The culture war conservatives can’t win

There’s a culture war happening today that most people don’t know about. It runs through economies and divides organizations large and small. The battle lines are invisible. When brought to light, the struggles can seem minor and inconsequential compared to the conflicts defining business as usual. But the volume of this war increases day by day. Even the oldest, most stubborn, conservative leaders can feel the ground vibrating beneath their feet.

They look around, wondering what is taking place. They study the faces of interns, designers, engineers and marketers, thinking: ‘Which side are you on?’ They wonder how they can possibly preserve the status quo.

The culture war terrifies traditional leaders. It shatters their peaceful journey from the past into the future. In the past, there was order, composition, hierarchy, ratio and rules. Something inexplicable is taking place, bound up with the advent of digital technologies. A new generation of leaders is driving impossible innovations through the landscape of 21st century life. They are pioneering new ways of organizing for innovation, a new vision of what a business should be and achieve, and new cultural maps to get it there.

Think you can outrun a tsunami? Think again. The culture war is coming and there is no place to hide.

The culture war divides us. On the one side, we have planners and managers, the forces of tradition. If you have no idea what I’m talking about, you’re probably with them. On the other side, we have hackers, makers and entrepreneurs, the forces of the future. The two sides speak different languages. They think in different timelines: one, the linear march of monthly spreadsheets; the other, a circuitous tangle of cycles and loops. The one side says: ‘Show me the plan’. The other side says: ‘Show me the opportunity’.

In the startup industry and industries impacted by startups, the culture war cuts organizations in half, sewing them back together in a hybrid form. People in these industries don’t have the chance to take sides. They must be planners and hackers, managers and entrepreneurs. They forcibly meld practices and mindsets that resist unification. They try to build dual operating systems.

Outside these industries, many people can’t see the culture war coming. The war is not about social and political values. It does not set progressives against traditionalists, Republicans against Democrats, red states against blue. It is a war over the future of organizational culture. It is a war about who gets to decide ‘how we get things done around here’. It is less about who owns the future than about who gets to map it out and what this map of the future looks like — a spreadsheet or a lean feedback loop. It is a war over the kind of operating system that defines the modern company.

And there is no way that traditionally-minded leaders can win it.

Traditionally-minded leaders can’t win this war because the rules of innovation have changed. Consider the kinds of activities that contribute to innovation. Fifteen years ago, a company was considered innovative if the CEO mandated a steady flow of new product ideas through the company’s Innovation pipeline. Innovation was a carefully planned process, driven from above and tied to key strategic goals.

Nowadays, innovation means entrepreneurship, self-organizing teams, fast ideas and customer experiments. Innovation is driven by hacking, and the world’s most innovative companies proudly display their hacker credentials.

Hacker culture grew up on the margins of the computer industry. It entered the business world in the 21st century through agile software development, design thinking and lean startup method, the pillars of the contemporary startup industry. Startup incubators today are filled with hacker entrepreneurs, running fast, cheap experiments to push against the limits of the unknown. As corporations, not-for-profits and government departments pick up on these practices, seeking to replicate the creative energy of the startup industry, hacker culture is changing how we think about leadership, work and innovation.

Traditionally-minded leaders can’t win, furthermore, because the Asian tigers have taken sides. In their arrogance and complacency, leaders of developed nations have been slow to embrace the new rules of innovation. Not so in China, which is rapidly becoming a global leader in technology. In Shenzhen, one of four special economic zones created by Beijing to serve as pillars for the national innovation economy, hackers, makers, startup entrepreneurs and investors work hand in glove to drive high tech innovation at a pace and rate that puts Silicon Valley to shame. There is a hyperkinetic startup scene driven by a culture of sharing, invention and entrepreneurship. At Huaqiangbei Electronics market, hundreds of storefront vendors ‘sell, repair and modify electronic components for other inventors and consumers’. Grassroots entrepreneurs can dream it, build it fast and scale it with the help of companies like Shenzhen Valley Ventures, who offer engineering, incubation and investment services, and market access to the world.

Traditionally-minded leaders can’t win, finally, because they are out of opportunities. The opportunities are all on the other side. Five days ago, an ex-Google engineer named Steve Yegge wrote a post on Medium about why he left Google to join Grab, a ridesharing startup that’s angling to become the Uber of Southeast Asia. Yegge’s post has generated over 200 comments and received over 20000 rounds of applause (Medium’s version of ‘likes’). Yegge has a ton of insights, but what stands out about his post is his breathless excitement as he describes the staggering opportunities for ridesharing, food, online payment companies and service verticals in SEA, as the middle-class embraces digital culture.

Yegge describes it as a ‘land war’, a war that can only be won by connecting and working with customers, a ‘winner-takes-all space’ and ‘fight to the death’. Fundamentally, it is a culture war. An entire generation of established companies will be wiped out in the tumult, because they don’t understand the new rules of innovation and they aren’t able to organize to compete.

Business leaders will blame politicians, economists, capitalists, communists, history, technology, Mark Zuckerberg and animal spirits. Really, they should be blaming themselves.

They didn’t see the culture war coming. They didn’t listen as it shook the landscape around them. They didn’t attend to the new ways of learning, launching products and adapting to change coming out of the startup industry. They remain stuck in the old ways, cleaving to outdated mindsets while they diligently filed their spreadsheets and reports.

There is a culture war happening today. It’s a war for the future of companies and organizations everywhere. It is not too late to take sides.

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Tim Rayner is the author of Hacker Culture and the New Rules of Innovation (Routledge 2018). He teaches at UTS Business School in Sydney.