What is culture anyway?

Culture, as derived from French and Latin, means to tend to the earth and grow. Cultivate and nurture, to actively foster growth.

So many corporate cultures are built by creating a mold and then forcing people to fit into said mold. In many companies, the further you climb the harder it is to find divergent thinking. It's the compound effect of "like me" bias, the Peter Principle and politics - to name a few. Leaders build leadership teams and fill roles based on who looks like, sounds like, acts like, thinks like and talks like...them. The "like me bias". Leaders often get promoted to their highest level of incompetence. The Peter Principle. Some plateau here, but others go further - climbing to levels that exceed their leadership lid and competence. This may be the result of: a) politics, b) being in the right place at the right time, c) familiarity (known evil vs. unknown evil) or d) laziness (choosing the easy thing over the hard thing).

Think about the concept of a mold in manufacturing. The purpose of a mold is to reproduce multiple uniform copies of a product. Multiple, uniform copies. Let that sink in.

A mold is the antithesis of diversity and innovation. I think back to some of the most innovative projects I've worked on. Projects with leaders like Steve Jobs whose vision could not be limited by a mold. The HQ project is probably one of the most difficult I've seen in my career. Nearly every aspect of the project was a first of its kind. Molds were literally broken. And because a courageous leader abandoned the mold, as painful as it may have been for many involved, innovation at its highest level was achieved. The impossible was made possible.

The meaning of culture is to actively foster growth. To do this, we should be constantly asking ourselves:

1. What molds need to be broken in our organization?
2. Do our senior leaders all seem to fit a mold? What is the mold? What are the implications of that on growth, innovation and customer value?
3. What does our attrition data tell us? Have we lost leaders that didn't fit the mold? Is it because they didn't fit the mold? What are the implications of that?
4. How can we create an environment where we actively foster growth? What needs to change for us to do this?

Culture is not a physical place. Cool workplaces with best-in-class amenities will not fix your culture. It's a critical mistake to identify your company culture with ping pong tables and cafes. These may be expressions of culture. They may be a catalyst to creating culture. But, they are not culture.

Consider the ways that growth is fostered in the simplest form, a garden. You have to prepare the soil, removing weeds as well as plants that have outgrown the space. You have to understand how various plants perform in certain conditions. Every decision, every action is about creating an environment that will foster sustainable growth. Then, you maintain. Maintaining is harder in many ways than creating it in the first place. The work is never really complete. Lazy is not an option.

The same is true when we think about fostering growth in a company. Designing an organization isn't about creating a mold. It's about creating an environment where people can experience sustainable growth. In many ways people are like plants. You don't have to be a botanist to see that a plant is dying or that plant is outgrowing its pot. You do have to pay attention though. You have to be thoughtful, attentive and invested. You have to be willing to remove the weeds, change the pots and abandon the mold. Like variety is good for a garden, variety is good for business. Invest in the divergent thinkers, invest in the people that challenge the status quo, invest in the mold breakers. It sounds simple, but it's actually quite hard. Investing in divergent talent requires us to challenge our bias, beliefs and values. This is what it takes to build resilient culture.