We had our leadership offsite in the US this week and one of the lines mentioned in the culture session is still on top of my mind.
Companies only have strong or weak cultures. You can’t classify them as good vs bad culture.
For example, you can have a culture where you treat everyone as a family. Salesforce is a clear example of this.
In Hawaiian culture, Ohana represents the idea that families — blood-related, adopted, or intentional — are bound together and that family members are responsible for one another. When he created Salesforce in 1999, he made sure that “Ohana” was in the company’s foundations.
https://www.salesforce.com/blog/what-is-salesforce-ohana/
You can have a culture where you treat them as a team (almost like a sports team). In this case, if you don’t perform well, you don’t get to play the next match. Netflix and Snowflake are the best examples of this.
Organizations need to accept that they don’t owe their people anything more than ensuring that the company is making a great product that serves the customer well and on time. They don’t owe people the chance to take on a role they’re not prepared for and don’t have the talents for. They don’t owe them a different job created to reward them for their service. And they certainly don’t owe them holding the company back from making the personnel changes needed to thrive.
Powerful, Patty McCord
Another distinct example is Amazon vs Google. Amazon is known for their frugality and if you want a bottle of water in their office, you can buy it from their kiosk. Google is known for giving free food, massage chairs, and everything else. Both are super successful companies and have defined their strong culture.
Culture is what you already have and are doing. Not what you want to copy from others. Makes me wonder what culture I personally have, what culture the teams I manage have, and what culture the entire company has. Are they one and the same or are they all different? Should they be the same or can they be different? What are the micro-adjustments and macro-corrections we need to make to our culture?
Questions to ponder for the upcoming months.