> They key to a strong culture is consistency from the top. The CEO's job is to make sure everyone on the management team is on the same page. If a senior leader wants to create their own unique culture for their part of the org, they can't be allowed to stay.
I love this entire thread and it resonates a lot with me. I, too, believe that there is not THE right company culture that will solve everybody’s problems. Many in the agile or “new work” camp seem to believe that their way is the ONLY way, for example.
Consistency is much more important than how the culture actually is.
I think consistency is overrated, and a cause of countless undue issues.
We seem to mostly agree that diversity is important, and having employees from different background help bring different ideas and solutions to the table, react with more agility on unforeseen situations.
On a fundamental level, applying the same vision and forcing the same values and rituals on everyone looks to me at odds with what diversity is supposed to bring.
As an aside, if a company has a credit card processing division and mini-game producing divisions, I'd see a clear case for them to not have the same values nor the same priorities, and in the end the same culture. That's what I also felt reading accounts from UX designers at Google in the early days, when they seemed to be crushed by the 100% data driven culture from which they tried to carve a small niche.
>On a fundamental level, applying the same vision and forcing the same values and rituals on everyone looks to me at odds with what diversity is supposed to bring.
IMO the difference is that consistency brings people together to agree on the same goals but diversity brings different perspectives on how to reach said goals. It's a bit of nuance, like the distinction between strategy and tactics.
Having disjointed strategy wreaks havoc because people can't agree on what's ultimately important in determining success. Differing tactics brings a bit of experimentation to the table where groups may try out different paths but are all honed in on the same end goal.
I've worked in organizations that couldn't align on strategy and it was horrendous. One level wanted the focus to be on creating an organization that is known for high-quality "world-class" work. The other wanted to move fast and bring in as much work as possible, sometimes at the detriment of quality. Leadership couldn't get on the same page and it created a fracturing of the workforce into competing camps, neither of which trusted (and at time worked to undermine) the other.
Personally, I believe consistency is an indicator of defined process.
Consistency can still produce negative results, but, because it is a defined process, it is much easier to ‘pull the levers’, and wrangle the process into an outcome you want.
Serendipity is great, but it really does take a special group of people for that synergy to work, absent a process.
Yes, I think at an individual level there needs to be clear rules and expectations, and the sense of belonging to a coherent group sharing the same values.
It's more at an organization level where I see the need to have niches accomodating groups that have different dynamics, perhaps goals and working patterns.
Another instance of that could be customer support centers, who work hand in hand with the product and dev centers, while having wildly different composition, processes and targets from the rest of the company.
> Many in the agile or “new work” camp seem to believe that their way is the ONLY way, for example.
I think many in the Agile camp are fed up with being held back by people who are unwilling to change, and are willing to break the mold (and some eggs) in order to find a new, better way to work.
> Consistency is much more important than how the culture actually is.
This just leads to a consistently toxic culture that nobody wants to work for. I have worked for plenty of places where nobody gives a shit and nobody tries to change anything, and it was terrible. Our working life should mean more than a stock ticker.
The "Agile" problem is more like a bunch of consultants and managers polarizing the population while the middle waves their hands and goes "uh, guys, you know 'agile' isn't the same as Scrum, and many more implementations exist beyond it, right?". As the consultants and managers keep insisting that if you don't want to participate in "Agile Scrum" (how in the world did we get this abomination of a word anyway?), you "don't understand the values of Scrum and/or Agile". In turn, monopolizing the ideology of iterative, short cycle development.
The last being absolutely insane, since both the values in Scrum and the values in the Agile Manifesto are extremely broad and abstract. Even the guide itself clearly states Scrum only being an implementation for those values, not the definition of those values.
I’ve always found it ironic when coming across discussions of people’s frustration with Agile (uppercase A) only to see the “you’re doing it wrong” comment-which I’ve seen often right Here on HN, among other places.
Mainly because wasn’t one of the foundational elements of agile (lowercase A) “people and tools over processes”?
Lately Agile feels as ritualistic and process-heavy as a checklist for a rocket launch.
Actually, no it wasn't. The one you are referring to is:
Individuals and interactions over processes and tools
Also "Agile" doesn't feel ritualistic and process heavy. I'm probably now doing what you refer to as the "you're doing it wrong".
Agile itself is not ritualistic and process heavy. Specific frameworks and people are. E.g. take a SAFe consultant trying to get a paycheck from a large corporation. Of course that's gonna be ritualistic and process heavy. That's the point of SAFe and even in the name. They're trying to sell a "safe" implementation of agile practices to enterprise organizations. Safe in the sense of not actually having to change all that much. Basically keep what you have but you can call yourself agile now. Comes with a rubber stamp too now!
That's way different than a company trying to actually live agile values as defined in the manifesto. E.g. throw away your issue tracking tool to build your software and put a bunch of post it notes all over the walls at the office. Talk to your peers. Build awesome software together from rough drafts on a post it. Or how a friend of mine describes working at Tesla: "Jira issues? Yeah we write those after implementation is done so that the AC match what we did". Awesome!
Hehehe, self fulfilling prophecy really. And no worries I get it. 'Problem' is, I'm still on the idealistic agile train myself and thus I will predictably (and I told you it was coming) fall into that pattern. Can't do anything about it. On the interwebs it's obviously hard to impossible to distinguish this from other forms of this. E.g. the SAFe consultant who feels dissed ;)
So yeah if you see me in real life, I'm fighting for proper agile value implementation in the organization around me and living and teaching them in my teams.
I love this entire thread and it resonates a lot with me. I, too, believe that there is not THE right company culture that will solve everybody’s problems. Many in the agile or “new work” camp seem to believe that their way is the ONLY way, for example.
Consistency is much more important than how the culture actually is.