Culture
Culture
The November issue of HBR has a panel style interview with 3 of the top performing CEOs of 2016. Among the interviewees was the CEO of WPP, the world's largest advertising company, owning a vast network of agencies around the world, employing roughly 190,000 employees. It’s an impressive empire.
I’ve been part of two such buyouts in the agency world, one of which was the acquisition of then Designkitchen (now Blast Radius) by WPP. Having lived through the cultural transition and recently visiting the old stomping ground of Blast Radius, I can see the culture has changed dramatically. This is not surprising. What caught my attention in this article was the following quote from WPP’s CEO Martin Sorrell:
“I’m actually somewhat suspicious when people use the C word — “culture” — because it’s often used by people who don’t want to do what we want them to.”
Well, that’s telling, eh? Acquiring dozens of companies to build a massive conglomerate is not the same as building a company one employee at a time. Don’t get me wrong, building such a machine is an enormous and admirable feat. I’m not sure I would be capable of bringing anything close to that scale to life.
Culture is not prescribed, top down, from the owners to the staff. Companies I’ve seen attempt that end up delivering an awkward monologue to uncomfortable employees who wonder what the hell is going on. Top down culture is ultimately inauthentic. In my opinion and the opinion of my cofounders, culture is best when it’s grown from the personalities of the people we bring into the ring.
We strive to hire a good mixture of talented folk who will challenge and enhance who we are. When you have good people, people you trust to represent your interests and to bring their best to every task, those people are your culture. Good culture is hard to sustain especially as people move in and out of roles and life happens. If you find that your people don’t want to sing your song, you might ask why. Maybe there is something you're missing, something better, or more true to the core of your business.
We get out of the way and let the culture happen. That’s how our movie club started; it’s why we go to the pumpkin patch every year; and it’s how our gr8 bit day of field games is run. Your people spend the better part of their lives with you: 40+ hours a week. At the end of the day, they can get a job anywhere. If you would rather they work with you, shouldn’t they help define what that looks like and how it feels?
