A Tale of Two Cultures

Culture 1

A division of the company decided after reading some articles and hearing some speakers that it needed to invest in "cultural changes".

It commissioned an (internal to the one division) cross-functional team to establish the principles of the culture. They put together a list of topics... the team who generated the list didn't fully agree on them, but worked really hard to come to a compromise that everyone finally signed off on. The bullet points were somewhat reflective of actual behaviors and somewhat aspirational.

An announcement was made to great fanfare with promotional materials and awards banquets and little trophies to be handed out to the winners each year when people were nominated by their peers (and subsequently approved by management) to be great examples of one bullet point or another. A few people really bought into the idea and used the principles as framing for discussions but by and large, the list was just a pretty frame on the wall.

Culture 2

The company realized as it was growing that it needed to codify the behaviors that the small, original, close-knit team had most appreciated about each other.

They assembled a team of folks from across the whole company who helped narrow the focus and condense the message to a short memorable list. Their list described actual behaviors that they wanted to continue doing as new people joined rather than ideals to which they aspired.

An announcement went out that there was a new required training course to understand the new list of principles. It was presented by the CEO, and recorded for replay as a required viewing by every new employee. Further, the company allocated budget to build a way for employees to recognize each other for things that exemplify the items on the list. It sends the person a small gift and a short writeup that gets shared with the management chain of the person who's being recognized to explain why they were shouting them out. The hiring team implemented the list of principles in their hiring practices and specifically framed the discussions with candidates around these topics. People who led projects or teams used the principles to guide discussions about decisions to be made. All of the company's strategy and priorities and focus began to be done through the lens of their list of principles, because the principles described the behaviors that already existed to some extent and were desired to continue.

Which company created "culture"?

Sorry, that was a trick question. The answer is BOTH. Because "culture" isn't some mystical-energy frippery like the Force. "Culture" (note the quotation marks, I'll dig into this later) is created with literally every decision that's made, with every word that's spoken, with every action taken. It's a summation of who we are, whether that's on a micro individual scale or across the whole of the company.

To put a finer point on it: The first company above created a culture of lip service to the things that matter. They said they supported some ideals, and even went as far as enumerating them... but then that's where it stopped. The follow-through was weak and ill-coordinated. The second company above strives to live their values authentically. They incorporate intentional discussion into everything they do to ensure that decisions being made align to those values that they've claimed to hold.

So why do you keep putting "culture" in quotes?

The epiphany I'd like to share with you is that we (even I) have been going about this "culture" thing all wrong. Yes, the "culture" of our company needs to grow and evolve and adapt. Yes, it's critical that we learn these lessons quickly, before we're disrupted, and before we ruin our relationship with everyone who works here.

But "culture" can't be separated from other aspects of the business. It isn't compartmentalizable like that. And THAT's the part where we're falling down... we're trying to make it some sort of "other" entity that's not related to what we do day to day.

The Secret

I've sat in many meetings bemoaning the idea that "we can't fix that because it's a cultural problem". Or stating the cop-out position that "The Company can't control the culture". (Note: I call this a cop-out because of poor word choice: no, they don't control it, but the implication is that they have no responsibility for culture just because they don't control every aspect of it - they CAN and DO change and influence it!!!)

Here's the secret to changing "culture". Everything you do and say, every way you act... all that stuff affects "culture" constantly. The problem with changing culture is that we naturally resist change.

The Secret to culture change, then, is not in the "culture" as much as it is in the "change".

The Parable of the Change Agent

Once upon a time, a man went fishing. He had a pole with a string tied to the end, and a small metal hook. He spent the whole day with his hook in the water and caught one fish.

He went home, and read a book written by a professional fisherman. He went back to the pond with his pole, and dangled the hook in the water all day again. He still caught only one fish.

He took a few months to study the biological features of the fish, learned their likes and dislikes, learned how to find out where they'd be at certain times of day, and became an absolute authority on fish. He went back to the pond with his pole, and dangled the hook in the water all day again. He still caught only one fish.

Y'all, this is exactly the approach that we take with cultural change. We read about it, study it, preach about it, write blogs on it (yes I'm preaching to myself here too!)... and then proceed to do the same old thing and wonder why we didn't get better results.

For example: we decide we're going to "do an Agile Transformation". To paraphrase how Jez Humble famously put it, we pretty much change nothing except having our meetings standing up... and then we wonder why we haven't seen the improvements we were promised. Why is this surprising???

The Secret to Changing Culture is Not to Change the Culture

A common pattern in development teams goes something like this:

• We deployed something.
• It caused a major outage.
• We respond by requiring a signoff to proceed - someone to accept the risk.
• We deploy again, this time waiting for the approval.
• Something totally different breaks and causes a major outage.
• We respond by adding in additional approvals; someone different was unaware of the change and that's what caused the outage.
• We deploy again, this time waiting for 2 approvals.
• Something totally different breaks and causes a major outage...

Our goal here is admirable... we want to be able to deploy without major outages. Our solution to the problem isn't helping us, though. Just like the fisherman of the parable, we just keep on going back to the pond and dangling the hook in there, obliviously.

Here's where it gets really weird though - all along the way, our team is picking up cultural cues!

• "We have to wait for ____'s approval because we had an outage last week."
• "There's a new change request form we have to fill out and submit by Tuesday in order to be allowed to deploy this week."
• "We can't start the deployment unless Susan's team is on the call, they're the ones who are authorized to press the start button."

We think we're making things safer. But what we're really doing is teaching the team that we don't value their ability to get things done in a timely fashion. Every change makes it harder and slower to deliver... and our team is learning from this firsthand!

What do we do now?

Let's envision culture not as something that's being created, like a building. You see, you can pause the construction of a building and walk away to work on other things, and then come back to it.

Let's think of it as something that's being shaped and molded, like a lump of clay. The clay is on the wheel, and once it comes off it won't be fit to shape anymore. There's no pausing for a "special pottery initiative" where we'll fix up the pot later; we have this one chance to shape it.

What will we do?