We live in interesting times. No matter where you call home, the political and economic realities in our local communities provide compelling context to consider the concept of organizational culture. I happen to live in Silicon Valley and am CEO of an education company called Remind. The concept of culture is front and center every day, and over the years I have developed a perspective of how I believe that culture is created through the contributions of every individual in an organization.
Rest assured, this isn’t going to be one of those narratives where I call up the definition of the word “culture” and use it as a jumping off point to explain how all we need to do is bring it back to what Merriam-Webster has to say. (Ok, if you want M-W’s definition here you go!) However, I am going to share my view on culture — how I define it and how I see the vital role that people in an organization play to contribute to the positive evolution of an organization’s culture. (Note that going forward, I’ll use organization as the generic term that encompasses any group of people coming together to achieve something special e.g. from a start up company to a public company, from a sports team to a theater troupe, and from a non-profit charity to a military unit, and any organization in between.)
Let me start with a misperception about culture that often confuses an organization and the people that join that organization. The misperception is that culture is not something that we are owed — or entitled to — as members of an organization. Culture isn’t a cozy sweater that we are given on our first day and all we have to do is put it on, and boom, everything feels nice and warm. A more appropriate metaphor is that culture is a patch of cloth and a few handfuls of yarn, and it’s up to you as a team member to weave your patch together with those of your teammates to form a giant blanket that wraps everybody in the “culture” of the organization. (This metaphor is compliments of the memories I have of my grandmother furiously knitting blankets on the sidelines of my youth baseball games!)
I’ve been a part of many different organizations, and as such I have experienced a wide range of practices that these organizations have fostered to support the creation of a culture that wraps around everyone in a positive and engaging way. What I’ve come to believe is that the ability to create a powerfully positive culture lives ultimately within each individual and that it is the addition (and subtraction) of the individual cultural contributions that ultimately create the overall organizational dynamic referred to as the somewhat amorphous concept we refer to as organizational “culture”.
And so how do these individual cultural contributions come about in the best way possible? From my experiences, there are two critical elements that, when combined, enable everyone in an organization to contribute in a positive way to create the organization’s culture to engage, inspire, and personally grow them each day.
The first of these elements is ensuring that you are sincerely engaged by the “Why?” that defines your organization. Last April I had a meeting with venture capitalist Vinod Khosla. At the end of our conversation, knowing that I was about to embark on a weeklong trip back east to tour colleges with my high school daughter, he recommended that I read Simon Sinek’s book “Start With Why”. I can’t recall all of Sinek’s narrative or examples, but the punch line was pretty succinct. Basically it goes like this: If you don’t believe in the importance of healthy living, you shouldn’t be at an organization that works to help people lose weight and fight off diabetes; if you don’t think open spaces are important for people, you shouldn’t go work at a non-profit land trust; or if you don’t care deeply about bringing transparency to those governing in Washington, D.C., you probably shouldn’t be a political reporter for the New York Times. You get the point right?
Now this doesn’t mean that you have to put your other personal and professional growth goals aside when you join an organization. Nothing about the “Why?” has to be mutually exclusive from the other reasons you might benefit from working at a particular organization. Taking a role because you think the stock options will be worth a lot some day, because you want to switch from being a product manager to an iOS developer (or vice versa), because the organization has a nicely designed office that is minutes from your home, because they serve breakfast, lunch, dinner, and unlimited snacks, because they give you as much vacation as you want to take, or any of the many other reasons that might entice you to join an organization, are all very valid reasons to accept an organization’s invitation to sign that offer letter.
But if you are truly going to feel compelled and engaged to “step into the circle” to make your contribution to the organization’s culture, you need to put the “Why?” of the organization above the other elements that are more personal. Frankly, what I’m saying is that self-optimizing isn’t a bad thing, heck it’s a human thing, but for an organization to build an amazing culture, the individual contributions to that culture have to come from the organization’s “Why?” e.g. the vision and mission that everyone is pursuing together that are bigger than any individual in the organization.
The “Why?” is only half the equation to building a great organizational culture. The other half of the equation is the “Way”. Specifically, the way in which people work together in an organization to achieve the impact and goals that define success also contributes meaningfully to an organization’s broader culture. This starts with the foundational layer of the organization’s values — the values that are unique to how the organization’s people work with each other, with its customers, and with its partners. For example, at Remind our first value is to “Be Teacher Obsessed”. I love this value, both for it’s clear purpose but also for the aspirational clarity it provides to further unify how people in different groups within the organization can make difficult trade-offs and decisions.
Beyond the organization’s unique core values, the “Way” concept must go further so that every person in an organization embodies foundational values that should exist in every organization (sadly, our media reminds us daily of examples where organizations fall short here). These are values that Patrick Lencioni in his book “The Advantage” calls “permission to play”, meaning they have to simply be a part of the organization’s daily vocabulary and DNA. For me, at the top of the list of these basic organizational values sit integrity, commitment, accountability, responsibility, trust, and the good old fashioned notion of saying what you are thinking in an open, direct, and respectful way, and being okay if others disagree, and even being able to stay committed to the “Why?” if the organization makes a decision that isn’t 100% in line with your strategic thinking.
Now before anyone out there yells at me to get off my soapbox, I fully acknowledge that I couldn’t have written this post 20 or probably even 10 years ago. I am guilty as charged for not living up to every single point I’ve tried to make here in every one of the organizational settings I’ve been a part of in my career. But like everybody else, I can aspire to do my best going forward, and I know for sure that the way I think, talk, and act as it relates to organizational culture will continue to evolve along the lines of what I have shared here.
I also believe that we are living in a world that can easily toss out a powerful concept like culture and define it as something that can be simply packaged together and handed to people in an organization when they show up for work. More dangerously, it’s easy to believe that culture is something that individuals are entitled to receiving in an organization along with their paycheck, professional growth, stock options, and tasty free lunches. Nope. Just like compensation and perks, culture is something team members get to earn by contributing to — and building — it every day.
I urge anyone who is part of an organization — non-profit, for-profit, or any other type of organization — to commit to help build their organization’s culture in three ways:
Be engaged first and foremost with the “Why?” of your organization. This doesn’t mean giving up on the personal growth opportunities, it simply means putting the “Why?” of your organization at the top of the list of things that you prioritize alongside your teammates.
Be engaged with the “Way” that your organization prioritizes how it goes about achieving its impact and goals. This means you need to embrace the organization’s core values in how you do your job and work with your colleagues, and that you need to “step into the circle” to intentionally exhibit the foundational values that can be powerful forces in scrubbing away the posturing and politics that so often pollute an organization’s culture.
Be engaged in weaving your patch into the organization’s culture blanket. Don’t sit back. Own that slice of your organization’s culture that you were granted when you were invited to join the organization. The extent to which you engage your teammates — and the “Way” you engage them by bringing a “growth mindset” geared to achieving the “Why?” — will weave your important patch into the broader organizational culture that you inherently want to be a part of every day.
An organization’s culture isn’t created by a single person or an executive team. It certainly isn’t crafted by a board of directors or the outline from a management book. Instead, culture is created by individuals who come together to create something important for others — a “Why?” that is bigger than any person in the organization — and by these same individuals in a “Way” that reflects how they want to achieve the impact and goals that the organization sets out to achieve. Ultimately, it’s up to every single person in an organization to make a meaningful contribution to the organization’s culture no matter where they sit.
Originally published on Medium on July 3, 2017. This Substack version is maintained as the canonical archive.