Cultural Norms and New People: Signal Intent.

A few weeks ago I was in Houston Texas on a long run along the River. During this time I was listening to the Toyota Way by Jeffrey Liker, again.

In the book there was much discussion about building cultural norms and visualising work so this was top of my mind. I'd also just watched a leadership nudge on YouTube by David Marquet, where he was in Milan and a little confusion occurred at a roundabout where, from what I gather, ended up in some Italian expletives being directed towards him.

All of a sudden, on the footpath there was an oncoming cyclist, and so I moved to the left to give him space. He moved to the right, and so I moved further to the left. We nearly collided and I had to take a jump off the path onto the verge. I heard something that I couldn't quite make out over my headphones. I acknowledged him and we both went on our way. Nobody was hurt and I bet he has forgotten about that crazy runner who nearly ran into him.

What happened?

Well, in New Zealand and also in England, we drive on the left hand side of the Road. There is a great story why, however it is a habit that is hard wired whenever I drive. It also reflects where I walk or run on the footpath , (Americans call it a sidewalk), While I was alone running along paying attention to my Audible book I had naturally defaulted to running on the left. When a hazard approached I made an almost instinctive move to the left. Similarly the oncoming cyclist, I assume living in Austin, would default to the right. Hence a near miss. My hand signal was not clear enough and sufficiently confusing because nobody there does that, that it wasn't read correctly.

The same happens at work.?

I often act like a butterfly around companies not spending more than a year at any. I notice language norms and patterns of work that emerge and people will tend to conform to. This can lead to two types of frustration. On the one hand a new starter might not be aware of these norms and accidentally, 'run in front of the bike'. On the other, there can be a frustration that through the curse of knowledge and these norms being obvious to the incumbent 'cyclist' there can be frustration at the new people not understanding how we work here.

I've seen this most acutely at a few organisation where the company was a small startup for many years and then had a sudden growth spike. I believe it is less of an issue for older larger companies that have a large turnover of staff. I am guessing it has become more acute over the past few years as people tend to move more often.

When I joined the Royal Navy, it had about 1000 years of history. Our initial basic training had us introduced to practices and language patterns which are completely different to the outside world. Once familiar with these it becomes effortless. There was even a book published called "Jackspeak", which was hilarious because of its accuracy.

Generally speaking people would serve in the Navy for many years and even a few decades, and it was a rarity that you would transfer to another Navy. Even when you did it was likely a commonwealth nation that had similar norms. We didn't tend to transfer to the Chinese Navy for example.?

In the tech industry, we find people are onboarded quite rapidly and get working immediately with all their preconceptions and assumptions based on experience from elsewhere. Often by the time all the norms are understood, there is a significant group of people who have moved on to learn patterns at a different company.

In the most acute case of this I saw a company split into 2 silos, one being the old school, the other being new people. The newbies were excluded from discussions by the founding teams.

What can we do about this.

1. Firstly, be aware of this challenge. At a new company be aware that patterns of language and work will have emerged over time so it is worthwhile paying attention to how people interact. Pro tip: Is rarely helpful to lead with "well at company 'x' we did this" in the early days as it won't endear yourself to the team you are joining. There is a paradox for me here as my role is to do exactly that, so I need to rapidly build trust and set context of what I am explaining.
2. For people who may have been at a company for a long time, say over 5 years, and there is an influx of new starters, be patient. The curse of knowledge can be frustrating as what is believed to be obvious to you could be novel to somebody new to the company. I recommend spending time being explicit with how you intend to operate.
3. I like what I have read about Facebook bootcamp, in the book 'The Silo Effect' by Gillian Tett. This is not disssimilar to the approach in the Navy of basic training and enables new Engineers to understand not only the codebase and product, but also the culture at Facebook.?

Facebook has/had a specific policy of not becoming like Sony, Having read the Silo Effect, and having first had experience of Sony during the time described in the book, this resonated strongly with me. I will write a separate article on that.

I enjoyed running in Texas it was a welcome, and warm, break from the New Zealand winter. the incident with the cyclist reminded me about signalling intent more clearly and of course what is obvious and natural to me might be completely the opposite to others.

This relates back to David Marquets own article on the same pattern. We can overcome this by showing, visualising and stating intent. This applies both as members of old school and new school teams within an organisation, especially where there are an influx of new people.

Be deliberate with intent.