I've worked for many companies that never spoke about culture, and their culture was fantastic. I still do my best to emulate what those companies had. We took pride in our work, admired each other, and treated each other with respect. We put the customer first and worked hard to succeed. Some didn't. We went into bankruptcy, fighting together to survive until the end.
When I started working in SaaS, company culture became a topic. It's steadily risen in Google Trends and appeared more often as HBR fare. And I have heard some really wild philosophies about culture in that time. Here is what I know about culture.
- Culture only comes from the top. It's not organic. It's based on who you hire, fire and how you train, and how you work.
- Bad culture is like fire; it destroys in seconds.
- Talking about culture has zero to do with building culture.
In business and life, you can't teach what you don't have. That spells trouble for any employee. The more hare-brained a company's concept of culture is, the worse it's going to be. The less job experience the team has, the wilder the ride is going to be.
The rewarding part of leading a team has nothing to do with an org chart. It's about teaching people a skill and teaching them how to act with that skill in the world.
