Building Culture@Scale | Lessons from Amazon—a Series
#Culture@scale, #companyculture #leadershipdevelopment
This series explores scaling culture by looking at the impact on Behaviors, Processes, and Practices that support successful outcomes in Decision-making, Accountability, and Innovation.
At seven, my family moved to Arizona, a predominantly White world, and I continued to spend summers with my grandmother in her predominantly Black world in Chicago. Music, television, literature, food, language, and social norms separated these two worlds.
?Understanding culture was a survival tool, and I continued to be a critical observer through law school and during my years as a corporate lawyer. During my decade at a national healthcare company, I became an expert in culturally competent care. The value of understanding how culture drives outcomes and performance continued in my roles in diversity and inclusion, learning, and leadership.
A year after joining Amazon, I took on a role where my very purpose was teaching the leadership principles as tools to build great leaders, which, at Amazon, is every employee. As I developed a deeper understanding of the leadership principles, they became magical tools to sustain what I experienced as a fast-paced, high-quality, innovative decision-making culture.
My next company had similar values on paper. The company’s messaging about the values was inconsistent and they were unclear about how to apply them to decision-making or accountability. While innovation was happening in pockets of the company, it was mainly a slogan on PowerPoint slides in other parts of the organization.
What was the difference between what I’d experienced at Amazon and what I experienced at that organization? Same great people from the same talent pool. It made me wonder. It made sense to shape my thinking around what I had experienced and taught as an Amazonian since I could bear witness to its success.
So, I researched how others evaluated culture and what they said about building culture@scale.
What Culture Means
Company culture is one of those elusive things that is easily described and more difficult to create.
?One useful definition of culture came from a presentation for software engineers that examined the role that organizational culture plays in the "process triangle" of people, process, and technology.
“Culture represents the way of life of a group of people, it is socially transmitted knowledge and behavioral patterns shared by a group of people, and is a complex system composed of learned behavior ideas, norms, symbols, and values that human beings acquire to become members of a society.”
Michael Beale’s LinkedIn post on artifacts of company culture appealed to the corporate cultural anthropologist in me. He suggested digging for artifacts like mission, vision and value statements, rituals and ceremonies, language and jargon, leadership behavior, policies, and communication materials.
Three artifacts stood out for me:
Mission
Having a compelling mission provides an anchor for engaging customers, employees, and stakeholders. Gallup’s annual survey on employee engagement includes the question “the mission or purpose of my company makes me feel my job is important.” Successful companies deliver here.
Opinions may differ on whether these companies are achieving their mission, and missions are a North Star to steer toward, but it is difficult to argue that these aren’t compelling ideas worth achieving.
Language
You can hear great company cultures in the language used at work. At Amazon, I heard two or more leadership principles used in daily language when talking about solving problems; “let’s Dive Deep on that,” “great Bias for Action,” “love your Customer Obsession.” The leadership principles felt alive and relevant.
At other companies I’ve worked in or worked with, reciting the company values felt false and inauthentic. At Amazon, you could see from Day 1 that people applied the values in how they showed up at work and how they made decisions.
A Unifying Identity
People have a powerful need to belong, and a unifying identity helps employees feel like a part of something.
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One of the things about working for a company like Google is that it becomes such a huge part of your identity - you become a ‘Googler’, embrace being ‘Googley’, and develop deep bonds with other Googlers around you who become, in ways, like an extended family.
Understanding How to Scale Culture
My challenge was how to organize a discussion on culture that is focused on performance and outcomes and not just feel-good statements. Jordana Valencia reminded us in “Scaling Culture in Fast Growing Companies” (Harvard Business Review) that you need to define culture in terms of clear, observable behaviors. Abstract values such as “innovation,” “respect,” or “drive” can mean different things to different people.
People, Process, and Systems
After reading Zavahir Dastoor's comments in the LinkedIn conversation on culture, I had found my approach.
?“Culture is the way people act or behave. ACTION or BEHAVIOR is the core contingent which needs to be nurtured. There are 3 aspects that synthesize culture: 1. People (Behaviors), 2. Process (Policies), 3. Systems (Framework and Practices)”
Having worked inside of and as a consultant to several global companies, I saw where they faltered by failing to recognize that culture is about decision-making behaviors, processes, and practices, not cheerleading slogans on company PowerPoints. All three areas need to be integrated and aligned for scalable, sustainable success.
Decision-making, Accountability, and Innovation
Applying a matrixed view helps manage the complexity of describing culture@scale, looking at the impact on Behaviors, Process, and Practices that support successful outcomes in Decision-making, Accountability, and Innovation.
What I learned as a Leadership Scientist at Amazon, I’ve tested against my experiences at other companies and what other companies have done. With a little individual brainstorming, I organized Amazon’s Peculiar Ways into the six components, to see how they operated to drive culture@scale.
Focus on Behavior
The beauty of Amazon’s Leadership Principles is the focus on behaviors, with behavioral examples that provide clarity. So, I just needed to sort them into the right components. First introduced to the public in the 2016 letter to shareholders, some of them had been operating for over two decades. According to onboarding presentations, the 14 Leadership Principles were finalized in 2005, with a slight change in 2015 to add Learn and Be Curious.
Important Notes
- In any conversation about scaling, the role of technology is fundamental, and Amazon is a technology company, founded on the belief that technology can solve most issues.
- Also, at Amazon, everyone is a leader, and some leaders are managers, so I refer to all employees when I talk about the Leadership Principles and building great leaders.
How has your company worked to scale culture?
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ChatGPT was used to revise this article
#Culture@scale, #companyculture #leadershipdevelopment
About the Author: Robin Terrell is a serial intrapreneur with a career portfolio that showcases her expertise in project management, learning, leadership and career development, product design and delivery at scale, diversity, equity, and inclusion and strategic planning.
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Absolutely agree, creating a robust culture is key ??. Remember, as Aristotle hinted, excellence is not an act but a habit. Let's keep nurturing positive environments! #leadership #companygrowth