If you google “culture”, you’ll find this definition in the search snapshot (emphasis added):
A culture is a way of life of a group of people--the behaviours, beliefs, values, and symbols that they accept, generally without thinking about them, and that are passed along by communication and imitation from one generation to the next [1]
It’s a great overarching summary.
As applied to an organisation, Brian Chesky (Airbnb) summaries culture as:
...Culture is simply a shared way of doing something with passion [2]
Consider, for a moment, if you were to ask 5-10 of your employees/colleagues what the culture at your company was like, what might you expect to hear? Would you hear something with a consistent theme? That doesn’t take much effort in recalling? Or would most folks have to think really hard about it? Would you hear widely divergent views?
Even young startups that haven’t invested a whole lot of time in thinking through and formalising their culture, tend to have a culture, shaped by values that flow from the founders and their life experiences. As long as they still find time to get involved in all hiring and day-2-day decision making, they can ensure that the folks they hire and decisions taken align with the value system they practice thereby maintaining the desired culture at their company.
Sometimes even large public companies don’t do too well in communicating to potential candidates about the core values that have helped them create the culture they pride themselves on. For example, here’s what Microsoft (IDC) says about its work culture: “Fast paced, challenging, and a whole lot of fun—that is how our employees describe the work culture at MSIDC….” [3]. Contrast this with the much clearer articulation of their values by Zappos [4]. Indeed, it’s rare to find companies that invest in codifying their culture, leave alone creating one that’s unique and differentiated.
More than what meets the eye
I have occasionally come across companies that project their culture as youthful. That can be a reflection of their employee demographic, but that shouldn’t be mistaken as culture. Being youthful doesn’t necessarily influence your decision making or day to day functioning. What your organisation might value is an entrepreneurial spirit that encourages bold calculated risk-taking, which may have manifested in hiring a predominantly younger demographic. So, the culture might be entrepreneurial, certainly not youthful.
Values
Culture is a manifestation of the underlying value system. For example: A culture of diversity results from a value system that encourages and looks for diverse perspectives (and candidates). Just as, a culture of customer obsession results from how you listen and respond to customer feedback. A culture of exceptionalism results from a value framework that’s never satisfied with being just great. A “fast-paced” culture values quick incremental delivery over big-bang releases. Culture when codified and disseminated as core values gets internalised in day-2-day functioning. In an organisation with a strong culture, you are likely to have had the opportunity to employ the prescribed values, in your decision making. You (attempt to) create a culture by picking (and practising) the values that are most important to you.
Shared understanding
A codified and well understood culture provides a shared framework of values that enables autonomous decision making. It allows an organisation to scale while maintaining its ethos. Consider, for example, you are evaluating between a decision that might impact consumer experience and one that might promote better business outcomes, which option do you go with? Are there values you can fallback on to derive a suitable outcome? Or do you have to consult the head of some division for this? If so, your value system is either not widely disseminated, practised or well understood. (Note though, that still doesn’t preclude you from keeping stakeholders informed. But because the rationale is aligned with the value framework, you are unlikely to be on different pages with the outcome)
Brings focus
Frugality, for example, is widely regarded as a core value to everything Amazon does, it’s part of its cultural fabric. Frugality is embedded in the belief that every little savings can and should be passed back to the consumer. While that may seem a little extreme to prospective employees, if it means sitting at makeshift door-desk rather than an ergonomic one [5], that kind of extremism sends a clear unambiguous message about the organisational culture. It helps your organisation attract candidates with similar values to fit your culture. It also provides a laser-sharp focus in your day-2-day functioning that makes the priorities and operational modalities unambiguous throughout the organisation.
Real vs Aspirational
Your culture should reflect what you are today, rather than what you aspire to be. For example, you might want to imbibe a “fast-paced” culture but in reality you are still following a waterfall development model. While it’s good to have an aspirational view of how you want to evolve your culture, being upfront about the existing culture can attract the right candidates, who can bring their relevant experiences to help you see through that transition.
Investing in culture
Given everything else that early stage companies have to sort through, it’s no surprise that a lot of startups (in India, particularly) don’t place a lot of emphasis on codifying their culture. Part of reason for this can also be that the culture is fast evolving with the formative team as it goes through the early phases. If as a founder, you think you have reached the scale where you can’t be personally involved in hiring (to evaluate a culture fit) or day-2-day decision making, then you need to sit down and communicate to your team about the organisational culture. Culture evolves from the values you preach (and practise). A value system that’s not well articulated and understood, can create serious bottlenecks in execution as the organisation scales, resulting in frequent occurrences of expectation / reality mismatches, a general perception of arbitrariness in decision making, low employee morale etc. It’s widely accepted that a strong culture is a key ingredient of any enduring organisation.
So, the next time you are interviewing, make sure, when you get the opportunity to ask questions of the interviewer, you ask each one of them, what’s the culture at that company like? Don’t leave this question for HR. Be wary of companies where you hear varied responses, it might indicative of a place that hasn’t put much emphasis on building a common understanding of the values towards building a coherent culture. Probe the interviewers on the values, asking them for instances where those values helped them in decision making and otherwise helps them in day-2-day functioning. If, for example, one of the company core values is employee growth and learning, ask them about the institutions they put in place to enable that. You’ll be able to weed out the ones that pay lip-service to their core values from those that are truly focused on building an organisation that endures. Be aware, when employees at organisations (having reached a reasonable scale) don’t have a clear understanding of the value system in place, you’ll likely experience (some combination of) uncertainties in direction, inconsistencies in decision making and execution bottlenecks across various functions. Not having a codified culture doesn’t make the place less worthy, but at least you know whether that environment would be a right fit for you based on your aspirations and experience.
[1] https://www.tamu.edu/faculty/choudhury/culture.html
[2] https://medium.com/@bchesky/dont-fuck-up-the-culture-597cde9ee9d4#.b9auw8wrk
[3] https://www.microsoft.com/en-in/msidc/life-at-msidc/work-culture.aspx
[4] http://www.zappos.com/d/about-zappos-culture
[5] http://glinden.blogspot.in/2006/01/early-amazon-door-desks.html