Open to Debate: There Is No 'Good' or 'Bad' Culture.... Only Culture
Adam Horne
I Help People Teams & Founders Design Company Culture That's Tangible & Transparent | Open Org 🖤
Welcome to the latest edition of our healthily divisive newsletter!, where we take a new topic each week and throw it out to the HR, People & Culture community for some constructive disagreement, insightful conflict and cathartic keyboard smashing...
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Revved up? Let's dive in...
There Is No 'Good' or 'Bad' Culture.... Only Culture
Ok, so how many of us have joined a company before after being told that 'the culture here is great'? Or maybe you've worked somewhere with a 'great place to work' award that really doesn't feel like...well, a great place to work... 👎
I'm sure a handful of you have even sold opportunities to potential hires based on 'great' culture too? Or tried to warn a friend off applying to a company because it's 'toxic'? ☢️
Is the labelling of culture as 'good' or 'bad' helpful? fair? valuable? Or are we treating culture as some fluffy benefit we can dress up to try and attract talent?
Here's the facts..
33% of people leave new roles within 90 days, citing culture fit as the reason (Jobvite)
That's a third.... That's a lot. A lot of wasted time, money & energy.
That tells me that something is wrong with how we understand, describe & 'sell' culture, particular through the lens of attracting & hiring talent, but also generally day-to-day.
Are we doing it a disservice by using labels like 'great' or 'toxic' to describe it? Are we actually sharing our personal opinion on how we feel about culture, rather than describing what that culture actually is? Because there's a big difference there...
🧠 My View
My answer would be absolutely. That's exactly what we are doing. And it's harmful.
In my opinion labels are lazy, and costly. What we're actually doing here is telling folks how we feel about culture, rather than helping them to understand what culture is, so they can make their own informed decision about whether they might in fact like it here...
And just because you think it's great... or 90% of your employee's would classify it as 'great', doesn't mean you should assume everyone else will think the same too.
What you're actually saying is 90% of people enjoy working here. So we're relatively confident you will too. But why do they enjoy it? Why do they thrive? and why aren't you focusing on telling people that information instead?
Maybe it's because people define culture differently... For me:
Culture is how we work here, not how we FEEL about working here
It's how we communicate, how we manage, how we do meetings, how we handle failure, how we share information, how we hire, fire, make decisions.. These aren't fluffy indescribable feelings. These are highly operational ways of work which can be designed, managed and communicated tangibly.
Feelings are personal. As are opinions. Which is where labels like 'good' or 'bad' creep in.
Instead, we should be removing those feelings, even if there is a majority sentiment there, and focusing on a few things:
Understand what culture actually means here in our context (e.g. how we work, communicate, make decisions, handle conflict. Our tools, rituals, meetings. Where we work. When we work...). Handy little diagnostic here if you want to make a start on that...
Are these 'ways of working' serving us? (e.g. can we achieve our goals working like we are right now? How do we actually need to be working to do that?)
How do we communicate that fairly, openly & honestly when attracting & hiring talent, so that they can make an informed decision based on facts, not personal opinions of others?
Bottom Line: There's a difference between what culture actually is, and how it makes us feel. Too many companies lead with the latter when hiring. That's why 33% of people leave so quickly. It's costly, it's lazy, and there's a much better way to do it.
What do you think? 👇
P.s. if you're craving more connection with other passionate HR, People & Culture folks, you might like our Slack Community over at Open Org. Check it out, and apply here! 🚀
🖤 350+ Start up People & Culture pioneers, helping & getting help in the most open, generous people community on the planet.
P.P.S - If this did get you nodding along, we're running a culture design cohort built on these principles in Feb. Check it out here
Building Remote Careers and Teams 🌎 | Head of Operations & People @ Passion.io | People Experience as a Product
1moThat's a tricky one. I think we often overuse labels like good or bad indeed. On the other hand I do think there are some things that depending on the situation, are hard for people to call out and they might default to what they feel about a certain environment. In general it's much more helpful to objectively describe how things are done and then move to the part where you say that's why I don't like it. Or that's why it's fundamentally not ok
Compensation Partner, Total Reward Partner | Tech, Fintech, Financial Services | ex-Checkout.com
1moThis is such an interesting one and I am conflicted! On the one hand, I agree that “a great culture” means absolutely nothing! And on the other hand, I see the merits of warning others of a “toxic culture”. I guess that tends to be when this term is used? I don’t mind the broad brush as much for a negative experience because I don’t feel it’s lazy to call something out as toxic. While I would hope the statement is followed up with examples of why that’s the case, I wouldn’t insist on it. I think we’ve all worked in environments where we’ve felt things were not right and unless it’s an important detail to dive into (for example in an interview), I think a person’s reaction to a poor career experience is valid. I really like Andrew’s description and call-out of the intangible nature of culture. One further thing I would want to add is that while culture is assumed to be the way that the *majority* feel, act, and interact within an organisation (thereby creating a consistent and expected pattern), it is very likely to be most influenced by leadership teams. Regardless of the ways of working throughout an organisation, if senior leaders feel, act, and interact in a certain way then that will almost certainly drip down.
I help HR pros build cultures people love through bold ideas, real talk, and human-centered learning | The Joy Equation: Ambassador + Catalyst | You are stardust with a heartbeat ✨
1moYou know I love Open Orgs take on having a manageable/measurable culture. Your company is the first time I’ve heard a definition about culture that makes sense and is accessible. And I’m the first one to throw away good/bad, right/wrong when describing anything because… it all depends. That said, in terms of getting to the ‘what’s so’ about a given company’s culture, using those words seems like one of the only ways to hold an organization accountable for the toxic conditions some of them develop and encourage. It’s kind of like the paradox of tolerance. Be tolerant, cultivate tolerance except in the case of the intolerant. Without some sort of values-based qualifier, it feels like we run the risk of enabling intolerant cultures to continue.
Future of Work | High Performance Remote Teams
1moThis is such an important point—when we sell culture to candidates, it shouldn’t be based on our own personal experience or ideals, but a transparent and honest understanding of what it truly is. Just like with customers, candidates deserve to make an informed decision about whether the company’s culture is the right fit for them.
Designing People Experiences to help tech startups to scale
1moThe anthropologist in me cringes when you reduce culture to "how we work here," but the People person in me loves that you're making culture more tangible. The challenge with culture is that it doesn’t exist in a physical form - it lives in how people feel, act, and interact within an organisation. This intangible nature makes it very hard to understand, explain, or measure. Creating "how we..." documentation is a great way to codify culture into tangible artefacts. It improves socialisation and integration for candidates, new hires, and current employees. And helps move away from implicit assumptions towards explicit expectations - which is key! But it creating and updating this documentation has to involve the people. Otherwise, it risks becoming a reflection of managerial ambitions aka "espoused culture", rather than the reality of lived experiences - the experience gap you described has and always will be the problem with "culture". I don't think I'll ever be happy with the oversimplication of culture, but it's much better than the bean-bag-ification of it, so I can sleep at night 😅