Find the right Company Culture..not a Cult

Before we begin, allow me to preface the suggestions to come with the following. If you’re just starting out on your “professional journey”, are living paycheck to paycheck, and/or have massive debt: you don’t get to be quite as discerning in finding your next opportunity. Money is far from everything, but it’s necessary and a very useful tool. Besides, if you’re really fresh on that young professional scene, you won’t even know what to look for until you’ve had a few more years of experience.
A final piece of preamble, there is so, so, so much to be learned from the “bad” positions, environments, organizations, etc. You will gain the experiential knowledge of what NOT to do, the idea of a certain role vs. the reality of that role, and that old cliché with something about what doesn’t kill you…you get the point.

So what does it mean to find the “right” company culture? Finding a group of individuals that are equally passionate about the product/service they’re providing, tend to agree on the decisions that are made and the direction of the company, share most of your sentiments pertaining to both professional and personal issues; and all seem like people that you’d love to hang out with outside of the office. Right?
Wrong. At least, that’s my opinion (you’re always welcome to disagree) and it’s an opinion that’s shared by much more qualified minds than my own. Just ask Adam Grant, who’s research shows that this is more fact than opinion. You can also listen to any number talks from the late, great stand-up philosopher, Alan Watts for a broader emphasis on the cultural aspects. I’ll provide an abridged list of influences and references at the end of this piece, but suffice to say — the following sentiments aren’t novel to me.
Now, before I tell you what I believe you should be looking for, I want to make something very clear. I’m not suggesting that it’s a bad thing for employees to be passionate about their product/service or the work they do. I certainly don’t think it’s a bad thing to like your colleagues or create relationships that extend beyond the professional realm. However, there are a few integral elements of a company’s culture that you should be looking for to start.
4 Cornerstones of a Great Company Culture
These are the cornerstones of a foundation that can support companies of all sizes and industries. After these have been set, your personal selection process will be much more context dependent.
1. Diversity & Differing Opinions
You want to find an environment that not only allows, but welcomes diversity and differing opinions. Differing opinions and a broad range of backgrounds and experiences are the best protection against the pitfalls of group-think and mob-mentality.
Will differences in opinion cause for disagreements? Yes, and they should. However; it’s much more important to agree on the process for coming to a decision than the decision itself.
2. Objectivity & Measurement
Are they able to separate the individual from the idea, decision or outcome? What are they measuring and why? One of the biggest mistakes any of us can make is to assume that what we think/say/feel/want is the same as everyone else.
Recognizing that our individual perspectives/wants/needs are not necessarily reflective of our colleagues and certainly of the marketplace is integral to finding continued success in business and life.

3. Process Accountability > Successful Outcomes
When the sole focus is on a “successful” outcome, teams are incentivized to keep a myopic and limiting focus on certain type of external goal, rather than understand (and hopefully appreciate) the process and reasoning for that outcome.
This often creates an environment that is so risk-averse that it squanders the potential for more creativity and truly novel ideas. Yes, we all like winning, but there’s sometimes even more to gain from understanding our failures. Successful outcomes can be completely random, “lucky” if you will. Rewarding the process for forming a hypothesis, testing, and then being able to learn from that success or lack thereof will make for an environment that is much more conducive to growth
4. Empathy & Compassion
These words often conjure thoughts of soft-spoken managers singing Kumbaya and making friendship bracelets in the break room. But empathy and compassion are just as necessary in the most traditional mega-corporation as they are for those small-scale crunchy-granola gal-pal nonprofits.
I’m not mentioning these just because “mean people suck” — they do. However, there’s a direct impact on performance and business overall. These are no longer just qualitative measures, there’s a plethora of research that has captured quantitative demonstrate that the way we treat each other has a direct impact on how well companies and their employees perform.
Empathy allows us to better understand where an individual is coming from. Whether that be understanding the other side of an argument, or keying in on the pain-points of your target market.
Compassion is just as important for yourself as it is for others — some might even say it’s a prerequisite. Work and life at large bring inevitable struggles, and it’s terribly inefficient to add to them by being a jerk. Compassion doesn’t mean excusing poor performance or behavior, and yes, you can even criticize compassionately…and should! Criticisms are not mean to be insults. And if you find an environment where people mistakenly believe those terms are synonymous: red flag — keep searching.
After the four cornerstones have been addressed, you should be able to answer two very important questions that are much more subjective:
1. Do you find value in the work?
2. Can you find value in the work?
Keep in mind, value is not the same as passion and how you choose to integrate both of them into your work/life balance is certainly enough subject matter for an article of it’s own. That’s also an article I’d recommend writing for yourself — and if you need some inspiration to get started here, are a few of my favorites:
Resources & Inspiration
Adam Grant: Give and Take
Daniel Kahneman: Thinking Fast and Slow
Seth Godin
Larry Gioia: The Power of Connection + The Future of Work
Barry Rabkin
Ramit Sethi:
Tim Ferriss: Tribe of Mentors + Podcast
Ezra Bayda: Beyond Happiness
Adam Robinson
Zak Slayback (especially for the young professionals)
Derek Sivers:
Ryan O’Donnell
Jake J. Gibbs
Kevin Sousa
Raji Sankur: Interview with Aaron Watson
Kit Mueller
Sol Orwell
Zack Obront
