What is Engineering Culture?
Building a successful team is not just about finding a group of people with the right mix of professional skills and attitudes to get the job done.
Most of us already understand the importance of teamwork and experienced the challenges that come with trying to blend high-performing individual talents and personalities.
In recent days, the word ‘culture’ is becoming crucial for companies to attract top talents. Engineering culture is becoming one of the hot topics that invariably pop up for discussion. We often ask each other
“What’s the culture at your company like?”
But what exactly are we all trying to find out?
What’s culture? More importantly, why does it matter?
Often, we see perks and tangible aspects of works are being described as the culture. But is it really?
Culture is ultimately defined by a mixture of values, beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors shared within the organization. It’s a way of how we all work together towards a common goal, a set of norms about how everyone works with each other. It’s a known fact that effective and efficient collaboration and communication are what make it easier for employees to accomplish their work together — it’s essentially the glue that holds a team together.
Culture refers to how decisions are made and how work is done within the group. Culture is like the wind. It is invisible, yet its effect can be seen and felt.
Culture is a deeper set of values that inform the language, the norms, and the whys of doing work in a certain way — which are all essentially refined by everyone within the organization over time.
How to Build The Best Culture?
But of course, no matter what, a particular culture could be either positive or negative depending on individual perspective. A highly competitive culture would be perfect for someone who thrives on challenges and prefers emphasis on individual contribution. But not everyone enjoys working in such high pace environment. They might have different priorities, values, motivations, and own goals.
Undoubtedly, there is no such thing as one size fits all when it comes to culture. There is no “best culture”. We need to tailor and customize it to meet the needs and the goal of the organization. A good culture is defined by values that speak to the DNA of the organization. That being said, there are numerous cultures, such as encouraging exploration of new technologies, driving continuous process improvement, which often get described as good cultures by many within the industry.
By building a good culture that directly aligns with the organization will allow to innovate faster, build greater loyalty with customers, and improve employee satisfaction. In addition, it will elevate the quality of the hiring process and the quality of hires.
Culture cannot be enforced, but only facilitated.
But culture-building can’t be achieved with just the top-down mandate. It needs to live in the collective hearts and habits of people and their shared perception of “how things are done around here.” Someone with authority can demand compliance, but they can’t dictate optimism, trust, conviction, or creativity.
Key Takeaway
Build a strong engineering culture that not only aligns with the organizational goals but also focuses on making all the members within the organization happy and productive. Build a culture of autonomy and transparency. It should make the employees feel appreciated and included. As a leader, help them see the impact of their work, and inspire them to always innovate and to continuously improve.
One Important Point We Can’t Afford To Overlook
Unless you have well-defined mechanisms in place to protect the diversity of personalities and behaviors, it could result in less diversity and a monoculture.
Focusing too much on the culture fit could unintentionally result in a monoculture that makes the work environment less welcoming to anyone hired that does not fit the mould of everyone else.
Wrapping Up
Building a good engineering culture is certainly a lot of work, but the resulting work environment is well worth it. It is not something that we can do easily. There are no shortcuts.
We have to identify which cultural behaviors we would like to see, what values we want to embody, and then take proactive steps towards those ends. We need to really invest in creating a culture that works for our organization.
Sit down with those involved and decide what is important for the organization. Put mechanisms in place that will support the concepts, allow employees to grow. Live and breathe the culture within all levels of the organization.
