Think of your cute little daughter. (If you don’t have one, think of mine. Unless you’re a creepy bastard.) Think of all that you hope and wish for her.
Would you want her to work at your company?
If not, what will you do to change your company and the culture that you feel would be unsuitable for her? The people you work with are the sons and daughters of others. And they don’t deserve a rotten culture anymore than your daughter or mine.
You are creating a culture that affects the lives of many. And you’re defining tomorrow’s culture of work.
Are you creating something good enough for your daughter?
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
Hey,
great. I like the aspiration, Adam, as you can imagine. You need to add to your criterion also the dimension of time. It is easy for Google to create an amazing work space when valuations go through the roof, everybody gets insanely wealthy, and they have undisputed momentum in the business.
What if a company goes through difficult times where employees can’t be given 20 percent of their time or one day a week to kick around their own ideas, etc. Where money is abundant and everybody feels that they are on trip like Ellison or Watson.
It is easy to judge a culture of a company at one point of time and to claim achievement of a great company culture, it is an entirely different kettle to judge a company culture over time.
Remember the oft-talked about HP Way? Well, when HP had all the momentum in the technology business, everyone lauded the HP way. Ask about the HP way these days and memories of leadership Carly Fiorina and then Mark Hurd come to mind and board room war stories. Fifteen years ago, Sony was the place to be. Remember Sony’s Dreams and their amazing innovation culture. Harvard and Stanford was busy writing case study over case study about anything Japanese and particular the amazing brand SONY. Then, Apple turned their lights off with the iPod.
Companies grow and strive and hire new people, but part of a company is also no growth, decline and having to face the most agonizing decisions of letting people go. And the difference between announcing new employees and growth, and having to deal with layoffs and decline can be the difference is huge.
To find a place where I would want have my daughters to go work, I probably would think a lot about: what industry they should operate (because that drives very much culture of business), what momentum a particular company has in an industry (which again drives over a relatively short period of time the culture) in one particular time, and then I would look at the predisposition of my daughters (I have two, age 15 and 16) and they could be no different because they would would feel comfortable or succeed in one company culture over another has a lot to do with them as well.
I believe a lot that can be done to make a company and culture more suitable to one of my daughters or the other daugther but it has a lot to do with the health of the industry, the particular momentum my company at a particular point in time, and how much money there is left at the end of the day to create the workspace in the first place.
Erich
Erich:
Thanks so much for the very thoughtful and beautifully written response. I agree with much of what you say, particularly the idea that a company culture needs to be judged over time. And I also agree that there are factors other than cultural that ought to inform the aspirations we have for our children.
Where I part company with you is in your point that it takes money to create a healthy culture. I very much disagree. Yes, Google can only offer free gourmet meals because they can afford to pay for them. And so on. But it does not take any money to say “thank you.” It does not take any money to sit with your employees and coach them. It does not take any money to be honest and kind to your coworkers. Most of what it takes to create a healthy culture requires nothing other than people choosing to be decent humans.
One more point: Sometimes, misfortune occurs and there is very little to be done about it. But in general, I think you have the causality backwards. It’s not that good culture comes from financial success. It’s the reverse. FInancial success comes from having created a good culture. The caste studies you cite are extremely on point and informative. But past does not have to be an indicator of the future. We can choose to be kind and decent. Even if others haven’t.