Skuffed & Shiny

The right culture for us?

Culture is a hot topic for many companies. Start ups talk about establishing a great culture. Candidates are looking for the right cultural fit in a prospective company and vice versa. Successful companies attribute culture as the secret to their success. Failing companies talk about changing their culture as part of a turn around plan. Then there are the clichés that companies have “a world class culture” or they have “an agile culture”. But what does it all really mean? What is culture?

One thing is for sure, culture is one of the most powerful forces in business. A company culture sets the tone and direction for the organization. The way the culture goes so do the goods and services. How the goods and services go, so does the market.

In many ways a company culture is a living thing. It fights for its very survival. A company that’s struggling for its existence or is seeking a new product-market fit can be seen as having a startup culture or startup mindset. A culture that is well established and deeply entrenched is fighting to live by leveraging managers who are afraid to try new things. Employees like those at yahoo are fighting against change in leadership and changes in policy to maintain a established culture while leadership is trying to shift a culture to be more open and communicative.

Many companies like Apple, Disney, Instagram and Twitter have a culture that is for the most part in harmony with their markets and enjoy the success that comes from a mutually beneficial relationship.

So where does culture start and where does it end? In my experience culture begins at the top. The example, words used and priorities set by executive leadership is where culture is nourished but it is the rank and file, the individual contributors who are the ones that are growing the culture.

The national culture is influenced by Hollywood and the images of culture that they sell. Yet it is the moviegoers who translate what they see into our national conscious and collective culture. In much the same way businesses are using marking to influence their customers to create and foster a consumer culture.

When a competitor is able to sway away customers from an incumbent it is more that they are swaying customers cultural perspective away from their rival. The products that delight them are more in line with the cultural expectation than by the common definition of “product-market-fit”.

Successful startups are actually recognizing a cultural shift and apply the right culture-product-fit to draw in customers. When the culture-product-fit is right, the market shift can be incredibly fast.

For example consider how fast Instagram was adopted. In just 90 days they went from zero to over one million users and then sold to Facebook in just 551 days. The share-alike culture and personal nature of pictures simply resonated with the culture.

Some of the most powerful features of twitter, such as the @name, hash tags and re-tweeting came not from product mangers imaginations but from watching how their community was using the app. The community grew the features but the company had a culture that was in line with the community culture to help make it happen.

So for corporate and business leaders the most powerful act is one where you act in accordance with the culture and in the direction you want your organization to grow. Align your behavior with the right consumer-cultural-fit and your business will find its natural home. It is your responsibility to find a home of growth or not.

All the world’s a stage

Back in college when I was a computer science major I believed that computer science was a pure and noble thing. 

I would joke with my classmates about liberal arts majors. We viewed them as clueless flower children dancing around mountain meadows sniffing daises. The artsy-fartsy would only take easy slider classes that prepared them for an exciting career in the fry-cook-arts.

We, the computer science and engineering majors are part of the academician congregation. We have the pure truth of math and logic. We commanded electrons that course through veins of a computer bending and folding them to do our will. We were gods.

My mind was set. I knew my place in the world. I knew who I was.

Then I meet a girl. She was a writer and she was a singer and not the flower child I projected on the liberal arts majors. She was sexy and that made me do stupid things. Because of her I found myself listening to a live chamber group playing Bach. I sat happy next to her watching the ballet perform Sleeping Beauty. Because of her I was laughing and enjoying actors perform Sweeney Todd, singing about meat pies and missing cats.

I have moved on from my tech-nerd roots, Yet, I still feel some of the same tech v. art conflict. On my right shoulder sits the nerd preaching the orthodoxy of science. On my left shoulder is the singer caroling the virtue of art.

Today, my life is focused on business. Looking back it is clear that I have only traded one nerd-life for another. The tech v. art conflict is still alive and well. I believe most of the challenges in building a successful business can found in the clash of tech v. art and it doesn’t need to be that way.

The successful have secret knowledge.

Within the conflict of art v. science is a reconciliation that transcends both. The successful mix the demigod qualities of structure and logic with the beauty and elegance of art forming a stage prepared for our stories. And here is the secret knowledge; it is stories that connect us.

The success that surround us all are rooted in stories. Companies and people alike. Twitter and Square, Facebook and Apple, Instagram and Timehop, Google and Wikipedia, Disney and McDonalds, Barack Obama and Mitt Romney, MLK and Gandhi, Me writing this and you reading this. We are all are sharing stories, acting as part of a story, brokering stories or most powerfully, telling stories. 

The world exists so people can connect with each other. I believe it is the earths only purpose. Our worlds’ natural state is to be borderless and for us all to have access to each other, to learn from each other and to connect with each other.

The wise, the lucky and the successful, they all have simply provided ways for people to hear a story, find a story, discover their own story and most importantly tell a story. The technology we have today just makes it more easy to tell our stories. The future will be full of more ways to tell stories. They will take their place in a long history of stages that people use to exchange stories.

The whole world really is a stage and our stories are the play.

The most dangerous risk of all

From Yahoo.

“Thompson is willing to use every arrow in his quiver,” said Enderle. “He is going to use an aggressive management style. He is far from done. He is one of the more aggressive CEOs we have seen to date to pull off either a turnaround or a sale. Yahoo desperately needs an aggressive CEO.”

http://www.itworld.com/legal/258694/ipo-looming-yahoo-lawsuit-puts-facebook-awkward-position

From Goldman Sacks

When the history books are written about Goldman Sachs, they may reflect that the current chief executive officer, Lloyd C. Blankfein, and the president, Gary D. Cohn, lost hold of the firm’s culture on their watch. I truly believe that this decline in the firm’s moral fiber represents the single most serious threat to its long-run survival.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/14/opinion/why-i-am-leaving-goldman-sachs.html?_r=2

From a developer blog “Another take on Hero Culture.”

That’s my understanding of hero culture. The guy who sucks, is somehow the hero, because it takes time. The guy who doesn’t look busy, because he did it right the first time, is overlooked, upset, and eventually changes jobs; which really only validates the hero.

http://blog.websages.com/2011/03/10/another-take-on-hero-culture/

And even a startup on twitter

@1: my team is amazing. up at 4:30 am for an early flight and there’s already a morning of news in the @—-.

@2: @1 West Coast location, East Coast sensibilities…

@1: @2 that and hardworking 19 year olds ;)

@2: @1 Fire them in 11 years when they begin to require sleep.

Any more proof that the biggest and most dangerous risk to a business is bad culture?

The business of launching

One of my hobbies is paragliding. When people learn that I fly, they often make comments that paragliding is an “extreme sport”.  A activity reserved for the truly insane. I don’t think paragliding is extreme, I think it’s mental.

When I say paragliding is mental I don’t mean free-flying is a certifiably-mentally-ill activity. What I mean is the sport of paragliding requires huge mental demands. It demands my concentration, my focus and my careful consideration of my surroundings and elements.

Because of those considerations I spend a lot of time deciding when to launch.  So along with my advanced pilot rating I have also mastered the art and science of “parawaiting”, or waiting and waiting and waiting for the right conditions to fly. 

I have taken parawaiting to the next level.  I will often sprawl out laying back against my gear to watch others fly. It could be that I’m waiting for the right winds, or for the sky to clear of a gaggle of wings, or just because I’m not “feeling it.”

Parawaiting is not boring. I spend many hours parawaiting at one of the best fly spots in the world, the “Point of the Mountain” at the southern end of Salt Lake City.

Pilots from around the world come to fly The Point. There are green pilots taking their first kitting lesson (kitting is ground-flying used to practice wing skills) to the worlds most amazing top rated pilots and everyone in between. The point is to paragliders as the North Shore in Hawaii is to surfers.

From my hundreds of hours in the air and many more hours parawaiting, I have seen every kind of pilot and skill level there is.

I group pilots into 5 categories; newbies, juniors, pilots, “the scary as all hell” and finally the masters.

Newbies are fun to watch fly. They jump at every breeze and think if they pull hard on a b-line the wing will morph into a portal to the inner bowels of hell where they will be sucked in for all time and eternity.

Juniors are great to fly with. They have mastered the basics and have good wing control. They are eager to learn and improve but still have a caution that can make them good pilots.

Pilots are the vast bulk of the paragliding community and I’m proud to be part of this group.  We all have had our share of failed take-offs, hard landings and rowdy air that has tossed us around like some giants’ play thing.

I have had a few stitches from a hard landing or bad launch. But nothing like the scrapes, bruises, stitches, broken bones and trips to my neighborhood ER from snow skiing, water skiing, hiking or mountain biking.

Paragliding can be very safe. I have enough flight control that I can launch from the side of a cliff, hover to have a conversation with someone on the ground and land in the bed of my truck. That may sounds impressive but it is all rather normal for a reasonably skilled pilot.

The next group are the “scary as all hells” or as we like to call them “the idiots”.  These pilots are often very skilled. But that experience has become hubris that blinds them to the real dangers of the sport.

Idiots are arrogant and think they have progressed beyond the average “pilot”. They fail to read the sky and hear their soul before flying. The reason I call them “scary as all hell” is that a pilot who makes a terminal mistake may kill themselves, but the idiots will kill themselves and take out others with them.  If I see an idiot launch, I don’t. Ever!

The last group are the masters. These are the pilots who have an innate ability to read the sky like a hawk. It can be fun to see a master test the wind by telling a newbie to launch just to see how they “sink out”.  (we call them “wind-dummies”). 

The sky could be free of wings and wind and a master will be doing a pre-flight finishing just in time to launch and catch the only epic thermal of the day. Meanwhile every other pilot rushes in to catch the thermal but fails to launch and catch up.

What I like about masters is they know they can’t fly if they don’t launch but are well aware that all pilots have to come down to land, sometime - so they make it their choice when to launch and when to land.

In business I group people into the same categories. 

Most people are just “professionals” - the “pilots”. 

A few are the idiots who commit career limiting moves and take others down with them. 

Some are newbies who are the “business-dummies” that never get the idea that if you are not in the game you are being played.

Personally, I want to to be one of the business masters. One of the few who can read the business winds and predict change and recognize opportunities.

A master is someone who has the education, experience and skill to be mental. Masters know when to launch.

Note to self in combat.

1. Friendly fire - isn’t.

2. Recoilless rifles - aren’t.

3. Suppressive fires - won’t.

4. You are not Superman; (Marines and fighter pilots take note.)

5. A sucking chest wound is Nature’s way of telling you to slow down.

6. If it’s stupid but it works, it isn’t stupid.

7. Try to look unimportant; the enemy may be low on ammo and not want to waste a bullet on you.

8. If at first you don’t succeed, call in an air strike.

9. If you are forward of your position, your artillery will fall short.

10. Never share a foxhole with anyone braver than yourself.