Why Shared Belief is Essential to Thriving Business Culture

The beginning of anything requires a leap of faith. This has become both a truism and pablum in Silicon Valley. But as the years go by, what does it take to convince thousands of people to continue to take collective leaps of faith — innovation after innovation, software release after software release??

I’m a huge advocate of face-to-face interaction, collaboration, and the power it brings to teams, especially when teaching future leaders and fine-tuning business evolution. It has been proven time and again that great ideas and a truly exceptional level of creativity and innovation can only happen when people are together, shoulder-to-shoulder, in a shared act of trust. ?

These powerful and sometimes all-consuming states of mind are integral to startup culture and the most effective way to inspire people to commit to achieving a seemingly impossible task. This is the type of shared belief that sits at the center of what Silicon Valley is made of. It’s the core element that has helped create so many hyper-successful, innovative companies that are able to capture lightning in a bottle — again and again. This can only happen when teams are aligned, believing, and striving together.??

?Historically, this is why creative people and entrepreneurs have flocked to Silicon Valley for decades. They know that common goals can only be achieved when special groups of people come together, committed to chasing an impossible dream. This is why established companies take office space and invest billions of dollars to build campuses where their teams can thrive, in person, together.?

However, coming together to share beliefs and unlock passion is in jeopardy in a post-Covid hybrid work world as we all struggle to figure out how to regain what was lost during the pandemic.?

Consider the pandemic experience at Microsoft. A peer-reviewed study of Microsoft’s 61,000-plus U.S. workforce found that teams became more siloed and spent less time communicating with colleagues outside of their immediate teams after the company mandated work-from-home. Microsoft researchers found that the amount of time workers spent collaborating with other groups dropped by 25%.??

A post-pandemic MIT study came to a similar conclusion. Analyzing email networks, MIT researchers discovered a 38% drop in so-called “weak ties” within the researcher email network. Weak ties, which are connections between two people without mutual contact, are essential to innovation because they represent opportunities for the cross-pollination of ideas while presenting challenges to siloed thinking.??

What does it mean to believe????

The dictionary defines belief as “trust, faith, or confidence in someone or something.” But something doesn’t need to exist for us to believe in it. In fact, the first step to doing anything new is the creation of a belief that you can do it. This belief comes before the product, before the company, before everything.??

When I talk to my children about the need to believe, the conversation always comes back to one of their favorite movies, “Kung Fu Panda.” Before Po becomes The Dragon Warrior, there’s a critical scene where Master Shifu makes Po’s teacher, Grand Master Oogway, promise to believe in his student’s potential, even though Po is just a clumsy panda. The lesson here is that belief doesn’t happen in isolation. We create beliefs by sharing them with others.??

Inside a start-up, that shared belief can feel akin to mania. The world may think the future is already written, but inside every start-up, small teams, working together, have the power to change the future because they hold a shared belief that unlocks the passion and drive they need to accomplish what everyone else thought couldn’t be done.???

The tech industry saw this most recently with ChatGPT. The original plan was to release a very polished product called ChatGPT-4 at some point in 2023. But OpenAI leadership was concerned that tech giants like Google would beat them to the punch, so they pivoted. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman told his team they were going to launch a different product, ChatGPT-3.5, in two weeks! The world knows how that pivot turned out, but inside OpenAI the pivot was only possible because the team shared a belief in the impossible.??

?We must believe again. ??

I don’t want to rehash the pain of the last few years, but one thing we can agree on is that we experienced a lot of division. Some of that division was already there, but it didn’t help that our institutions, companies, and even our families went remote.???

The social distance kept us safe, but that isolation robbed us of our ability to believe. It’s little wonder that we saw so many questionable ideas — from conspiracy theories to crypto scams — flourish these past few years. We went remote, and in the empty spaces, doubt grew like a cancer among us.??

Then the world reopened, and we came back together to socialize, love, worship, govern, and do so many other great things. We didn’t question the value of doing these things together. We understood it implicitly.???

A better case study for why it’s essential to bring people together for work is civilization itself. We didn’t build civilization by working remotely, so why do we think we can build the future in isolation? The future has always been the product of what we dream and build together. It’s time to come back together, share our beliefs, unlock our passions, and return to work. ??

Love to hear your thoughts. What has been your experience? Going to Cannes Lions? Let’s talk in person.??

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