Culture (/ˈkʌltʃər/) is an umbrella term which encompasses the social behavior, institutions, and norms found in human societies, as well as the knowledge, beliefs, arts, laws, customs, capabilities, and habits of the individuals in these groups.[1] Culture is often originated from or attributed to a specific region or location.
Humans acquire culture through the learning processes of enculturation and socialization, which is shown by the diversity of cultures across societies.
A cultural norm codifies acceptable conduct in society; it serves as a guideline for behavior, dress, language, and demeanor in a situation, which serves as a template for expectations in a social group.
Wikipedia:: Culture
Your Company Has Something,
But Culture Ain’t It
I’ve been inside more than my fair share of companies. Each thinks they have a unique culture. A couple of them – family-owned-and-run bidnisses that were more dysfunctional than a ranching family during a feud – certainly had a culture. If you define culture as the thing growing in the petri dish that can kill you if you touch it, they had a culture.
Every company thinks they have a superior culture. If they don’t even have a culture they can’t have a superior culture. They’re mistaking pathology for culture.
But even those companies that tout their culture in their recruitment and sales brochures have something other than a social or community culture. They just stole the term to make it sound like they had a friendly place to work or considered the customer over the bottom line. And let this be a lesson to you: if a company ever waves the culture flag, run. Run because they don’t have anything.
They’re hoping you fall for the Emperor’s New Clothes one more time. But you can’t be that gullible if you’re running.
Let’s ponder a reminder of why companies exist. (The list follows.)
- To make a profit
There. That’s it. And why would this be such a cold and heartless raison d’être? Because if they don’t make a profit they can’t stay in bidniss. And if they can’t stay in bidniss, they can’t do anything else!
Every company thinks they have a superior culture. If they don’t even have a culture they can’t have a superior culture. They’re mistaking pathology for culture.
What is a Corporate Culture Pathology
It’s a fact: nobody knows what they’re talking about when they say silly things like “corporate culture.”
Ask ’em to define it. You get something historic, like the following:
I know it when I see it.
United States Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart describing his threshold for obscenity; Jacobellis v. Ohio, 1964
Justice Stewart could not define it (but he was talking about something easier to define than culture). He had to see it first. It’s easier to see if you know the signs.
Banners on the Wall
Banners will tout things like bumper sticker slogans purporting to espouse the company’s values. Things like:
- Trust is built on transparency
- We’ll never tell a lie; honest
- Hearing comes from listening
- We treat you like family
- Half of everything we do is 50 percent of our effort
- We’re not done until you run out of money
- Ours goes to 11
Cute Coffee Cups
A company has a culture if it’s got a fancy logo on coffee cups it gives to people to make them think they’re special. The cost of a coffee cup – even one with a logo – is so much cheaper than another dollar per hour. It also serves as a tangible substitute for taking the time to actually talk to people.
The easiest way to create a corporate culture is to steal it from someone else; like the SEALs or astronauts.
Having special coffee cups made up to hand out at mandatory company off-sites lets long-timers collect the set and show a higher commitment to the avowed corporate values. It’s called Culture Signaling.
Those with four different coffee cups will be clearly seen as more acculturated than those with just three.
Monthly Company Lunches
Time to eat pasta or sub sandwiches with your close, personal friends at work enforces the corporate culture. Especially when the lunches are mandatory; which they are.
It’s a special time for one of the executives to talk about his recent flight in first class where he was able to convince his two-hour friend of all the wonderful attributes of the company while doing his darnedest to convince you, too.
The lunch is too short for camaraderie, offers no common experience except indigestion, and seats everyone at the kids’ tables has become one of the hallmarks of a vibrant culture. But they do have bland, free food. It’s not culture, but it’s a tangible benefit; regardless of how small.
Pretending to Be Like Somebody Else
The easiest way to create a corporate culture is to steal it from someone else; like the SEALs or astronauts. A rich field from which to steal cultures comes from fiction. Stealing someone else’s invented culture proves far easier if the actual story taken from a book has already been perverted into some movie script like Lord of the Rings, or Top Gun. This confers extant visuals for HR to leverage.
Which one of you wants to be Gollum?
Corporate culture will never exist because culture – true culture – grows organically from the roots, not from the crown.
These are double-plus-ungood examples where the company didn’t just decide to steal an idea, they decided to steal an idea that’s been corrupted by the first guys who stole the idea.
This shows original thinking.
Lots of companies like sports teams — not a real sports team, but a whole sport: like football (American or real, your choice), baseball, hockey, luge… whatever. (My favorite is curling; what a vibrant culture!)
Don’t expect anyone to start paying the employees like Golden Gloves First-Basers, though. The metaphor stops at the pay stub.
The Stake in the Heart of Corporate Culture
Corporate culture will never exist because culture – true culture – grows organically from the roots, not from the crown.
If a company grows to be of a particular size, there may exist sects or factions of people from isolated or silo’d branches. Depending on the cunning and isolation and the dependency on long-term stagnation, the culture of a sect can be quite corrosive. It’s never beneficial.
Sometimes these cultures eat at the very heart of whatever good still exists – or once existed – in the company. Nobody in their right mind should ever want this kind of culture. And yet…
Contract Culture
One of the most corrosive and dysfunctional towns in the world lies on the Potomac River and hosts the worst cultures of the entire continent: Washington, D.C.
The whole of the city supports a parasitic culture called Beltway Bandits: large enterprises dedicated to siphoning tax dollars and producing studies, research, litigation support, lobbying, lying, cheating, stealing, and most importantly, perks for the 435 congresscritters and their staffs.
The legal framework for this effort is the government contract.
Without attending to the specifics, here’s how government contracts wind through their (typically) four-year tides and eddies.
Year One
The very best in the domain work on the contract. That’s because they’re contractually obligated to employ the named principals for at least the first six months. The contract is fun.
Year Two
The principals leave for better money with a new contract with someone else. They’re replaced with second-tier experts who are almost as good, but have a chip on their shoulders about being second-tier.
The contact is not nearly as much fun.
Year Three
The second-tier experts go to other contracts, taking with them the best of the actual producers in the contract. The company fills each absence with bodies. They don’t care so much and the government agency with whom the contract is let starts reducing the number of hours required to fulfill their needs. Fewer people work on the contract.
The contract is definitely no fun by now.
Year Four
Folks who can’t find work anywhere else linger. The contracting agency sends fewer and fewer support requests as they are now working to let another contact. The current contract holder has no chance of winning a second contract since all their good people are gone and the top-and-second-tier experts have been given huge offers with someone else.
The contract is a drudge, the work is a bore, and management blames everyone that remains for their failure to keep good talent and support exceptional output.
The Culture
Take away the contracting environment and the four-year-cyle of the beltway bandit when thinking of every company outside the beltway. Every company with four or more years is like the fourth (or worse) year of the four-year contract.
This is why HR and Marketing desperately need a delusionary cultural facade. If the truth got out, then the truth would get out. (tautology)
An Idea
Cultures derive (grow) from what is common in the majority of the community. Companies cannot compel anyone to live or believe what they do not want to live or in that which they do not believe. But companies can strive to hire those people who already carry the personality engrams underpinning a culture they want. (Let’s only invite people just like us to our club.)
That seems a bit too much like Stepford Wives, donnit? So before the HR director goes off on a creepy social experiment, let’s do something nobody ever thought of before: let’s let everybody have their own strengths and weaknesses and let the company grow and learn from the friction and interaction of real human beings.
If you have a corporate culture, have the janitorial staff spray the kitchen. They’ll get rid of it.