Good Culture, Bad Culture

I don't know why, but I have an inherent appreciation for skyscrapers. When I was a child I enjoyed spending time playing with my Lego blocks, always trying to build as high as my amount of blocks allowed me. Naturally, this led me to poor skinny towers too fragile to stand by themselves for longer periods. Thanks to the constant frustration of seeing my creation ending shattered on the ground, I came to realize that it was impossible to keep building up without a solid foundation. It didn't matter how far I build upwards if the foundation was poor my creation will eventually fall. Given that, I began to spend more time reflecting on how to design a solid foundation that will support an increasing amount of blocks, rather than striving to build high and fast.

2 decades later, I'm no longer into lego building blocks but this analogy helps me understand how important is to get business culture right.

Culture is not a nice-to-have, it's the foundation that describes values, people, relationships, work and processes in an organization. Despite its importance, I feel that many times it's set aside in favor of short-term goals. Somewhat underrated by some, I want to highlight that, as with the building blocks, you only can go higher in terms of results by building a solid culture first. Without strong cohesion on values that unite people towards a common goal, your beautiful creations will fall apart. Build low and well and then aim to the sky.

Taking Ben Horowitz's "Good Product Manager, Bad Product Manager" essay as inspiration, here are my thoughts about company culture:

• A good culture is not about home office, a cool pet-friendly office with astonishing city views, on-site craft beer and ping pong tournaments. It's about connecting people around a shared goal and building meaningful relationships. A bad culture is one that fosters shallow conversations that go nowhere.
• A good culture focuses genuinely on career development and personal wellbeing. A bad culture focuses on what seems convenient to the boss's wishes.
• A good culture creates an environment of meaningful work, aligning people's personality, passion and personal objectives with business goals. A bad culture designs roles based solely on business needs.
• A good culture is cohesive in a way that unifies people under the same banner of independent and critical thinking. A bad culture is a coercive cult that punishes different points of view and shuts down the flow of new ideas.
• A good culture encourages people to innovate without fear of failure, to learn fast from mistakes and get better in the process. A bad culture is restrictive. It forbids error.
• A good culture secures non-hierarchical communication channels and empathy through all the members. A bad culture is authoritative and promotes power abuse.
• A good culture functions in a meritocratic way, recognizing fairly the contributions of each person. A bad culture suffers workplace politics where ideology, friendship, age, race, beauty, and other no work-related variables play an important role when deciding whom to promote or whom to hire.
• A good culture has its foundations on the values of people while ensuring diversity at the skills/abilities level. It's a community around shared beliefs. A bad culture has no clear identity nor values. Constant disagreements and misunderstanding thrive there.
• A good culture treats you with tough love, concerning about the welfare and development of its parties while being honest and transparent about weaknesses and problems. A bad culture is overly protective, not telling the harsh reality or, on the other hand, is cruelty and uninterested about people's welfare.
• A good culture is a culture build upon generosity, and try to understand and help others in their needs without expecting anything in return. A bad culture has instrumental relationships where some people take advantage of others' favors.