John the Factotum

Culture

Let's ponder culture for a moment. How do we define culture? Why is it important? Can we change it? How? Who is responsible for the culture in which you participate? What is "good" culture?

The definition of culture according to Webster is as follows:

For the sake of this reflection, I'd like to extrapolate slightly from Webster's definition and use the following:

perceived desirable and undesirable behaviors and attitudes that are continuously reinforced by a group of humans

The thing that is hard about culture is that we're hard-wired to participate in whatever culture we find ourselves. If we go back to our days of small tribes, fitting in was the difference between life and death. If you were somehow different from the group you would be ostracized. You would be cast out into the wilderness with no help to find food or build shelter or opportunity to procreate. That fear still lives in us. Think back to high school. Everyone wanted to be cool. In my day, the uncool were bullied and made-fun-of. In some cases that fear of being shunned serves us well. In others, not so well. Regardless it's a reality that we should acknowledge. More importantly, we shouldn't participate mindlessly, letting the world around us dictate our emotions and coercing us into values that may not be ultimately helpful to us or the people to whom we are closest.

There are several flavors of culture that I believe are useful to recognize:

Though I've listed these flavors distinctly, the truth is that they exist in a giant Venn diagram with lots of overlap and combinations. If we zoom way out it's helpful to recognize how all of them have both positive and negative aspects. Also any of them can use our insecurities to manipulate any of us into acting in destructive ways that are beneficial to leadership. Adolf Hitler may be the most glaringly awful example of this, using fear and purpose to motivate and orchestrate a campaign to exterminate Jews and conquer Europe. There are reverberations of that same tactic with regard to immigrants in America today. If you take manipulation to the extreme you get a cult. There's a fine, blurry line between "strong culture" and a "cult".

Culture in Software Development #

In business, culture is a topic that comes up all the time. We all hear and read things like, "That company has the coolest culture." What does that even mean? I would say it depends a lot on what you value. Usually, when I hear a phrase like that today it takes me back to the early 2000s when Silicon Valley was super hot and they had ping pong tables in their offices and bought lunch for the staff every day...like somehow the ping pong table was a symbol of "cool culture". Let's be clear: These were mechanisms designed to make [mostly young] people work longer hours for less money. Then again, in business, the motivation behind intentional culture is to incentivize profitable behavior. When done well, it's mutually beneficial to shareholders and employees.

Employees will always ultimately behave in ways that align with how they perceive they are being measured. The easiest example of this is in sales teams. Because a substantial portion of their compensation is derived from the amount of revenue they generate, sales people will tend toward doing or saying almost anything to close the deal with less emphasis on truth or feasibility.

As a software developer, if I perceive that delivering more features is better, I will deliver more features faster with a lower emphasis on quality. When performance is perceived by employees to be measured in dollars and quarterly earnings, quality, ownership, and morale tend to suffer. After that you have a bit of a downward spiral where the long-term effects of short-term thinking create exponential problems with tech debt and churn (in both employees and customers). By necessity you have to apply more short-term thinking just to survive and the enterprise ultimately becomes minimally profitable, if at all.

So how can we balance the fact that we do, in fact, need to be profitable as a business with the knowledge that profit-oriented culture doesn't necessarily motivate the most beneficial behavior for software developers? An effective leader (good or evil) recognizes what motivates the individuals of a group and leans into those traits to build a culture that's self-perpetuating. In software development, there is a pride of craftsmanship and seeing a customer value what you've built that is highly motivating to most individuals - way more than money. Here are a few things I think about that can create a culture that taps into that motivation.

My experience has shown that creating a product development culture around these ideas creates a constructive feedback loop where individual and corporate ownership, quality standards, and speed to market increase. Generally revenue and profit also increase dramatically and quickly.

Closing Thoughts #

At the end of the day we have to recognize that humans have an innate need to be a part of something bigger than themselves. Culture forms communities through social identity, giving us bigger purpose. The best thing we can do for ourselves and for the world around us is to think critically about the culture we are engaging with (personally and/or professionally) and how we influence that culture to be constructive.