Culture Islands & Landlocked Leaders
Leadership trying to change culture from the outside in without first evaluating the underlying cause of existing problems is an expensive attempt at a makeover that will predictably end in zero meaningful change.
Self-sustaining organizations within very large companies do not always reflect the overarching ethos of the broader company. These “culture islands”, cut off from the mission of the whole but requiring resources to exist, will create ways to measure success to demonstrate their utility.
In the cultural island scenario the opportunity to change and innovate is low due to the fact that perceived value is all that is required to prove necessity and thus continued existence (rather than actual value which requires freedom to question and iterate upon ideas that are no longer working). A surprising amount of time can pass before the decay is evident enough for shareholders to become skeptical. As long as the price of shares remains or elevates, there is no need to look behind the curtain.
Teams that are working within the cultural island appendage of a larger firm will often have a silent mandate that requires compliance with a hierarchical vision; the questioning of which is forbidden (enforced by indirect methods such as isolation or excessive busy work).
These silos will only retain talent who are insecure about their prospects in the wider job market and thus will perpetually remain less productive, less innovative, and less engaged than their corporate counterparts in an otherwise thriving company.
The cultural island scenario requires massive corporate change and a willingness by senior leadership to look at themselves and their closest allies in an organization (the very top not the vast middle swath of directors and VPs).
Generally, there is no willingness for navel-gazing within companies that have grown large enough to grow toxic and aimless limbs, nor will one find the self-awareness required to look inward at all. The first part of fixing a problem is after all admitting that one exists in the first place.
When an organizational unit has reached the point of sustaining itself by validating itself with manufactured metrics, there is no recourse other than removal of the gangrenous limb; or the rot will spread and begin to atrophy the whole by reproducing the corrosive system across the organization. But I do not think anyone starts out to end up this way.
The tragedy of the aimless organizational unit is that hundreds and thousands of employees work in companies and parts of companies that function in this manner. The people I have worked with who are in this situation always have one thing in common, they are deeply dissatisfied by their work but do not feel safe questioning their leaders.
I believe this behavior is patterned in us by our society which does not encourage critical thought and encourages us to seek simplistic answers avoiding complexity at all costs. We have created a compliance culture at a time when we desperately need deep critical thinking.
The fear of stepping outside of the invisible lines that we perceive have been drawn for us keeps us compliant.
This is especially true in the culture island scenario. You can tell that you are on an island if you know that most everyone around you is unhappy with the status quo but even the leaders of teams remain silent when they are offered the opportunity to speak truth to power.
This malignant system will leave traces of itself all the way up the leadership ladder, often in the form of a monoculture, i.e. cronyism. Other symptoms include but are not limited to the following: finger-pointing/blame before solutions, isolating teams by never holding meetings where individuals have the opportunity to ask questions of leadership, metrics, and dashboards that require “data massaging”, unclear targets and goals, gossip and just about any other unsavory example of behavior in human dynamics that are demonstrably the lesser versions of what we are capable of doing and whom we are capable of becoming.
To leave such toxicity as an individual is both existential and invigorating. We must face the fact that one person will use up all of their good energy trying to change an intrinsically toxic system from within. The individual will do better for their own energy conservation and good humor to leave for brighter horizons and tell their stuck friends what greener pastures lie on the other side of the quagmire once they are capable of sharing this new perspective. The feeling that you have wasted time and effort where real effort was never desired in the first place can be unsettling. However, the individual who has freed themself from the emotional and intellectual shackles of the culture island will soon take pride in their ability to overcome the fear of the unknown and uncharted path that is now unfolding before them and relish in the joy of self-awareness.
If you are taking a leap of faith on yourself, good luck brave voyager. You have the tools within yourself. Surround yourself with strong mentors and leaders and offer your knowledge as a mentor to others. You will not look back. I wrote this entry some months ago when I was also feeling quite stuck. With the layoffs in tech this year, I felt now is a good time to share these thoughts. We have systematic issues that require novel approaches, I am certain the only way to deliver novel solutions is from outside of established institutions.
