The Culture Advantage — Value of a Good Corporate Culture (Part 1 of 4)

By: Michael Dykes (Senior Director, Engineering)

If you spend any amount of time on social media for professionals like LinkedIn, you’ll quickly come across a variety of good (or at least well-intended) advice and mantras for the type of people you should seek to work with, help, or avoid at all costs. Maybe the advice strikes a nerve, causing you to pause and reflect on the implications. Consider a few I came across in my LinkedIn feed, just in 15 minutes:

“People ask me, ‘What if you spend all this time and money on training and someone leaves?’ ” Crosby says. “I ask them, ‘What if we don’t spend the time and money, and they stay?’ ”

After 20+ years in the same organization, I changed jobs 2 times in 2 years. Serious culture shock! When a friend asked for tips on moving to a remote role with a new company, here’s what I shared:

Assume nothing. Ask lots of questions.
Meet with key people 1:1 just to get acquainted.
Give yourself 6 months to feel oriented.
What you think may be broken probably is.
Realize your outside perspective is a strength.

If we hear “let me finish” from people we interact with, that most probably means we need to improve our listening skills.

Most of us spend at least eight+ hours a day, five (or more) days a week working with groups of people within our organization. These people have diverse backgrounds and bring a number of different perspectives to the table. Most are great, but occasionally you encounter those we’d prefer never to work with again. At best they’re self-serving or unsupportive, at worst they are underhanded, destructive, or even abusive.

I recall my first IT job when I was also working to finish my degree. The power went out in the building while I was doing data entry into a dumb terminal (that’s right… mainframe, baby!) And what was my boss doing to support the team? Walking the cubicle aisles making sure we were all still working! I’m literally shaking my head as the memory comes back to me.

But again, most of the people you work with are just the opposite. Like the employee who became a friend who would do anything for you. Or the colleague who brought you flowers when you were at home sick. And the one that stayed late just to provide someone to talk to as you struggled with whatever issue. Maybe you’re lucky enough to have that boss you’d work with again at another job — the one that invested in you, mentored you, and even proofread your resume for your next gig.

So why does the above reflection on employee relationships matter? Because it highlights the importance of having a good corporate culture where employees share a common set of values and principles that underlie that culture. It’s one thing to follow your good boss to another company, but if they end up leaving while you decide to stay, everything and everyone else in that company is still there. Culture has to go beyond individual people or team relationships. It must transcend the entire company and help unite employees at all organizational levels across all corporate locations.

Importance of Corporate Values

When it comes to defining a company culture, corporate values provide the foundation for that culture. These values are the fundamental beliefs, common goals, and core principles that guide the organization overall. Collectively, they define what your company stands for, why it exists, how it does business, and perhaps most importantly… how it treats its employees.

Values matter because when employees see those values in action the end result is a unified and productive company culture. Ideally, one is a direct reflection of the other. So, given that most of us have to work for a living, and that usually entails working with others, shouldn’t we strive to work with people who share those same values?

Now that doesn’t mean everyone has the same views… political, religious, or otherwise. People are all wired differently, but we can respectfully embrace a diverse workforce filled with people who may hold views that challenge our own. Because in the end, successful companies are guided by core values, not ideology. In my experience, open political or religious expression in the workplace puts you on the fast track for increased friction and decreased morale. To avoid this, lead with empathy while maintaining focus on the values people share and enabling them to be their best.

Guidewire’s Values

Consider Guidewire’s key values or shared principles that are published on our website for customers, partners, employees, and all the world to see. They include:

• Integrity — We build and maintain honest, candid, and caring relationships with clients, potential customers, partners, investors, and of course, each other!

I’ve heard integrity referred to as who you are when no one else is looking. It means you own up to your responsibilities and follow through on what you’ve committed to. That people know you’re responsive, consistent, and authentic. And it means you’ll determine and execute the best way path forward for a given task, without compromising company values.

• Rationality — All we do is supported by factual evidence — whether it’s building awesome products, making decisions, or communicating with each other.

This strikes me as a very mathematical term, probably because there is a mathematical context for rationality. But even beyond that context — rationality is fundamentally driven by reason and logic (just like math). More specifically, it means we value the quality of being able to think and act sensibly. It doesn’t mean we can’t dream and innovate — far from it — but when we do it is evidence-driven so the end result is realistically achievable.

• Collegiality — We’re in it together — so we’re all equal. We work in professional harmony, with respect, without arrogance, and as part of a structure where responsibility is shared and owned by all of us.

Collegiality is not achievable without Integrity and Rationality. This means people cooperate and collaborate together while fulfilling the responsibility they share. That can be anything from project planning, to pair programming, to a simple exchange of ideas. And because we’re in this together, we might make mistakes but learn from those mistakes and move forward. Finally, collegiality implies teamwork, open communication, and respect for one another.

How Values Dictate Corporate Culture

Good or bad, effective or not, corporate values permeate throughout an organization’s culture. Employees feel and experience it in everything they do. It affects processes both formal and informal, how people interact and collaborate, as well as how they are recognized (or not) for a job well done. Done right, these values will establish a culture that attracts the people you want and retains those you already have. Done wrong, you end up with a culture that lacks unity and ultimately drives people away.

Of course, many companies without formally stated principles/values are often driven by (where else?) top-down executive directives. In stark contrast, companies with well-understood guiding principles have an inherent advantage because they empower employees and drive better performance that lead to better business outcomes.

There are a lot of good books and shared opinions dedicated to developing corporate culture. One of my favorites is Change the Culture, Change the Game: The Breakthrough Strategy for Energizing Your Organization and Creating Accountability for Results. Here the authors distill a methodology for affecting behavioral change toward accountability in a principled way. While changing corporate culture is beyond the scope of this article, I encourage you to explore this book if you get a chance.

Recognizing Corporate Culture in the Wild

Every company, regardless of size and ownership model, has a corporate culture. It may take time to fully understand it and be clear on who drives it, but the culture is there. Perhaps the culture could be summarized in a few sentences, captured in a simple phrase like “family atmosphere,” or characterized by a single adjective such as “intense.” Every job has its own complexities, but if you’re starting with a new company your future job satisfaction could very well depend on how well the cultural values of that company align with yours. If you’re looking for an intense, high-performance company as your next career move then a job posting that includes “become part of the family” may not be the place for you.

Identifying a Leopard by Its Spots

Big cat experts have recognized for years that individual leopards can be recognized by the spot pattern on either side of their cheeks. It’s something the trained eye can easily recognize, while the rest of us just see how big the cat is… observing from a distance, of course!

The same holds true for a corporate culture — looking from a distance can be much different than observing that culture up close. So while a job may be attractive at first glance, often it’s better to observe from a distance before taking the plunge. One of the best ways to do that, of course, is to spend time reviewing the company’s own websites to see how they position themselves, what their customers are saying, or any business, technical, or workplace awards they may have won.

Learning how employees feel about their current or former employers is even better. While certainly not 100% accurate or reliable sources, sites like Glassdoor and Blind can provide at least some insights into a company’s culture. Better still is the thoughtful use of LinkedIn messages not to “spam” but to connect with ex-employees of a company you may be interested in joining. You can message current employees as well, but you may get more honest feedback from people who no longer work there.

Guidewire Had Me at Hello

By now it’s no secret to anyone who read up to this point that its corporate culture played a major part in my decision to join Guidewire. From the values of the company, the people I met when I first interviewed and worked with since, to their innovative, best-practices approach to performing everyday work. While there are many reasons you might want to join a company, I believe one thing stands above all others… “It’s the culture, stupid!”

Here are just a few of the cultural characteristics that captured my attention originally and have continued to reinforce my decision to join Guidewire:

• Better work/life balance — Guidewire definitely has a high-performance work environment, but they understand not everything is an urgent priority so there’s no reason to burn people out in the pursuit of key business objectives. Software products take time to build, so taking a mindful, deliberate approach helps ensure you build the right product, the right way. That doesn’t mean you won’t have to put in extra hours and effort to achieve a key milestone, but you can pace yourself along the way.
• Culture of innovation and learning — Guidewire encourages people to look for better ways of doing things, both for our customers and ourselves. That means not just stressing the importance of continuous learning but also providing the tools and workplace forums to make it happen. This has led to things like cross-functional social events, biweekly up-skill days, no-meeting Fridays, and even company book clubs.
• Adhering to best practices — Best practices exist for a reason, and Guidewire is always imploring teams to plan and execute a best-practices approach. This not only improves the overall quality of work, but saves people time, reduces stress, and ultimately makes everyone more productive. So whether is agile methodology, automated builds, or test-driven development, following best practices will drive better results.
• Investing in knowledge sharing — In pair programming, the working assumption is two sets of eyes on your code are better than one. This improves code quality so fewer bugs make it into production, which translates into greater stability, improved service levels, and happier customers. It also means engineers can learn from one another, sharing knowledge and building empathy with their coding partners. Finally, it facilitates rotating people between teams so they can broaden their skills across multiple development projects.
• Being heard and enabled — One day at an airport kiosk I picked up a copy of Turn the Ship Around!: A True Story of Turning Followers into Leaders by L. David Marquet. In the book, he details how empowerment helped grow leaders in the very top-down culture of the United States Navy. By “flipping the model” and giving his crew responsibility they became completely engaged while setting records for performance, morale, and retention. The lesson here is that enabling employees might be the best way to nurture leaders while empowering everyone to contribute to their fullest potential.
• Minimized office politics — Unless you’re working as a sole proprietor, no company will ever be fully immune from office politics. Whenever multiple people come together to work toward achieving common goals, there’s always some likelihood that perspectives will differ, and egos will clash. Guidewire’s culture has helped to minimize that potential friction, encouraging people to put differences aside and focus on the job at hand.
• Working with empathy — This ties directly to the core value of collegiality, which helps to establish mutual respect between parties. I’m surprised how much this ended up mattering to me, because It wasn’t something I fully considered when I took the position at Guidewire. As mentioned above, I was genuinely surprised how much empathy improved through pair programming. More broadly, I believe working through the pandemic brought out the best in most of us. Everyone was dropped into an unforeseen circumstance, and we had to figure it out together. Working from home… sharing a workspace with others in the household… taking the responsibility of parenting to entirely new levels. At least in my lifetime, never has the value of interacting with empathy been more clear.

Conclusion

This is the first in a planned series of blog posts dedicated to exploring corporate culture and the positive impact it can have on employees. Look for future articles that cover topics like team enablement, maintaining work/life balance, as well as driving innovation and continuous improvement.

If you are interested in working on our Engineering teams building cutting-edge cloud technologies that make Guidewire the cloud leader in P&C insurance, please apply at https://careers.guidewire.com.