Here are a few books I’ve read recently that were insightful on organizational culture.
Working Backwards by Colin Bryar and Bill Carr
The authors of this book are former executives at Amazon, and they share the inner workings of how the company grew so successfully. A big piece of their success came from codifying leadership principles early on. Here is how they did that:
“In 2004, human resources head Mike George and his colleague Robin Andrulevich made an observation: the company had grown like a weed, adding many leaders who were inexperienced and in need of some formal management and leadership training. So Mike asked Robin to create a leadership-training program. Robin asserted that doing so would first require clearly and succinctly codifying what leadership meant at Amazon. Such an exercise would certainly delay the rollout of the program, but, after much discussion, everyone agreed it would be a worthy undertaking. In the 2015 shareholder letter, Jeff wrote, “You can write down your corporate culture, but when you do so, you’re discovering it, uncovering it—not creating it.” This was the assumption on which Robin had been operating when she set about to codify the Leadership Principles. She interviewed people throughout Amazon who were effective leaders and who embodied the essence of this burgeoning company. What she thought would be a two-month project took nine months to complete. But by the time she was finished, her effort had gone a long way toward identifying many of the elements that would make the company what it is today. This initial set of Leadership Principles was basically an articulation and synthesis of the ethos of the people Robin interviewed.”
I believe that the best principles and values are extremely specific for each organization. Having “trust” as a principle or value is not helpful because it is so vague. Amazon’s leadership principles are specific, and therefore, help people make day-to-day decisions based on them.
“Thanks to Robin, who did a superb job collecting these powerful principles, they were expressed in an actionable and distinctly Amazonian way. For example, the Insist on the Highest Standards leadership principle is described like this: “Leaders have relentlessly high standards—many people may think these standards are unreasonably high.” The words “relentlessly” and “unreasonably high” are distinctly Jeff-ian and therefore Amazonian ways of thinking and speaking. Another important Amazonian phrase often appears alongside the Amazon Leadership Principles and key tenets: “Unless you know better ones.” This reminds people to always seek to improve the status quo.”
The author's argue that the best way to write leadership principles is to do it internally as a company, rather than outsourcing it.
“Define a set of leadership principles. These must be developed with participation from many contributors. Don’t assign the task to a single group or outsource it to a consultant or service provider. Do it yourselves. Hash out the details. Revisit the principles from time to time and revise if and as necessary. Then, as with the aspects of the culture, bring the principles into every process, from hiring to product development. Depict your flywheel. What are the drivers of growth for your company?”
Another great nugget from the book shares how important mechanisms are: “Good intentions don’t work. Mechanisms do.”
“There’s a saying often heard at Amazon: “Good intentions don’t work. Mechanisms do.” No company can rely on good intentions like “We must try harder!” or “Next time remember to…” to improve a process, solve a problem, or fix a mistake. That’s because people already had good intentions when the problems cropped up in the first place. Amazon realized early on that if you don’t change the underlying condition that created a problem, you should expect the problem to recur. Over the course of many years, Amazon has put in place mechanisms to ensure that the Leadership Principles translate into action. Three foundational mechanisms are: the annual planning process; the S-Team goals process (the S-Team consists of the senior vice presidents and direct reports to Jeff Bezos); and Amazon’s compensation plan, which aligns incentives with what’s best for customers and the company over the long term.”
Remote Work Revolution by Tsedal Neeley
Tsedal Neeley is a professor at Harvard Business School who has been studying remote and global work. Her new book about remote work couldn’t be more timely. One practice she recommends all remote and hybrid organizations do is called a team launch.
“Team launches (and periodic relaunch sessions) drive performance throughout the team’s journey. Relaunches are critical to keep remote teams cohesive, but even more so when teams transition to remote work, and especially by necessity as with COVID-19. Leaders need to be proactive about more, not less, periodic relaunches. The typical length for a launch is an hour or an hour and a half, and that time can be spread across two sessions. Every member needs to be present for an open discussion to share opinions and contribute perspectives on the best ways to work together as a team. When working remotely, launches should be video meetings where people can be as connected as digital technology allows.
[Here are] the four essential elements of teamwork that each member must agree on:
Shared goals that make plain and clear the aims that the team is pursuing.
Shared understanding about each member’s roles, functions, and constraints.
Shared understanding of available resources ranging from budgets to information.
Shared norms that map out how teammates will collaborate effectively.
Notice that each of these four domains begins with the same word: shared. That’s because the fundamental goal of a launch session is alignment.
Relaunches are periodic appraisals of how the group is faring with the four key areas. I often joke that a relaunch is like a couple’s date night because in both instances you revisit what’s important and may check in on the present, past, and future to figure out what’s working and what might need adjustments. As a general rule, teams should revisit their standing via a relaunch at least once per quarter. When people work remotely, I have found that relaunching every six to eight weeks to orient or reorient based on evolving dynamics is more important. During these occasions, virtual working groups and leaders acknowledge how each member is doing, figure out how to address concerns, and ultimately get everyone on the same track to achieve team goals. In other words, relaunches are never a one-and-done event. Because work conditions are often dynamic, hitting the reset button once won’t be enough.”
Neeley also shares a framework for how to think about different types of trust and what is needed for remote teams.
Two basic terms that help us think about how to choose from the nuanced palette of trust available when working together are cognitive trust and emotional trust.
Cognitive trust is grounded in the belief that your coworkers are reliable and dependable. Teams motivated by cognitive-based trust use their heads to consider their colleagues’ qualification to do the task at hand; trust is usually formed over time, and confirmed (or disproven) over numerous experiences and interactions. For example, when you learn that a colleague has gained significant experience from a previous job or has graduated from an institution you respect, you begin to form cognitive trust. As you work on a project together, your cognitive trust will rise or fall depending on how consistently your colleague has behaved to demonstrate reliability over time.
By comparison, emotional trust is grounded in coworkers’ care and concern for one another. Relationships built on emotional trust rely on positive feeling and emotional bonds, and they crop up most easily when team members share common values and mind-sets. If you consciously mentor a colleague or a group takes up a collection to give a coworker a gift, for example, that’s driven by emotional trust.
Relationships based on emotional trust are akin to friendships and involve the heart. They do not require more time to achieve, but they are more difficult to form among remote teams. Passable trust is more dependent on cognitive trust, whereas swift trust is more dependent on both emotional and cognitive trust.
Passable trust is necessary but not sufficient for most remote teams. It’s useful and frequently used for communicating outside of teams and across organizations—it’s the fuel that keeps organizations working—but because it doesn’t become more intense or involve emotion it’s not the special ingredient that makes a team, but especially a remote team, really gel.
Connect by David Bradford and Carole Robin
This book is written by the creators of the “Touchy-Feely” course at the Stanford Graduate School of Business. This is the most popular course, and alumni say it is a life changing experience. I couldn’t wait to read it, and found it helpful, although a big part of the experience is learning with a cohort of fellow students. Here are a few passages I highlighted:
“Exceptional relationships can be developed. They have six hallmarks:
You can be more fully yourself, and so can the other person.
Both of you are willing to be vulnerable.
You trust that self-disclosures will not be used against you.
You can be honest with each other.
You deal with conflict productively.
Both of you are committed to each other’s growth and development.
The last three hallmarks have to do with feedback and conflict. Challenging someone can actually be a powerful way of supporting them, and yet few people feel confident they can do it well. Someone with whom you have an exceptional relationship calls you on behaviors that really bother them, and when they do, you know it’s a chance for learning, not something against which you have to put up your guard. They know that in helping you understand the impact of your behavior, they are showing commitment to your relationship and helping you grow. Fights happen, even in the best of relationships (as you’ll see, the two of us are proof of that!). But a fear of conflict can lead you to bury irritants that, if raised and successfully dealt with, could actually deepen the relationship. Conflicts left unspoken can still cause harm. In an exceptional relationship, it’s easier to raise and resolve issues so that they don’t lurk and result in long-term damage. You see such challenges as opportunities to learn, which decreases the chance that these same difficulties will appear again.”
One of the most famous concepts that I had heard about before reading the book was “going over the net.” Here is the explanation:
“When someone else’s feedback is an attribution of your inner reality, it’s tough not to feel defensive. The first reaction is to rebut: “No, I’m not.” A second tendency is to counterattack: “The reason that I do that is because you do X.” This is a normal response when we feel attacked, misunderstood, or placed in a one-down position. But defensiveness can lead to escalation and prevent both parties from learning. Accept you are feeling defensive, but don’t act on it. Instead, use the feedback model to push the other person back to their side of the court.
Although conceptually simple, it’s not always easy to do. One of the most interesting and remarkable things that happens at the Stanford business school is the way in which the model of the net becomes more and more commonplace in everyday conversations as more of the students take Interpersonal Dynamics. We are also heartened about the extent to which it stays with alums for decades. “Over the net” has become a culturally defining term.
A great example of the utility of these concepts involved a young woman we knew who had learned about the net model from an older friend. Her high school tennis coach was very irritated with her and said, “Your problem is you’re not committed.” She calmly responded to him, “Can you tell me more about what you mean? I’ve never missed a practice or a game, and I happily play anywhere in the lineup you place me. That’s what commitment means to me. But obviously I’m doing something that makes you think I’m not committed. What is it?”
The coach then raised his voice slightly and said, “You show up to practice without your uniform!” To which she responded, “Oh….Okay, I’m glad I asked! I would have never known that was how you defined commitment. If you’d told me I was disorganized and forgetful, I’d have been the first person to agree. I get it now. I’ll be back tomorrow for practice…with my uniform.” Their relationship changed significantly once she learned the source of his irritation and was able to respond to it.
Remember, sometimes feedback comes in very ugly wrapping—but that doesn’t mean there’s not a gift inside. Since by yourself you can only know two of the three realities, receiving feedback is essential to being more effective. You need to know the third—the impact of your behavior. As we often say, “It takes two to know one.”
The authors discuss how often a barrier to speaking up is the fear of someone above you not wanting to hear what you have to say. However, that is often not the case.
“In spite of organizational constraints, our experience is that most managers and employees want more open and direct conversations than they often have.
In the programs we conduct for executives, we have found it fascinating that when we ask, “How open can you be with your boss?” the responses are most often, “Oh, I have to be very careful,” “I need to watch my words if I disagree,” and “It’s best to make bosses think the new ideas are theirs.” These answers are irrespective of the participants’ level of management.
Then we ask a follow-up question: “If your direct reports disagree with one of your ideas, what do you want them to do?” The responses are again similar across all levels of management. Except this time the answer is, “I want them to be direct, to lay it out, not to beat around the bush. I want to know the truth.” We then observe, “Isn’t that interesting? All the people in this program are secure and centered, but all have bosses who are fragile and insecure. Clearly, we need to get your managers, not you, to these programs!”
As we noted above… you can be direct and straightforward. You can help your boss see that you are on their side and your intent is to be their ally. You are likely not only to gain more respect but also to end up with stronger and more functional relationships. With that as a basis, it is possible that many work relationships can grow to be exceptional.”