What is culture?

Paul Paroro

I was recently asked this question by a colleague after I suggested establishing a culture for our development team. I was vague in my reply which included a phrase about shared core values. So, I thought that I would find a better answer.

Not just for start-ups

Much has been written about company culture in the start-up world. The Netflix culture deck or Amazons “door desk” have been thoroughly analysed and discussed. But for those of us outside this ecosystem, it is not a common topic. The book “What you do is who you are” by venture capitalist and management expert, Ben Horowitz, is an easy read and helped me gain a better understanding of the subject. 

The author uses his extensive experience in creating companies, along with historical models to explain what culture is and is not. He also provides guidelines on how to build a strong business culture, but for now, I’m just going to use his approach to present a simple definition.

What it is not

First, let’s look at what culture is not. Horowitz eliminates things that people usually confuse for culture, like games in the break room or free drinks. Those are perks. Although they may shape the culture, the personality of a leader is not what we’re looking for either. What about the corporate values proudly displayed in offices or on a website? Nope, those are aspirations. Enron, the billion dollar energy company which went bankrupt after it's unscrupulous accounting practices were uncovered, had values like "integrity" and "respect" displayed in their lobby. Their actual values were a world apart.

So, if none of these things are culture, what is it?

What it is

Culture is how your team makes decisions when you’re not around.

To help explain, let's look at a concrete scenario. When I work on a client proposal, I usually like to describe our plan, step by step, so that the client has a clear operational roadmap for the project. But if someone else from my team is writing the document:

  • How will they know the level of detail that is expected?
  • If we win and negotiate the contract, what’s more important, the price or the partnership?
  • If there’s an obvious problem with our development process, does anyone speak up?
  • When we eventually deliver the product, would it be okay to ship with bugs or should they work to eliminate them?
  • How about a sticky situation where important information is available that could impact the schedule, do they tell the client?

How people reply to these sorts of questions is the culture. It’s the set of assumptions that they use to resolve their everyday problems. It is like an invisible force guiding their behaviour when no one is looking.

To recap

Culture is not what we would like to see or hear. It’s not what we write and it’s not what we say. It is simply, what we do. Horowitz goes on to say that if you do not methodically set up your culture, then most of it will end up being accidental. Instead of taking this risk, I thought it would be a good idea to take steps to shape the culture so that our team would get the right answers to the above questions. But how do we make this happen? Well, it depends on where we want to go, and that’s a story for next time.