togetherness, company culture and building

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“We laughed and laughed, together and separately, out loud and silently, we were determined to ignore whatever needed to be ignored, to build a new world from nothing if nothing in our world could be salvaged, it was one of the best days of my life, a day during which I lived my life and didn’t think about my life at all.”

Jonathan Safran Foer

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Someone (Gerad Petherbridge) recently asked what makes a great advertising agency culture. I flippantly answered “an uncompromising vision to do great, smart, work.” And you know what? I stand by that. And I stand by that not just for advertising but for pretty much any business. To me, that is the core of a principled culture. I’d wrap two other principles around that:

  • Progress (better today than I was yesterday).
  • Integrity (no ethical shortcuts).

 

Note I have not used the word “values” yet. I will not in this frame of reference <but I will in a different frame later>.

A culture, or community of people working together, or maybe better said, the things that create a well-connected, group of people tend to be bonded in a more nebulous vision. Shangri-La, values, principles, attitudes, whatever labels you want to attach (and there are gobs of people and books and coaches who will) that we always want to identify, evaluate and ‘formula-ize’ even though it is actually something that’s actually more magic in a bottle. Yeah. Shangri la as it were.

I would suggest all those labels are just stupid shit.

That doesn’t mean there are into underlying practices that can facilitate a consistent desired output, but it means you really cannot create it; you simply create scenarios in which it can occur/emerge.

I will say my opening one sentence paragraph may be my definition for togetherness & my definition of the best business culture one could imagine. It captures the essence of what togetherness should be for everyone perfectly. It embodies culture. This is what a well aligned business focused on a similar vision & purpose should feel like. I find it interesting because I believe we now this in our youth and the as we forge our way thru the business world we get stripped of this, what I would call the substance, in our pursuit of ‘getting shit done’ & ROI & results.

“People are energy sources to be activated, not depleted, to maximize businesses. We flippantly discuss jobs as mundane and boring which only makes the people doing them feel meaningless and mundane.”

Bruce McTague

 

Many people smarter than I have discussed meaning of work and the fact people want to work toward something, not just for something (like money).

To me this is about a vision which everyone gathers around. I call it a campfire.

The odd thing to me with the campfire concept is that it implies a bit of “thoughtful gathering of fuel to build a campfire” (some purposeful planning & thinking) and, I will admit, as a leader I never really thought much about purposefully sharing any real substantive value to the people who elected to follow me nor do I purposefully share any substantive value to people I wanted to join whatever merry band gathered around that campfire. I never thought about trying to create some compelling message or try and be compelling. I solely focused on my convictions, my attitude & beliefs and I imagine I thought of it as “I have a campfire, come sit down … and I hope you stay <if you want>.”

Ok. This leads me to Values.

My POV: a business does not have values, they have principles. People have values, individual to themselves, and tey bring them to work every day and a business places principles at the front door so the people can coalesce their behavior around those principles.

Beyond the fact Values statements do not define behavior tossing around values in a flippant fashion seeds an organization with cynicism.

But here is most possibly the toughest challenge developing a business Principle ‘campfire’ — it takes a leader group with real guts. Why? The thing is that Principles have the uncomfortable task of encouraging personal & organizational success all the while fettering how success is achieved. Let’s call Principles the reins you tug and release on the organization.

Why does that matter? Well. As Napoleon said: “Success is the most convincing talker in the world.”

Success, in and of itself, is the one thread wish holds together almost every organization. We can discuss purpose and we can discuss integrity but, in the end, the function of an organization is to be successful.

And success is a cat’s cradle clash of personal versus the organization.

This is where I bring in ‘empathy’ and ‘mirroring.’

Empathy is a connection between feelings. Its strongest connection is when one’s feelings toward another mirror what the other is actually feeling. Let’s call it empathy alignment.

But.

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“Mirroring alone does not lead to empathy. We still have to choose to believe another person’s feelings matter.”

The Anatomy of Empathy

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If someone’s personal employee identity is defined by the culture, the principles of the culture need to be aligned not only with the personal values, but also the success value or it all gets negated, wiped out, and makes the employee feel lost, maybe isolated and, at its worst, feel less worthy as a person <questioning not only hier abilities but also how they are going about using their abilities>.

Then there is the organization itself. Success and identity <values> clash in a fear of being cast out from the collective <either by being fired or by not fitting in>.

Humans are tribal by nature and organizational culture feeds into that <and principles are maybe the key aspect of foundational culture aspects>. Obeying principled behavior, even if you have differing individual values, is the price to pay for staying in the tribe. In exchange you get to enjoy the perks, protection and personal actualization found within the organization.

Lastly. In the end.

Here is the most powerful aspect of culture.

Employees are greatest advocates for what they believe in. And. The holy grail of the ‘future of work’ is having employees (people) believe in themselves & believe they offer value every day. Brands <what you sell or just simply the company you work for> reside in minds of customers. Employees just show people what they can believe in. In other words. Productivity increases in tandem with greater brand/business value <a version of the Halo Effect>. So if the employees produce great work imbued with integrity and people like it and find value in it you have created a loop of highest value.

I admit I worry about wording it this way because inevitably some business person will think “how do I measure that and motivate that” when the power in this is only measured in the looped feedback mechanism. Ponder.

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Written by Bruce