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by btrombley
4414 days ago
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The author is right to question the hype around culture as though it were invented in Silicon Valley, but I think he also falls into the trap of equating culture with superficial qualities that change over time. To paraphrase Built to Last: if you look outside the tech world, there are plenty of companies like Wells Fargo, Nordstrom's, and 3M that been around for over 100 years with very clear cultures and brands--far longer than any one CEO's reign. Of course, the culture changed over that time as measured by social attitudes and management practices, but they are successful because the core company culture survived. At 3M it was innovation and meritocracy. At Nordstrom's it was above-and-beyond customer service. Don't let cynicism over the company culture of free t-shirts and late nights cloud out the goal of building a culture that lasts longer than you will. Just like parenting, it's what you do, not what you (or your posters) say that matters. |
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"You have to do careful study to filter out which cultural values remained immutable over time, if any at all. Ask the first ten employees to leave a successful company why they left, and many will answer “the company changed.”
You have the benefit of retrospection with those companies - In year 1 or year 5 it was (likely) far less clear what the company would look like in 50 or 100 years.
It is also a matter of perspective - as an outsider to any organization the perceptions we have of culture are different than what it's actually like inside. 3M in particular has gone through many cultural changes, including the ones that led to peaks in innovation (see: http://solutions.3m.com/wps/portal/3M/en_US/3M-Company/Infor... on McKnight circa 1950s) and low points (see http://www.businessweek.com/stories/2007-06-10/at-3m-a-strug... McNerney, circa 2000s).
So we're talking about two sides of the same kinds of coins - yes some elements are stable, but it's hard to sort out what they are, and it depends heavily on whether you are an outsider looking for examples, or an insider actually trying to get something interesting done.