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“The best way to keep a prisoner from escaping is to make sure he never knows he’s in prison.”

Fyodor Dostoevsky

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Well.

There is a lot of discussion happening on re-injecting Purpose back into business, how that impacts business culture and methods to insure an aligned organization <so its not just words>. I have written about manufacturing a business culture before, using Zappo’s as an example, of how businesses try to inject someone else’s culture into their own business. And I think it is stupid and misguided <although one of the architects of the Zappo’s program gave me a nice note suggesting some leaders use it as an inspiration>.

That said.

There is something weird happening in this organizational culture development these days. I kind of call it the ‘generational culture gap.’ I call it that because I interact with both startups as well as established longer-life businesses which means I typically interact with different age leaders.

Longer life established businesses are more likely to be led by older business people who’s ‘pride in business’ most typically revolves around ‘pride in results.’ This was the generation borne of outcomes … quarterly reports, project completions, profitability standards and crap like that. The means, and aspirational meaningfulness, mattered significantly less than the results.

The startups are more likely business people with experience <it is a myth that it is mostly younger people who are the entrepreneurs> but their businesses are strewn with young idealistic people who have been bombarded with ‘propose – driven businesses’ crap. They have a concept of the importance of culture but ‘cool & entrepreneurial’ <with some aspects of social responsibility> takes on more importance than any real character, or personality, driven aspects in their culture.

The gap therefore exists between the two visions of what an organization should embrace. Naturally, the leaders try and compensate.

The older leaders try and manufacture a culture beyond ‘results’ <I call itbolting on a soul>.

The younger leaders try and manufacture a culture based on ‘enjoyment or passion’ <I call it ‘bolting on results’>.

In doing so, both are creating prisons for their employees.

What do I mean? Somewhere along the way we have started thinking of building a culture as, well, building – as if we can ‘construct’ an intangible. This is not instilling a pride in making something <and the ‘building culture’ is not building but rather a derivative of the making pride>.

By the way <on a separate note> I would also point out that this manufacturing culture contributes to the divide between urban/rural & corporate/blue collar. In a business world where more and more <about 75% I believe> of our GDP is based on not making shit <i.e., financial services, banking, services for the things that are made> those manufactured business cultures look absurd to the people who work in businesses who actually work to make shit.

Anyway.

Business is tough enough these days without having to worry about what type of business, culturally, it will be. Typically this issue is of higher importance to the younger generation than it is to the older generations.

Older generations have a tendency to look at a job as a job and will I get to do what I am good at and get paid for it.

Younger generations are actually better at realizing the business life is an extension of the personal life, or vice versa, therefore the culture is a higher importance.

Now. Combine the leadership challenges with the fact businesses are struggling to figure out how to not only attract young talent but actually LOOK attractive to young talent and this becomes a formula for disaster <or, at least, some poor decisions>.

As I have written before … many companies look at this as ‘buying their loyalty’ through features — flex hours, laptops, free lunches and technological gizmos.

And that is stupid. People don’t but features they buy benefits. Same with companies.

Features? In other words, selling to young people on why they should be working some place not based on what company does but rather what the company will do for them or give to them.

So what are these leaders doing?

Manufacturing a culture. Yeah. I just typed ‘manufacturing.’ I maybe could have said ‘culture engineering.’ Maybe I could have said ‘build a prison.’

Many businesses aren’t building a culture because they <a> believe in it or <b> believe they actually have a natural culture worth a shit … but rather because they want to encourage loyalty. Sometimes they do it simply because everyone is telling them to do it. And sometimes they can make that prison look amazing.

That said. Its a prison.

Beware the leaders who build prisons you only see as paradise.

Beware the leaders who seek to ‘build’ a culture.

It is quite possible all this ‘building’ is a reflection of the poor management training we gave the rising leaders. It is also quite possible it is the repercussions of an ‘outcome generation’ who lost sight of everything but outcomes.

It is quite possible that this is a reflection of leaders, who do not really know how to lead, and believe this ‘building a company culture’ is most effective under the title of ‘the cult of personality.’

Regardless.

I believe these culture prisons are actually more about the semi-insidious concept of engineering of company culture. This concept is fostered by the leaders, who are really assholes, but set out to build ‘a company people love to work at.’ <note: an asshole is not capable of truly building an environment in which people will ‘love what they do.’>

Now. Many of these prisons don’t look like prisons.

Well. Until you try and escape or try and do things that don’t quite fit within the warden’s rules.

culture-business-prisonLook.

A healthy company culture doesn’t really take a shitload of work, should actually be a reflection of the standard beliefs and behavior of the leadership and is the kind of stuff that gets a company through the hard times <doubles the joys and halves the griefs>.

But today we seem inclined to view building culture as building prisons. All  I can say in conclusion is, well, that is not the way a company culture evolves.

 

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Written by Bruce