[lostcolony]

First, I want to say I largely agree with you.

Second, I want to say that the 10% of a company's values/missions that aren't tautological marketing catch phrases are actually -incredibly- important, and can directly contribute to a company's success. The fact 90% deviate is more to do with companies not realizing how important it is to not just be marketing fluff, than any intrinsic value or lack thereof of having such a statement.

Fundamentally, a company has many decisions where they have to choose A or B, not both. Oftentimes these decisions are made at a level the CEO or similar has no insight into. To be able to ensure people make the right decisions and are all pulling in the same direction, a culture has to be adopted. Mission statements, value statements, etc, are the only tool the CEO really has to shape that culture, beyond simply hiring into the roles directly underneath him (which is hard to do without insight into what is going on beneath -them-). The Culture Code has a great segment in it about how Johnson & Johnson's credo (specifically, "We believe our first responsibility is to the doctors, nurses and patients, to mothers and fathers and all others who use our products and services") led to its handling of the cyanide in the tylenol incident, which saved the product line (when every analyst was like "that's done, no one will trust Tylenol again"), as well as introduced the now ubiqitous tamper proof packaging.

[theamk]

Maybe I had unusual experience, but in the places I have worked, it was executives' actions that matter, and not random mission phrases.

To go back to Tylenol example -- reading the news at the time, it looks like the company was praised for quick product recall and good communications. All of those are top-level decisions, and I am sure CEO had insight into them.

So I suspect you are confusing cause and effect here -- the cause was top management's beliefs, and the effects were (1) nice-sounding credo, and (2) good reaction of Tylenol accident.

In other words, the company can talk all they want about "excellence in details" on their culture page -- but CEO can still say "demo is in 1 week, just disable all tests". The opposite is also true -- there plenty of companies which have mo mission page at all, but have the great code.

[gain_sky]

I'm unaware of the Johnson & Johnson example you mention, but to me a company with a "good" culture code (are they ever bad? or even different?), is like Kim Jong Un saying that North Korea is free and fair.

I'm not saying that culture doesn't exist but it exists in the decisions that are made by the people who run the companies themselves, they set the tone and precedent for how the company works and the employees take note and follow.

[lostcolony]

Yes, there are bad cultures. More commonly, there are companies without a culture. Oh, different departments may have a de facto culture, but the company as a whole doesn't have one. That's a problem. Because where a company grows and delivers value is in the alignment of very disparate concentrations and expertises. You can build the best damn software system in a given domain, but if your marketing team isn't on the same page, it will fail. And if your marketing team is awesome, but the product completely misaligns with what they're selling it as, you will see some initial success, but very quickly be disrupted or flat out fail (though if your business people are good they can possibly swarm to buy any competitors before they become a threat).

The decisions are important, yes. But the person at the top isn't making every decision. They may have the best intentions, but if somewhere down the chain of command someone is prioritizing the wrong thing, focusing on the wrong thing, but still doing their job okay, they won't be told to do differently or let go. Defining a focus allows their immediate superior to recognize they're not doing their job. It even allows their subordinate to tell the manager "Hey, our mission/values statement says X; are you sure we should be doing this?" and possibly fix it without escalating it (though if escalation is necessary, it also provides a reason to escalate it, and a reason for the superior to pay attention).

[snowwrestler]

> I'm not saying that culture doesn't exist but it exists in the decisions that are made by the people who run the companies themselves, they set the tone and precedent for how the company works and the employees take note and follow.

Corporate culture provides a framework for understanding why managers make the decisions they do, and for employees, peers, and the public to hold managers accountable for the decisions they make.

If your opinion is that the people who run companies have no constraints or influences on their decisions, I would strongly disagree with you. The Tylenol example shows the power of culture--it gave J&J leadership the license (but also the pressure) to set the correct priorities when making decisions on how to handle it.

There's a book called The Leadership Moment by Michael Useem that I really like. About half the stories in it pertain to corporate culture either positively (Merck) or negatively (Salomon Brothers).

A classic example of a difference in corporate culture (how employees contribute to quality) is illustrated by this story from This American Life:

https://www.thisamericanlife.org/561/nummi-2015

[Zalastax]

This is the example: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicago_Tylenol_murders

[xstartup]

Yea, but when everyone from ICOs to shady diet piet e-commerce companies uses same tactics, it no longer works.

[lostcolony]

Not so. The point isn't to differentiate yourself from everyone else (hence why who else does it should be immaterial), nor is to be a bit of pablum served up to your shareholders (as the 90% mentioned here is), it's to be a set of clear priorities to help decision makers make decisions.

Again, going back to the J&J case, placing their priority on their customers, their community, above their employees, and above their stockholders, meant that everyone could align in "We have to do what is safest for them, despite the cost or inconvenience to us". It would have been much easier to just issue a localized recall; they instead issued a national one. They could have pointed fingers (the addition of cyanide was, after all, not their fault); instead they took ownership over how to make their product safer. Etc.

It's not a catch all or magic bullet, but it -is- important to know, when making decisions, what to prioritize for.

[zebraflask]

You might want to look up J&J's handling of warning labels on over-the-counter painkillers, specifically re: Stevens-Johnson Syndrome, before you let yourself become too enthusiastic about their corporate values.

[lostcolony]

I'm not actually extolling their virtues as a company, just pointing out a case where a set of values led to an action that would otherwise have not happened, and which actually led to a long term benefit.

Does every/any company adhere consistently to that? Of course not; companies are made of fallible humans.

But how do you -ever- bind a group of people together to pull in the same direction, -especially- when it's at the expense of short term gains, for unclear long term gains? By creating a guide, a set of principles. That's what a mission/values/etc statement is supposed to be. Not just marketing bullshit, but something that helps determine what action to take. "We're gonna be the best" isn't useful, "We're going to prioritize X" is; it's a guiding star to recalibrate against. Yes, it takes someone to point out when you drift, and corrective action to be taken, but without it, you have no hope whatsoever of staying on a given course.

[zebraflask]

That set of "values" came from the legal system: they wanted to minimize lawsuits and regulatory fines.

[lostcolony]

Actually, they were told by the FDA they only needed to do a recall in the Chicago area, and that they were not legally culpable (because of course they weren't). Their actions in no way prevented frivolous lawsuits, and they were not going to actually have any won against them for some random person spiking their product with cyanide.

Instead of doing the minimal amount they had to do, they took it a step above. It would have been perfectly okay, and business as usual, to recall in Chicago, and then to do nothing. Instead they did a nation-wide recall, and didn't reintroduce the product until they had a solution to prevent it from happening again.

[PJDK]

I think you could kind of generalise this to say that a mission statement is only useful if you can imagine some situations where someone would have a difficult call to make and could reference the mission statement to help make the decision.

The one I always think of as good is "Move fast and break things". Not that it necessarily is a good idea, but rather that you can quite clearly use it to help make decisions like "do we launch now to capture a transient opportunity or later to ensure full QA?"

[commandlinefan]

Well, if anybody is looking for a good tagline, "don't be evil" is available.