lead a distributed team, you must describe your processes clearly. Similarly, if you lead a distributed organisation, it’s your responsibility to describe value-aligned behaviours. Solicit people’s input if you must. Hedge your stance and keep things open for change, if you have to. Do all of that, but please, write things up! This is something we can learn from GitLab. Their values aren’t mere brochureware. They list 100 odd value-aligned behaviours to explain how they’d like to operate their company.

Of course, writing things up isn’t the endgame. But when you describe your culture this way, you level the playing field between employees. Regardless of power asymmetries, everyone can describe value-aligned behaviour consistently. You leave little to interpretation and imagination. And when you learn about a tension you haven’t addressed yet, it’s time to improve your documentation. That’s how you can grow your culture, without letting it go rotten.

Before I went on vacation, I recorded a podcast episode with the wonderful Pilar Orti. Amongst other topics, we discussed why running a distributed organisation needs more intentional efforts than a reliance on happy accidents. Therefore the async-first manifesto values “intentional actions over serendipitous success”. 

I encourage you to listen to my conversation with Pilar if this idea of “intentionality” makes you curious. And coming back to culture, let me ask you what you think. If you had to define a company’s culture, how much would you leave to imagination? What would you document? What are your experiences with healthy cultures? In contrast, how have you seen cultures go rotten? I’d love to hear from you - here, on LinkedIn or one-on-one!