Where Does the Energy of Your Organisation Live?
The invisible glue that holds your company culture together might be stickier than you realise
If we think about companies as people — which is really what they are — then we might ask ourselves one simple question: who do we want to hang out with?
My hunch is that like in your social life — you probably want to hang out with those that you (truly) like, know, and trust. In fact, research shows that having a best friend at work is not just nice to have, it makes for a more resilient workplace. Employees who have a best friend at work are:
- 43% more likely to report having received praise or recognition in the last seven days
- 37% more likely to report that someone at work encourages their development
- 35% more likely to report co-worker commitment to quality
- 28% more likely to report that in the last six months, someone at work talked to them about their progress
- 27% more likely to report that their company makes them feel their job is important
- 27% more likely to report that their opinions seem to count at work
- 21% more likely to report that at work, they have the opportunity to do what they do best every day
Psychologist Ron Friedman has been studying workplaces his entire career. He claims that having a best friend at work is one of the strongest indicators of productivity. Indeed, when we have that same deep social bond with our friends as we do with our coworkers — there is an intrinsic obligation to do, and be our best. Friedman writes:
Employees that have a best friend at work tend to be more, focused, more passionate, and more loyal to their organisations. They get sick less often, suffer fewer accidents, and change jobs less frequently. They even have more satisfied customers.
The best places to work often involve having your besties right there alongside you. The proverbial office becomes a more enjoyable place and space where you can both be vulnerable and have a laugh too.
Eyes On Hands Off
Modern workers want to exercise more autonomy over how they get work done rather than being told what to do. Autonomy, long proven to be a key driver in engagement, means we want the freedom to determine what we work on, when we work on it, and where we work on it.
We desperately need managers that not only understand this, but that walk the walk. By empowering his or her team, these managers transform themselves into 21st-century leaders. They boost worker morale, engagement, performance, productivity, as well as loyalty. They also function much more like teachers: they replace micromanaging with leading and educating by example. By distributing authority to colleagues, they champion transparency, knowledge sharing, continuous learning, feedback — and endless opportunities for growth.
The caveat, of course, is that individual autonomy and business alignment must co-exist. Spotify’s engineering culture epitomises this as they make it clear that workers should, “Be autonomous, but [never] suboptimise.”
In other words, ‘God forbid your next song recommendation sucks because some engineer went down a vanity rabbit hole.’ Patty McCord one of the co-authors of Netlfix’s famous culture deck hammers this point home, “Companies don’t exist to make you happy…the business doesn’t exist to serve you. The business exists to serve your customers.”
Attitude and approach are also important in how leaders ask for help. Call it intent or servant-based leadership, the point is to explain the why behind the ask. Bringing workers into the fold, allowing them ownership and responsibility is typically much more effective than leaving them in the dark. Through collective goal setting, they may be encouraged to experiment, to report on, and to learn from the failures instead of being punished for them.
The end game in work environments where failure is embraced is improved creativity, satisfaction, motivation, and engagement. Innovation also then has a real chance of becoming a core capability and not some fleeting aspiration.
Return on Trust
What does a trustless company look like? It’s a place where the golden rule does not exist. It’s riddled with paranoid workers who operate out of fear rather than confidence. It’s chalk full of power dynamics where backstabbing is fair game. It’s a place where managers smother and micro-manage because they operate from a position of fear and anxiety. They isolate themselves further as they move up the ranks — and then lose more sleep each night for fear of shitting the bed.
And a trustless company has a toxic culture that suffers from unrealised creative potential and productivity. It becomes a poisonous environment where stressed-out workers affix, and then continually adjust their professional masks.
But if we flip it, if the bedrock of an organisations operating system rests on trust then what follows is a culture rich with psychological safety (the magic ingredient found by Google when it studied its teams). One way to help earn this trust is through radically candid conversations.
I interviewed Edward Vince, a creative director at Facebook who told me that one of the most noticeable characteristics for him is the mighty culture of trust. It helps explain why Facebook took pole position on Glass Door’s 2018 Best Places to Work survey.
The high trust factor also explains why their offices — the biggest open plan workspace in the world — is often two thirds empty. Edward reports that working there really does feel like a startup, which is quite astonishing given the fact the company is nearly 15 years old.
It’s said that trust is earned and so often cooked into the culture of a company by the founders. Perhaps Zuck got it right then. If an organisation’s muscle memory can stretch, then with each additional worker its trust quotient is flexed. A return on trust cannot be overemphasised then — it creates a spirit where folks can be themselves, share ideas, gain constructive feedback, and real support that enables them to learn, grow, and succeed.
Guiding Principles
There is really no one size fits all solution for building a nourishing company culture. But there certainly are guiding principles. These could include organisations having clear and compelling answers to the following:
What are acceptable and unacceptable behaviours?
What are our values?
What’s our story, why do we really exist?
Take for example the polar distinction between the answers to these questions if it were Lyft and Uber responding. Or Warby Parker and American Apparel. From here, it’s not far-fetched to see if an employee’s worldview fits well with that of the organisation. With the cards on the table, it’s much easier for both parties to predict whether an employee might flounder or flourish.
The next generation worker isn’t going to put up with dysfunctional workplaces and toxic cultures. A movement of progressive workplaces that cultivate nourishing cultures is also a branding exercise. Dubbed ‘employer branding,’ the discipline sits pretty between HR and Marketing. It’s a very reassuring sign that folks have awoken to the fact that HR is a marketing function. Culture nerds that tend to their company’s gardens remain cognizant of their organisation’s energy and do well to tell their authentic stories.
Hito Labs founder, Victoria Stoyanova puts it best when she explains, “Culture is the invisible glue that holds everything together in the equation of professional life.” Without this glue things don’t just fall apart, they fail to stick in the first place.
This article is based off Vancouver’s debut Culture Labx. Join us for the next one on a sunny terrace — get notified here.
