Hard things about team culture

One hard things about building culture is when there are many good characteristic that does not conform with each other.

For example: “Be experimental and keep learning” vs “Be professional and prepared”

Both of these characteristic are good, but they does not conform with each other well. We need to keep balance, that’s for sure.

But the point of culture is to value something over something. So we know when things goes completely wrong, what should we belief. What is priority.

For another example: In the large scale, normally, Eastern people value collectivism while Western value individualism.

That’s not mean Eastern is better or worse than Western. It’s just we value the different things. That effect our lifestyle, working style and every aspect of life.

In the small scale, like organization, team, etc, it’s the same.

We need to communicate what we value. We need balance, but in another hand, we need to know that when things goes completely wrong, what should we belief.

And I think the most hard part about building culture is to set and commit some values over other values, because leader, as a human, will always have fear of missing out. We feel like if we committed to something, we lose the balance and we lose the good things on the other side.

But by leader not committing, it turns out that individual will still commit to something anyway.

For same example: Some people will insist that everything should be prepared and well-defined, and other people may insist on everything should be experimental and learn.

That may turn out well because now we have balance. That may turn out bad because now it become chaos and there are so many value beliefs fighting for some grounds.

I can’t really say anything at this point, it up to situation.

But I belief that’s what good leader do, setting and committed to value as it needs, and be strong to those values.