A Tale of Two Cities

The topic of organization culture is more fundamental to how we work than our goals, our roadmap, and our processes. I want to illustrate that through a tale of two cities - Happyville and Misreville, and how life differs in these two towns.

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Circles

Circles have long been associated with intimateness and inclusivity. Before a match starts, teams gather around in circles. In Happyville, people form a circle after hours or in a stand up. When a member who is not in the circle arrives, they invite this person in the circle and make a bigger circle. In Misreville, when someone new arrives, the circle does not invite the new person and the circle remains of the same size.

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The circle in Happyville is inclusive and the circle in Misreville is exclusive. What Happyville has is a team, what Misreville has is a set of cliques. Inclusive circles assure the new members - you are one of us. Go ahead, take a leap, we got your back. If we want to live in Happyville, exclusive circles must be converted to inclusive circles. Next time, when we form a circle, we should reflect on whether the circle is inclusive or exclusive.

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Professionalism

In Happyville, people pay the same respect and professional courtesy to a college hire that they do as an executive. They realize that people are not their title or tenure, and everyone deserves the same respect. In Happyville, when a team member comes asking a question, the person who has the answer stops, acknowledges their presence by looking at them and either answers the question or tells them that they are working on an important task and will stop by their desk to answer the question. In Misreville, people's behavior depends on a hierarchy or the membership to a clique. People will fail to acknowledge the presence of their team members. Pretend to not listen to their questions to avoid talking to them. Tone of their voice and the expression of their faces will change drastically, depending who they are talking to.

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It is natural to form friendships at work. In a team, we will be closer to some people than others. There is nothing wrong with that. However, every single team member deserves the same professional courtesy irrespective of their level, tenure or our personal feelings towards them.

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Psychological Safety

In Happyville, when someone new to the team makes a comment or asks a question, the remaining team members are happy to see the engagement and curiosity of the new member. They patiently answer the question or request to take it offline and then actively follow up. This behavior builds psychological safety where people are empowered to take risks. In Misreville, under the same condition, people will roll their eyes, try to cut them or shut them out and in some cases make fun of them behind their backs. This behavior curtails psychological safety and causes people to shut out, watch their backs and not take risks. No question is a stupid question. It takes a lot of courage to put yourself on the line and ask questions, especially from the new members of the team. It is far better than keeping all those questions inside with a fear of not looking stupid. Similarly, we should be open to the new ideas. In Happyville, people will listen to the ideas actively as people are free to speak their minds. In Misreville, people are tentative, careful and add a lot of more disclaimers before speaking, if they speak at all. The reason they do It is because they don’t feel free to speak. They don’t want to be interrupted and corrected before completing their sentences. I am not saying that precision in our words does not matter. It absolutely does. But we must build psychological safety first and then people will be more open to our suggestions. This is especially important when dealing with new/junior members of the team.

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Leadership

Leadership is not entitlement. Leadership is responsibility. We should expect everyone to be a leader. In that sense, higher the level, higher the responsibility. This is even more applicable to people's managers. Responsibility is not a burden, it is freedom. Humans need purpose to move forward. Responsibility provides us with that. If our purpose is to live in Happyville, then it is our responsibility to make it happen. Once again, the higher the level, the higher the responsibility.

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Just as someone said - "We create our own heaven and hell", we choose whether we live in Happyville or Misreville. I cannot imagine why anyone would want to live in Misreville, yet there are so many Misrevilles around. Why is that? This anomaly emanates from the discrepancy between our purpose and our auto-response to the situations. We form our auto-responses through conditioning. A new hire in Misreville, over a long period of time will behave in accordance to the culture of Misreville and a new hire in Happyville, over a long period of time will behave in accordance to the culture of Happyville. And that is why an open, professional and empathetic culture is so essential for a team to achieve its full potential. There is no such thing as - 'no culture'. Culture will be formed. Either it will be formed by default in that case it is a toss-up between Happyville or Misreville, or it will be deliberately cultivated as it happened in Happyville. I will conclude this article with these thoughts for us to reflect on and a promise that we must be committed to ensure that we live in Happyville. Anything less is unacceptable.