Culture Balances: Intro
Making sense of culture with the concept of balances
We all have underlying thoughts that govern our thinking.
Some call them beliefs, mental models, or even religion. And I would argue that we all need them. Because without them our lives would be quite scattered.
My current favourite is about balance.
Everything requires a balance.
Because for every situation, there is always a choice. Not in the binary sense, but a lot of grey in between two extremes. And more often then not, the extreme ends of the scale are not the ideal approach.
I especially like to use this way of thinking when it comes to Culture. Culture is one of those broad-ranging and connected topics, that it is hard to wrap one’s head around it. But the concept of Balances provides me with a universal framework to make sense — and stay objective.
Let me give you an example from my recent interactions. A co-worker and I started chatting about communication — which we all know, is hard.
At Redbubble, we are trying to be more deliberate in our approach to sharing information. The company is in a transition from a share-with-everyone approach to something a bit more departmental and separated.
Share-with-everyone can work for small companies, where everybody sits together and has the same context. It is, however, not scalable. As soon as the company grows past a certain size, this type of communication will cause a lot of trouble.
The departmental model works better for bigger companies. In essence, it limits the reach of communication to a sub-group. But it is much harder to share across the boundaries. And in extreme cases, it requires lots of repetition which impacts productivity.
So, it is all about finding the right balance.
And to make matters worse, the right balance is never right for long.
As the company changes and evolves — even if it is only the hiring or letting go of some people — the requirements change. Culture changes. And so does the balance.
Another good example we chatted about was having a purpose Vs. a task-driven culture.
In a purpose-driven company, employees are motivated by the mission. There is no need to give detailed instructions as everybody makes decisions in relation to what is best for the mission. Sounds awesome. It is hard to get right though. The freedom to interpret the mission as you see fit can lead to quite a bit of wasted effort.
Contrary to that is a task-driven company. Here, everything is very clearly defined and all employees have to do is execute tasks. No uncertainty, clear direction, full steam ahead. This approach though has its downsides too. It can be very hard to find motivation if tasks are laid out in detail. It is also closer to a single point of failure: If the person defining the tasks is misguided, there is lots of work without impact.
Once again neither extreme is not a good approach. The trick is to find the balance that works for you.
Working With Balances
The framework of balances will not give you all the answers to fix your company culture. But, it does provide a way to think through the current situation and identify where you might want to take things.
Here is an overview of how I apply them:
- Identify the topic or area of interest, e.g. Communication or Decision Making
- Plot out the extremes for the topic or an aspect of the topic, e.g. share-with-everyone Vs. siloed
- Identify the Pros and Cons for each extreme
- Figure out where you, your team, and your company sit on the spectrum (which is not a single point, but a range)
- Decide where you, your team, and your company would like to be
- Identify the underlying levers (if not obvious) and come up with a plan
Some of these steps are straightforward and can be accomplished by an individual or small group.
Others require a bit more work and preparation. I will cover steps 4) to 6) in greater detail during future articles.
Update:
- Part 2 of this series is available, covering a framework to map balances visually.
- Part 3 is also published, talking about influencing culture change.
