How to build a great culture
There is no shortage of talk about building a good culture in organisations those days. But, if you have red my article about the inner workings of a culture — yes, a shameless plug — you know I have a rather divergent view on the subject.
And so, today I wanted to step away from generalisms and talk more specifics: how to actually build a decent culture in a software engineering organisation. And yes, it doesn’t have to involve buying a ping-pong table and hanging the company values posters in the office.
What are the rules
As I mentioned in my previous article, I’m not a huge fan of values based culture creation. Because it’s not specific enough for the actual goal we’re trying to achieve; which is building a great engineering culture. And so, instead, I will talk about it in terms of creating a good solid environment conducive to creative work, such as software engineering.
My main problem with values driven environments is that they tend to mostly contain and proliferate the founders values rather than the group’s needs and wants. It’s great if the founders know what they’re doing and can set good norms for their peers rather for their own comfort. But, more often than not, that’s not the case and it’s “my way or the highway”, all the way to the IPO. Well, if that ever happens.
Instead, I want to talk about the fundamentals. I want to talk about building a great working environment with strong peers cohesion from scratch. How it works and what’s important.
There are, most likely, more than one way to look at the problem, but there is a framework that had stuck with me throughout the years. It defines the prerequisites for a person’s safe and productive attachment to a peer group. It’s formulated through the following three fundamental questions:
- Do I belong here?
- Do we have a future together?
- Am I safe?
Now, lets unpack those a little bit
Culture and belongingness
Belongingness is the foundation of any strongly cohesive group dynamic. It is the sense of belongingness that generates the implicit trust that all high performing teams require to operate successfully; especially if a decent amount of stress and uncertainty involved.
Belongingness is a double edged tool though. The easiest way to cultivate a sense of belongingness is to run an exclusive club. If all the members are essentially the same, then the sense of belongingness comes by default. The problem with exclusive clubs though is that they don’t scale and they don fare well when they face change.
We don’t have to walk far to see examples of that. The history of open-source is littered with the white middle-class dude communities. They all struggle to expand beyond those circles even when they try really hard to be open and inclusive. Because if an new member is not like the 90% of a homogeneous group, they won’t feel like they belong there, no matter what the group leaders say.
And that brings us to the main point. We call this a sense of belonging because it is intuitive and non-verbal. Words don’t really matter much here, and a person needs to feel like they belong to a group, not to rationalise it.
The problem here is that belongingness grows out of one’s identity. If a person can bring their whole self into a group and drop their barriers — and hence become a productive member of this peer group — then they can say that they belong there. If on the other hand, their identity is not acknowledged or considered inferior the identities of the rest of the group, then this person is bound to struggle regardless of anyone’s best efforts and intentions.
There is a way out of this mess, and it’s called diversity. An identity of a group can be purposefully crafted around the idea of diversity as the unifying factor. If a group is purposefully non-homogeneous, and differences are innately valued, then it is bringing that unique self into the group that turns into the bonding factor. Because, being different brings value to the group.
It is a surprisingly difficult feat to pull off, though. Basically because in any diverse environment there is usually a dominant group that will allow for the diversity to exist for as long as their own status at the top of the food chain is not challenged.
And that brings us to the most difficult idea to stomach. If we want to build a culture that scales and evolves long term, we need to build a culture around diversity. And the only way to build a diversity based culture is to build a diverse leadership team. And the only way to build a high functioning and diverse leadership team is when the big boss is not a member of the dominant group.
Look, I didn’t say it will be easy. Nothing worth doing is easy.
The future that binds us
In my humble opinion, one of the most moronic blunders any leader can do is to threaten firing people if they won’t do what they are told. Another one in the same category would be going into redundancies and expect that those who remain would feel grateful to still have a job. Here is another one, hire a whole lot of contractors to get to the market faster.
What do you think all of those decisions have in common and why are they detrimental to creating a good robust culture? It’s just one thing: those decisions either threaten or don’t assume continuity in a relationship.
Continuity, or shared future, is another critical ingredient in any healthy culture. Because if there is no future, or the future is highly uncertain, then why bother? Why bother going extra mile, why bother being helpful or nice, why even bother staying with the group? Time is universally in a limited supply for everyone, and no-one in their right mind will invest their most precious assent into something that has no future.
Even the most loyal to the company and its mission will mentally check out and play it safe if their future with the company is threatened.
Employment is a source of income for most people, but it is also a source of purpose. It is especially true for the most impactful creative professionals. Because creative people seek creative experiences, that’s how they derive meaning and value in their lives. And an act of creation is innately linked with things to come, the future. Break that link and you break the reason for a creative person to show up at work.
The opposite is also true. By creating a lofty goal, a leader can create a narrative where the work people do is linked to a shared future. And that is why “lets change the world for the better” slogans are so effective, even though they are kind of a cringe. The goal doesn’t have to be saving the world though, it could as well be as mundane as building a decent place to work.
If a sense of belongingness is a fundament for trust and formation of a robust culture, then the shared future is the glue that keeps everyone together.
Safe environment
There is an endless list of amazing articles about psychological safety at a work place. So, I won’t beat around the bush and repeat what was said before. But, I wanted to add a few points that relate to building a good culture at work.
If belongingness and shared future are prerequisites for people to show up excited about work, then their safety defines the limits of their involvement. Because, generally, people will only go as far as the safety will allow them.
Creative work is always exploratory and uncertain. Every time an engineer takes up a ticket and starts writing code they take risks. Risks that the thing won’t pan out the way they imagined, risks that they will run into unexplored areas and have no idea what to do, risks that their solution will explode weeks later. And they will only take as much risks as their appetite for possible repercussions will allow them.
Here is the problem though. The team’s leader/manager is the most privileged person in the group. As the result, they won’t feel or see the risks the way the people who actually do the work do. It is especially true in a cross-functional environment where the leader can’t make innate value judgements for half of the people on the team.
One smart person described it this way. Imagine you’re working at a nuclear waste excavation and disposal site, and you don’t have a geiger counter. Actually most of your team don’t have them, it’s just a few people who have geiger counters. Just believing that everyone’s safe without listening to those who can actually measure the environment is basically irresponsible.
Psychological safety issues in a team don’t start with the leadership or it’s strongest members, they start by affecting the most vulnerable ones first. Junior devs, minorities, people who are going through a rough patch in life. Those are the people you have to really listen to if you are serious about building psychological safety at work.
Ever heard of a canary in a mine? Every single team has one. Make sure you find them and listen to them all the time.
Closing remarks
I’ll try to wrap it up in a rather controversial way. But, this is the best analogy I have at the moment.
Have you ever noticed how similar religious organisations structures and contemporary corporate environments are? When you look at a company after a company, you’ll see that all of them have N tenets that employees supposed to adopt as their own, and on top of that they have to demonstrate unconditional trust into the clergy and their decisions.
Given how long religions tend to survive, it might be not the most terrible idea. But, there is also a very dramatic history of suppressed innovation and intolerance for divergent ideas. And so, if we’re trying to create a culture that supports and cultivates disruptive innovation, then it follows that this might be not the best system to emulate.
Where we might want to look instead is practices that creative undergrounds use, because that is where innovation happens as a way of life. And if you look closely, you will notice that most of those subcultures share similar traits: diversity as a default setting, shared drive for building the better tomorrow, and looking after the most vulnerable members of the community.
Do that in any form that works for you and you will be better off in terms of building a productive engineering culture than 90% of those companies that hang their “work harder” values posters on walls.
Well, at least that’s what I think.