Quarterly Culture Inspiration: July 2019

Quick update: The book I co-authored with Liz Fosslien is a Wall Street Journal bestseller: No Hard Feelings: The Secret Power of Emotions. The book was recently featured in The New York Times, and was selected for the Next Big Idea Club. You can read more about the book here and sign up for our monthly newsletter here. Follow us on instagram for weekly illustrations!

Every quarter, I share helpful summaries and excerpts of the best books, podcasts, and articles I’ve read about culture.

Book: The Making of a Manager by Julie Zhou

Julie Zhou is a VP of Design at Facebook, and she just wrote a fantastic book about how she learned how to manage. It has so many wise lessons for new managers! The last chapter is all about culture. Julie writes:

“As you manage more and more people, you’ll play a bigger role in shaping culture. Don’t underestimate the influence that you can have. Even if you’re not the CEO, your actions reinforce what the company values.

Your team’s culture is like its personality. It exists whether or not you think about it. If you’re not satisfied with how your team works together— maybe the vibe feels hostile instead of helpful, maybe it takes a long time to get things done, or maybe there’s constant drama— it’s worth examining why this might be and what you can do about it.”

Julie provides a series of questions you should ask yourself to understand your current team and your aspirations for the team. She then gives suggestions on how to have hard conversations, how to walk the walk, create the right incentives, and invent traditions that celebrate your values (like an annual Oscars-style award ceremony so people can recognize all the ways in which their coworkers are awesome).

Article: “Culture is What You Do” by Shawn Blanc

Shawn Blanc is a thoughtful writer and blogger. In this post, he talks about being intentional about creating culture for his company. He writes:

“Now, when I make a decision about my company I have to think about how it impacts our team and our culture. When I make decisions about what projects we take on, what our company profit sharing looks like, the amount and type of time-off we allow, our team communication systems, and more, I have to think about this:

Is this a vote toward the type of work environment I want to have in 20 years?

Here’s the thing. It will never be easier to have an awesome work culture than it is right now.

Why should I be waiting for some sort of potential, future-state of my business before I can begin implementing the sorts of healthy work cultures that I want?

If I wait, then I run the risk of accidentally building a company culture that I don’t like. How awful would it be to look up 10 years from now and realize that I spent a decade building a business that is stressful and exhausting to work in?”

Video: Lecture 10: Culture (Brian Chesky, Alfred Lin)

As part of Sam Altman's 'How to Start a Startup' class at Stanford University, Brian Chesky, Founder of Airbnb, and Alfred Lin, Former COO of Zappos and Partner at Sequoia Capital discuss how to build a great company culture.

Quarterly Culture Inspiration: April 2019

Quick update: The book I co-authored with Liz Fosslien is out now: No Hard Feelings: The Secret Power of Emotions. The book is a Wall Street Journal bestseller, was featured in The New York Times, and was selected for the Next Big Idea Club. You can read more about the book here and sign up for our monthly newsletter here. Follow us on instagram for weekly illustrations!

Every quarter, I share helpful summaries and excerpts of the best books, podcasts, and articles I’ve read about culture.

Book: The Messy Middle by Scott Belsky

The Messy Middle is a guide to "navigating the volatility of new ventures and leading bold creative projects by Scott Belsky, entrepreneur and Chief Product Officer at Adobe. “Creating something from nothing is an unpredictable journey. The first mile births a new idea into existence, and the final mile is all about letting go.” The book argues that the middle stretch is the most important and often the most ignored and misunderstood. 

Belsky has a whole section defining culture and how it’s spread through stories. He writes:

Culture is created through the stories your team tells. The term “culture” is casually thrown around as if it can be designed in a conscious way: a cocktail hour here, a foosball table there. But culture is not in any manager’s control. It’s organically formed through the stories your team tells.

The stories a team recalls and shares about itself serve as a continual reminder for everyone of why they’re there and what makes the team special; they reinforce the foundations of a business and the aspirational elements that tie people together...

…[Stories] orient new employees and provide institutional knowledge. Even amid long periods of ambiguity and uncertainty, a healthy culture built on stories provides the context and comfort everyone needs to stick together and keep moving forward.

As a company grows, culture becomes less impacted by everyday stories and is floated on the remnants of the stories that happened early on. Tales from “the beginning” tend to have an outsized impact on the culture as they reflect the core, founding values of why and how this whole thing got started in the first place…Over time, even if the stories themselves are forgotten, the beliefs, values, and nuances of a company’s culture are collectively held by everyone.

If you’re a founder of a project or team, Belsky offers this suggestion:

You need to be present… especially in the early days. You need to recall [the stories] on the right occasions. And you need to let go of the reins and allow the characters on your team to begin making their own. Every team has a few “culture carriers” that are especially good at capturing great stories and retelling them. As the founder of a project of team, take stories seriously.

Book: Bring Your Human to Work by Erica Keswin

Bring Your Human to Work, by workplace strategist and business coach Erica Keswin, argues that companies need to focus on relationships. “As human beings, we are built to connect and form relationships. So, it should be no surprise that relationships must also translate into the workplace, where we spend most of our time! Companies that recognize this will retain the most productive, creative, and loyal employees, and invariably seize the competitive edge.”

In the book, Keswin spotlights a great example of intentional culture at Airbnb:

Airbnb’s brand is all about creating a sense of belonging, and not just for their guests and hosts. They actually have a group of employees (10 people in San Francisco and someone in almost every office in the world) whose role it is to take the values off the walls and into the halls. Similar to the role of ground control in an airline, the group takes care of the office environments, events, internal communications, employee recognition, celebrations, and even the design of the office. According to Mark Levy, the former head of employee experience, these people aren’t “forcing fun, they’re reinforcing and supporting how we bring the culture alive.” Levy says, “They do it through pop-up birthday celebrations, anniversaries, or baby showers as well as creative themed events based on holidays or events— whether it’s Pride of the launch of their entry into Cuba.” This is the kind of effort it takes to truly scale culture."

Keswin also spotlights a way of parting gracefully:

“So here you are. You’ve just joined Jellyvision, and we want to talk about the END of your employment here. What’s up with that?"

That is the beginning of the Graceful Leave Policy at Jellyvision, the maker of interactive software. The idea is that each person Jellyvision hires is so valuable, and finding a replacement is so tricky, that out of respect, Jellyvision asks employees to notify the company when they start to look for a new job, apply to school, etc. In exchange for this respect, employees will get the support of Jellyvision in their job search, contacts and introductions, resume assistance, and even prorated compensation.

Talk about transparent!

After an employee shares such wishes with Jellyvision, he or she will continue to be staffed on projects that “make sense” given the timing of the departure (some people have stayed on for more than six months), and employees are expected to work hard until the end. Parting ways is never easy, but at Jellyvision it’s done with the human touch.

Podcast: How I Built This with Stewart Butterfield from Slack

In this episode of How I Built This, Guy Raz interviews Stewart Butterfield, founder of Slack. Butterfield talks about how to it's important to get the entire organization aligned to create a good culture. He shares that it’s easy to do this with 8 people, but much harder with hundreds.