Thoughts on culture

In recent years, I’ve come to appreciate the importance of good culture at work. I’ve thought about it quite a lot, and in this post, I’ll try to digest some of my thoughts.

First: what is culture? Let’s run with the following definition:

Culture is the shared set of values, beliefs, customs, and creations—both physical and intangible—that a group learns and hands down over time.

Clearly, any workplace has a culture. But:

• What does it mean to have a good culture?
• How can we influence and ensure that we work in an environment characterized by good culture?

I’ll discuss both of those questions in the following. But first, based on my last three years’ experience, here are some direct benefits of good culture that I’ve witnessed:

• I feel safe — I can express my thoughts more or less unfiltered.
• I can be curious and spend time on investigating ideas. This has made it much easier for me to fill skill gaps, for instance.
• I receive honest feedback on my actions and work.
• We’re allowed to have fun.
• We are open and share our thoughts and ideas.
• We respect each other’s time and minimize unnecessary lengthy meetings.
• When things are unclear or frustrating, we are good at being constructive. Instead of staying in a frustrated state, we start investigating how we can best proceed.

Establishing and maintaining good culture

I believe there are a couple of important prerequisites to establishing good culture:

• We must have a clear understanding of what good culture is!
• We must have the ability to self-reflect:
  • What is our culture today?
  • Which values and practices do we demonstrate?
  • How are these values and practices passed on?

In my opinion, establishing good culture is a major leadership and management responsibility! This obviously includes the higher-ups, but also senior staff in general—anyone who has any formal report or mentorship role will influence co-workers “down the line”. I therefore think leaders at all levels should engage in the above-mentioned self-reflection. Essentially, “we need to know who we are to change who we are”.

Now, to establish and maintain good culture, I think we need to do the following:

• Set out values and describe how we want to work together.
• Demonstrate the values in action.
• Give attention and support to those who embody the desired good culture.

As should be evident, I strongly believe that leaders are the main carriers of our working culture. There’s a downside to this, though: leaders also have an opportunity to create bad culture. The heritage they demonstrate spreads quickly! This can be especially harmful if, on one hand, leaders “demand” good culture, but on the other hand, fail to live up to it themselves.

The characteristics of good culture

Now, what are the characteristics of good culture? I believe we can consider characteristics along three dimensions:

1. leadership
2. communication
3. work habits

In the following, I’ll highlight values, practices or habits that I think are crucial parts of a good working culture.

Leadership

• Lead openly and transparently!
  • Processes must be transparent. That usually means they’re well documented in a way that makes it easy for stakeholders to find information.
  • Make it clear who’s involved in each process.
  • If decisions are made, be explicit about how and by whom.
• Lead clearly, with well-defined processes!
• Lead with trust, delegate authority and decision-making downward.
• Use criticism and critical feedback to get better.
  • Ask questions about the feedback before you dismiss it! Listen (don’t just hear)!
  • Treat criticism as an opportunity to improve and to include others.

Communication

• Assume that what others say comes from good intentions.
• Give praise when it’s deserved.
• Offer feedback—including critical feedback.
• Strive to deliver criticism in a factual and friendly manner.

Work habits

• Work openly and transparently.
  • When we’re working on something, we should make our work visible from the start. Code should be shared in branches that are available to our colleagues. Text should also be shared.
• Trust that everyone is doing their best.
• Actively collaborate to achieve good results.
  • I’ve found both pair programming and “pair writing” to be very useful. It is a good arena for mentoring and makes collaboration very natural.
• Use structured documentation and writing as a tool for productivity¹.

Final remarks

In case you’ve read this far, here are three parting thoughts:

• Be mindful of the culture you’re already in. Notice its values, habits, and unwritten rules.
• Decide what kind of culture you want to help create. Pin down the values and behaviors you care about.
• Own your influence: Every choice you make either strengthens or reshapes the culture around you.

Finally, here are some other posts on this topic that I’ve found interesting and inspirational:

• It’s okay to have no idea what you’re doing and try anyway
• Culture matters