Purpose or discipline?

I was talking to a colleague of mine today about company culture. He mentioned how in one of his previous companies, everyone was “oozing with purpose” and “soaked in the mission” almost all the time. The team brainstormed frequently altogether and there was a feeling that every moment was significant.

In contrast, he lamented how another company he worked for lacked this feeling. The company felt really “operationally tuned”, people worked hard there, but there wasn’t as much of a sense of purpose. This company was more successful than the previous one, so with that in mind it wasn’t obvious for him which type of culture was better.

I told him that my thoughts were that emotional mission v. operational discipline in your company culture is a bit like being happy at home v. being happy at work. You don’t need to choose. I think that to build a truly great company, you can not only choose both, but you -have- to have both. I gave the example of Google, whose culture is known to be often jovial and bordering on childish disorder. Yet they managed to combine this with the right level of discipline and operational order to grow effectively at scale.

There’s a balance, and it often changes. When things are on rails but your growth is plateauing, perhaps it’s time to focus 80% of culture efforts to re-ignite the sense of wonder, mission and original reasons you’re building what you’re building — across your whole team. On the other hand, when growth is fast, or a big problem happens, maybe it’s time for more-than-typical focus on order and discipline.

But high level, you shouldn’t choose one or the other as the dominant theme forever. You want to be strong in and keep developing both.

What do you think? In what cases is it better for everyone to be oozing with purpose, and at what times should you optimize for operational discipline?