This excerpt is from ReCulturing: Design Your Company Culture to Connect with Strategy and Purpose for Lasting Success by Melissa Daimler (McGraw Hill, May 2022).
Daimler is now Chief Learning Officer at Udemy, and she previously led teams at WeWork, Twitter, and Adobe, in addition to operating her own boutique advisory and coaching firm.
In this excerpt, Daimler explains how company culture becomes real through a set of actions, or practices, that have to change as the company changes; gives examples of practices that failed to change (WeWork) and ones that did (Twitter); and then goes deep into one of the most important parts of how a culture is carried out, communication, offering frameworks for deliberately shaping how companies communicate.
“What worked yesterday is the gilded cage of tomorrow.”— Peter Block
When I think about the practice of culture, I sometimes bring up a fable about the “Pot Roast Principle”—the custom of trimming the ends off a pot roast that was handed down to the next generation. When a granddaughter eventually asked her grandmother where the custom came from, she learned the real reason: the roast would not fit in her grandmother’s small roasting pan unless the ends were cut off.
That is how traditions and practices are handed along. We observe, we absorb, we carry them out, without asking why. When a company is young, unstated assumptions about how to do things can take hold, the wrong behaviors can be rewarded, and the ends get cut off the roast even after the pan is larger. Practices have to be examined and evolve with the company; otherwise, different behaviors get reinforced.
Here is one example: when WeWork was started in 2010, the company set a required practice of gathering employees for a three-day Annual Summer Camp. As the company expanded, the practice stayed in place. Many employees looked forward to it each year, since it gave them a chance to connect with coworkers and create a community with one another. Others felt less positive. One of WeWork’s values was “together,” and this was a practice the cofounders and a core set of leaders saw as an expression of that. That may well have been true when the company had 10 employees, perhaps even 100, but by 2017, with 4,000 employees, “Summer Camp” had become difficult. Employees raised concerns about whether it was appropriate to spend three nights in a teepee with coworkers in a field an hour and a half outside London. Beyond security and HR issues, the practice, at that company size and reach, was soon outdated.
Could WeWork have kept the spirit of the connection it wanted through Summer Camp, but done it in another way that would have appealed to more employees? By reassessing its practices, WeWork could have looked at the practices of other companies that had grown too large for one global gathering. If they had, they might have been encouraged to create smaller, local team events that did not involve tents, overnight stays, or even alcohol, while keeping the emphasis on connection and community and less on handling the constant discomfort and stress.
Practices are the informal, everyday, and sometimes more operational actions or rituals that employees and teams put into use. The five core practices most companies carry out consistently are communicating, meeting, learning, recognizing, and connecting.
Just as we can design purposeful processes that align with and strengthen culture, we can do the same with our practices. Company strategies change, our processes change, leaders change. Our practices have to change too.
Why Practices Need to Evolve
As the WeWork example shows, one mistake many growing companies make is holding onto the same processes and practices they used when they had 20 employees, even after they have grown to 500, 1,000, or even 3,000 employees. Thankfully, it is possible to preserve the essence of what the practice was meant to do—mostly building team camaraderie, community, and connection—while still updating the practice so it remains inclusive and scalable.
In an interview with the New York Times, Matthew Prince, CEO of the cyber security firm Cloudflare, said practices should be reviewed as the company grows, with attention to those that may leave people out. In fact, one danger of growing “too quickly” is failing to evolve practices in ways that match the changes that come with growth. Prince gave an example of a younger engineer proposing a weekly habit of going to a local pub every Friday for drinks to talk about the week and get to know one another. Prince rejected the idea because it was not right for all people and all lifestyles. Could this practice, which might suit a newly graduated MBA who is single, fit the schedule and obligations of a single parent or a team member who has a longer commute home?
Prince said: “I explained that when you look at successful organizations, they’re defined by their ability to pull from the broadest possible pool of people. At some point, we’re going to want to hire a 50-year-old single mom or dad who has to pick up their daughter from soccer practice on Friday afternoons. If they can’t feel like they’re part of the team, then they’re not going to come work for us. That’s going to massively narrow the pool of people we can hire from. We wanted to make Cloudflare a place where, no matter who you were, you could come here and work, and you’d be judged on that work. We weren’t trying to recreate college.”
At Twitter, when everyone was in the same office, Friday afternoon happy hours were enjoyable. They were called “Tea Time,” and they began when all the employees could fit on a sofa and a few comfortable chairs, grab a beer or “tea,” and discuss the week. What happened? What did we learn? What is not working? What is coming next week?
As the company expanded beyond its San Francisco headquarters into other locations around the world, eventually reaching more than 1,500 employees, Tea Time had to be redesigned to fit new geographies. Friday afternoon is late in London and already the weekend in Tokyo. Twitter switched to alternating the time between evenings and mornings, with different sites serving as hosts. Each host would share business updates locally, along with local cultural practices and team updates, all tied to the company’s values. That helped all employees feel they were contributing to Twitter’s purpose, strategy, and culture.
In my book, ReCulturing, Patty McCord – Netflix’s former chief talent officer and now human resources consultant – and I talked about the urge to hold on to practices and ways of working, even when they were not exactly working well before. “Beware of the smoke of nostalgia,” she said. Rather than asking, “Remember how it used to be?” think about how good it can be now. She reminded me that the well-known culture deck she co-created at Netflix was not built overnight, or even within a year. It took 10 years.
Evolving practices has become even more critical with remote work. There are not as many social cues as there were in the physical workplace. Often, some of the most important work used to happen in the hallways between meetings. Companies now have to adapt more quickly to remote work with the help of deliberately evolving practices that reinforce culture. For example, those once-a-month all-company meetings might shift to a weekly rhythm. Those team meetings that lasted an hour each week are now twice a week for 30 minutes. That pat on the back is now a comment on the company’s communication platform.
The Practice of Communicating
Like meetings, communication systems are often not seen as intentional practices that need to be designed and changed over time. Synchronous communication (one-on-ones with direct reports, peers, or your manager), team meetings, and all-hands meetings, as well as asynchronous communication (texts, emails, Slack messages, and yes, even phone calls) all require ongoing review. But first, a story.
A few years ago, I was stuck in New York’s JFK Terminal 4 trying to get back to San Francisco (yes, another airport story—I traveled a lot). My fellow passengers and I were standing in our assigned lines at the departure gate, ready to board. The boarding time had passed. After 20 minutes with no updates, people lined up to speak with the gate agent behind the desk. But the agent did not speak to anyone—he was too busy on the phone. He seemed scattered, frustrated, and even angry. Then, he suddenly put on his jacket and left the desk without saying a word. The passengers began talking, inventing the worst possible scenarios, checking our phones, and trying to figure out what was happening and what our plan should be. Was the flight canceled? Were we going to get home tonight to see our families? Should we try to book a hotel for the night? Was it even safe to take this flight if it opened again? The shared anxiety was palpable.
As we were comparing our imagined scenarios with one another (and these are usually worse than reality), a woman named Diane confidently, intentionally, and even happily walked behind the desk. She set down her bag and, before even removing her jacket, picked up the loudspeaker and told us, with a smile, that she had no idea what was happening, but she would get back to us with an update within the next 20 minutes. There was a collective sigh of relief. We still had no information, but we had candor and a promise. We all relaxed knowing someone was now communicating with us.
And communicate with us Diane did—every 20 minutes. First update: “OK, I just heard from the captain. He said we have a flat tire—yes, planes get flat tires, too—and they were working on getting a new one. The good news is that there are no engine issues, so this won’t take as long as we had thought.” Second update: “OK, no new updates here, but I do have bottled water for everyone if you want one.” Third update: “Still no update, everyone. I am talking to the captain soon.” Fourth update: “OK, we got the tire! Still working on the timing of how long it will take to get on.” Fifth update: “The tire is on, and we should be ready to board by my next update.” Final update: “OK! Let’s board!” This took about two hours.
When I work with leaders on how to share important updates, I often think of Diane. While leaders are handling more than a flat tire on a plane, the lesson is to over-communicate, even when we do not have every answer. One of my mentors used to tell me that if I felt like I was communicating too much, that probably meant I was communicating just enough.
One of my clients, Bonnie, was feeling the same way that first man behind the boarding gate counter was feeling. She was hearing feedback that her team needed to hear more from her in the first few weeks of the global pandemic, when everyone was sheltering in place.
Bonnie is the CEO of a fast-growing startup. She is a seasoned leader. She had already worked with her current leadership team to build a clear strategy and define their values, behaviors, processes, and practices. So, making sure everyone was safe and ready to work from home was just one more process for her and her team. She offered business updates in the first all-company virtual meeting. Everyone appeared to be coping well, given the situation.
Still, in one of our coaching sessions, in the third month of the pandemic with all of her employees working from home, she said she had not sent anything to the team for several weeks. She was already overloaded with too much news, advice, and conflicting theories about what was happening in the world. She did not want to add more of that same uncertainty to her employees. What else was there to say? Quite a lot.
Although everyone was being flooded with too much information from outside, they wanted more information from her as the CEO. They did not expect, want, or need answers. They only wanted steady connection with their leader. When we looked back at her company’s values and behaviors, one of those behaviors involved ongoing connection. Since everyone had begun working at home, she had not ReCultured to identify different processes and practices to put in place that would demonstrate that behavior.
Bonnie started a habit of daily 10-minute virtual stand-ups with her leadership team. She asked each leader to do the same with their teams. She held a virtual all-hands meeting every Friday (up from once a month). Bonnie takes part in several group Slack channels and keeps open office hours each week. She still follows these practices today.
Communication is About More Than Information
A Wall Street Journal article noted that “Crises teach us that CEOs (and leaders) aren’t expected to be as right as they are expected to be engaged.” Leaders often fail to communicate because they do not think they have any worthwhile information to share. Yet good communication is about more than updates. It’s about connection.
As more and more companies shift to a hybrid workplace, communication becomes an even more important, active practice when not everyone is physically in the same place. We need communication, but we still need to be intentional about the kind of communication we’re sharing and how we’re sharing it.
Cal Newport, a computer science professor at Georgetown University, writes about the importance of deep work and focus. In his latest book, A World Without Email, he writes that “modern knowledge workers communicate constantly. Their days are defined by a relentless barrage of incoming messages and back-and-forth digital conversations—a state of constant, anxious chatter in which nobody can disconnect, and so nobody has the cognitive bandwidth to perform substantive work.”
Newport gives striking statistics: The average office worker sends and receives 126 emails a day, and the average worker does only 75 minutes of uninterrupted work each day. Teams that use asynchronous communication practices and answer the suggested questions will let their members focus more on deep work—maybe even get more than 75 minutes a day of uninterrupted work. As a result, teams will feel more productive and experience a more meaningful connection to each other and the organization.
When major shifts occur, either externally or inside your organization, that is a signal to ReCulture. Slack, Microsoft Teams, email, text, Google Docs, chats, phone calls, and video calls are all communication options you can use. Be clear with your team about how to use these tools and the expectations tied to them. For example, Slack and text are more urgent than email. Do you even need to send that email? Could it live in a Google Doc that you review with someone at another time when you are already meeting? In 2005, researchers from the University of California studied context switching and the effect it had on productivity. They found that people could need more than 20 minutes to return to a task after they were interrupted.
I used to send my team Harvard Business Review articles. Sometimes I would send them research reports I found fascinating. Some of them were over 50 pages. I would skim them and come up with so many good ideas we could possibly do with our team that I wanted to pass them along to the team.
After a few months of this, one of my team members said in a one-on-one that she could not keep up with all the articles I was emailing. She said the rest of the team was also feeling overwhelmed by how much I expected them to review. Overwhelmed? Review? In my mind, the articles were just FYI. If they wanted to read them and they were useful for sparking ideas, great. But no big deal if not. I was not clear in my communication. So, as a team, we created new communication practices by being clear about what we needed and wanted, in the time frame we wanted it, in the subject line. We came up with: FYI (for things that don’t need to be responded to but read), NAN (“No Action Needed” for things that don’t need to be responded to or read), URGENT: if needed within 24 hours (could also be followed up with a text); and AN (“Action Needed” for things that needed a response within the next 48 hours). This helped all of us prioritize our communications and next actions. We even came up with a practice of highlighting the top three takeaways from an article if we shared it with the rest of the team.
Adapted from ReCulturing: Design Your Company Culture to Connect with Strategy and Purpose for Lasting Success. Copyright © 2022 by Melissa Daimler. Used with permission by McGraw Hill.