Poking through 14+ years of posts I find information that’s as useful now as when it was written.

Golden Oldies is a collection of the most relevant and timeless posts during that time.

Focus on culture isn’t new, but it used to be a lot more positive. These days I see more about toxic cultures than about good ones, but what hasn’t changed is culture’s effect on performance, productivity and staffing. For better or worse, culture is still the most potent factor for any company.

Read other Golden Oldies here.

Shawn Parr, whose company works with large corporations, such as Starbucks and MTV, on innovation wrote a meaty post called Culture Eats Strategy For Lunch.

It reminded me of something I wrote back in 2008, because the title is from a quote by Dick Clark, CEO of Merk and after rereading it I decided it’s worth reposting, so here it is.

Culture Trumps All

A post on Dave Brock’s blog led me to an article at IMD’s site called “An Unpopular Corporate Culture” and, as Dave said, it’s a must read for anyone who still thinks that corporate culture is some ephemeral concept with no real impact that consultants use to sell their services.

And a double-must for those who talk about culture’s importance, but don’t walk very well when it comes to creating a great corporate culture.

For those who prefer to put their faith in plans and strategy, hear the words of Dick Clark when he took over as CEO of Merck in 2005 and was asked about his strategy for restoring the pharmaceutical company to its former glory. “His strategy, he said, was to put strategy second and focus on changing the company’s insular, academic culture.” The fact is, culture eats strategy for lunch,” Clark explained. “You can have a good strategy in place, but if you don’t have the culture and the enabling systems that allow you to successfully implement it… the culture of the organization will defeat the strategy.””

If you’re looking for a best practice corporate culture silver bullet forget it—one size doesn’t fit all.

Rex Tillerson, CEO of ExxonMobil, describes that company’s top-down command and control culture of consistency and discipline as “the source of our competitive advantage,” and has made it a priority to reinforce it.

Meanwhile, Robert Iger and Steve Jobs, in their discussions about the acquisition of Pixar by Disney, have been concerned with avoiding an Exxon style command and control culture. Jobs says that, “Most of the time that Bob and I have spent talking about this hasn’t been about economics, it’s been about preserving the Pixar culture because we all know that’s the thing that’s going to determine the success here in the long run.””

It took Lou Gerstner a decade to remake IBM.

The key lesson Gerstner learned in his time with IBM, as he later reflected, was the importance of culture.”Until I came to IBM, I probably would have told you that culture was just one among several important elements in any organization’s makeup and success—along with vision, strategy, marketing, financials, and the like… I came to see, in my time at IBM, that culture isn’t just one aspect of the game—it is the game.”

The article is more than just additional proof for my favorite hobby horse.

The analysis of the role of employee complaints/negativity play in culture and the importance of what to keep when setting out to change a culture as opposed to what to jettison will give you new insight on your own company’s culture.

In case you still doubt the power and value of culture I hope that Dick Clark, Rex Tillerson, Robert Iger, Steve Jobs and Lou Gerstner combined with the articles in Fast Company and IMD have finally changed your mind.

Flickr image credit: Bengt Nyman

A Friday series exploring Startups and the people who make them go. Read all If the Shoe Fits posts here.

A couple of years ago Dick Costolo explained why startups needed to hire “brilliant jerks” in order to succeed.

It’s stuff like that, especially from people like Costolo, that gives people permission to act like jerks.

Why?

Because people who tend to be jerks are usually delusional enough to believe that they’re brilliant.

But what about those who are brilliant (or what passes as such these days) and act like jerks?

Well, why not?

All they are doing is living up to expectations and, like Pavlov’s dog, the more free passes they get the more they will believe their actions/attitudes are OK.

In my life I’ve been around a lot of real brilliance and they had certain traits in common.

Without exception, they loved sharing their knowledge, building up those around them and helping them grow — no matter who.

That’s what truly brilliant people do; that’s why they are remembered.

The same goes for everyone who does the same.

Whereas the jerks are ephemeral and soon forgotten.

If they are remembered, it’s for what they did, as opposed to how they acted.

Steve Jobs is a good example, as is Jeff Bezos.

Think about it; what’s the likelihood that the brilliant jerks in your world are in the same league?

Image credit: HikingArtist

Poking through 11+ years of posts I find information that’s as useful now as when it was written.

Golden Oldies is a collection of the most relevant and timeless posts during that time.

Jerks, by whatever name, have been on the rise for awhile, but that seems to have escalated in the last couple of years, especially in the workplace. Not that jerk bosses are anything new, but they are getting more blatant.

Read other Golden Oldies here.

Although both articles I refer to are aimed at startup founders, I believe they are applicable to bosses at any level and in any company.

First, no boss ever accomplished their goals by being a jerk.

As Bob Sutton explains in The Asshole Survival Guide, treating people like dirt hurts their focus and saps their motivation. (…)

In the podcast, Reid [Hoffman] describes his test of a great culture: Does every employee feel that they personally own the culture?

Most jerks, no matter how unlikely that the comparison is valid, point to Steve Jobs to justify their actions, but consider how much more he could have done if he had been a better leader/manager..

It’s hard to find any boss who doesn’t recognize that culture is the most critical element in a company’s success.

However, what “culture” is has been twisted and warped out of all recognition.

These days “cultural fit” is the excuse of choice to indulge whatever biases, prejudices, and bigotry moves the hiring boss.

So, what does cultural fit really mean?

To answer that you have to understand what culture really is.

Culture is a reflection of the values of the boss.

Values have nothing to do with perks, food, or office buildings and everything to do with attitudes such as fairness, merit, transparency, trust, etc.

The point of cultural fit is to hire people whose personal values are, at the least, synergistic with the cultural values of the company.

Period.

That means that if the boss is biased, bigoted or a jerk, they will hire people who have similar values.

Image credit: Matthias Forster

Do you hire based on grades and/or the college attended?

If so, give yourself an F — for being a hiring dinosaur and ignoring the data.

Way back in the 1980s, when I was a tech recruiter, one of the best/smartest engineering vps I ever worked with told me he didn’t care about GPAs or college attended. He said that the value of a technical degree lost approximately 20-25% of its value each year, because the tech world changed so fast.

He also said that grades were more the result of a good memory and the ability to regurgitate information on demand than actual knowledge.

Fast forward to Adam Grant’s most recent column. Grant is one of the smartest people I read and I read a lot. Not because he has a PhD, but because he has more common sense than almost any other three (four? five?) combined.

The evidence is clear: Academic excellence is not a strong predictor of career excellence. Across industries, research shows that the correlation between grades and job performance is modest in the first year after college and trivial within a handful of years. (…)

Academic grades rarely assess qualities like creativity, leadership and teamwork skills, or social, emotional and political intelligence.

Take a good look at that list. It encompasses all the skills that bosses, no matter their level, claim they want, but frequently pass on.

Why? Because candidates with those qualities don’t as easily “fit” into rigidly framed jobs.

Whereas one thing that can be said for straight A students is that they are expert at coloring inside the lines, so are usually easier to manage.

Getting straight A’s requires conformity. Having an influential career demands originality.

“Valedictorians aren’t likely to be the future’s visionaries,” Dr. Arnold explained. “They typically settle into the system instead of shaking it up.”

Moreover, hiring with the assumption  that you can reshape their embedded code when it is convenient for you is totally unfair and sets you both up for frustration, at the least, or outright failure.

This might explain why Steve Jobs finished high school with a 2.65 G.P.A., J.K. Rowling graduated from the University of Exeter with roughly a C average, and the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. got only one A in his four years at Morehouse.

So the when you go to fill your next opening give serious thought to what you are really looking for.

Image credit: Adam Grant

A Friday series exploring Startups and the people who make them go. Read all If the Shoe Fits posts here.

How do you give your team the greatest chance to succeed?

By creating a supportive culture, instead of a judgmental one.

It’s not rocket science.

Just common sense.

Unless you actually believe you are Steve Jobs/Jeff Bezos/Mark Zuckerberg.

Then you can get away with acting like a jerk.

But you better be sure.

Very, very sure.

Image credit: HikingArtist

Originally this post was written for and about founders, but it is applicable to bosses everywhere, no matter the size or age of their company.

However, if one chooses to revisit a post from the past one must admit one’s errors — especially the glaringly obvious ones.

I wrote that “tolerance for bullying may be waning,” which, based on what has happened in the intervening five years was clearly off the mark.

What does seem to have happened is the “if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em” mindset has gained more followers, which is a sad commentary.

What hasn’t changed is that, sooner or later, believing your own hype will cost your company talent — or worse.

Bosses are known for the passion and drive that turns their vision into reality. While many are known for their technical brilliance or marketing expertise, fewer are known for their management skill.

Many harbor a secret dream of being hailed as the next Steve Jobs, Larry Ellison, Anna Wintour, Barry Diller or Martha Stewart.

If those names impress you then consider that they all are in Forbes Bully Bosses Hall of Fame (personally, I’d have included Jack Welch).

“At some point, those we consider ‘visionaries’ become puffed-up creations of their own imagination. When business executives stop looking beyond quarterly reports and stockholder dividends, they start ignoring internal stakeholders. We’re seeing that unravel now.” —Gary Namie, management consultant

American tolerance for bullying leaders may be waning.

There has been a real sea change in what’s conceptualized as good leadership. Americans have become disenchanted with power. Almost daily, they watch as leaders–in government, in business–fail to exercise appropriate restraint.” –Roderick Kramer, Stanford Business School professor.

In four decades I never spoke with anyone who liked being bullied and have watched tolerance for it seep away.

These days people vote with their feet; the question is not ‘should I leave’, but ‘how soon can I leave’.

The focus is how quickly someone can find a position that combines personal satisfaction with the ability to take care of their responsibilities.

Good management/leadership isn’t just about killer visions.

It’s about enabling growth by building up and never tearing down either the people or the enterprise for which you are responsible.

In short, take care of your people; without them there is no company.

Image credit: kowarski

Back in 2009 I asked what it meant to be educated, considering the amazing basic ignorance displayed daily by Americans — often the same folks who disparaged education focused on liberal arts and the humanities.

Two years later Bill Gates agreed with them, while Steve Jobs disagreed.

In 2011, Microsoft cofounder Bill Gates told a panel of American governors that a liberal arts education would hold back college graduates in the modern economy.

A few days later, late Apple cofounder Steve Jobs declared that “it’s technology married with liberal arts, married with the humanities, that yields us the result that makes our heart sing.”

Their opposite attitudes partially account for Apple’s rise and Microsoft’s fall

In 2015 I wrote about the value of a liberal arts education.

It took seven years and a full change in management, for the “new” Microsoft to acknowledge this fact.

Microsoft president Brad Smith and EVP of AI and research Harry Shum wrote in their new book “The Future Computed” that “one of the most important conclusions” of Microsoft’s recent research into artificial intelligence is that lessons from liberal arts will be critical to unleashing the full potential of AI.

“At one level, AI will require that even more people specialize in digital skills and data science. But skilling-up for an AI-powered world involves more than science, technology, engineering, and math. As computers behave more like humans, the social sciences and humanities will become even more important. Languages, art, history, economics, ethics, philosophy, psychology and human development courses can teach critical, philosophical and ethics-based skills that will be instrumental in the development and management of AI solutions.”

Jobs wasn’t much of a coder. His real genius lay his ability to “see around corners,” know what his market wanted before it knew and then invent it. The fact is that he could see because he was grounded in liberal arts and the humanities.

This is the advantage non-tech founders often bring to the table.

Just as AI can beat humans at chess and Go, it will soon beat them at coding, I wonder just how many of the highly paid techies at Google, Facebook, etc., have the knowledge, philosophy and empathy to design algorithms fit for human consumption?

Image credit: Kyle Pearce

A Friday series exploring Startups and the people who make them go. Read all If the Shoe Fits posts here.

Ask most tech founders about role models and who they want to emulate and you’ll usually hear the same names —  Gates/Jobs/Page/Zukerberg/Bezos.

Rarely do you hear Benioff.

Granted, Benioff’s Salesforce’s revenues aren’t as high and the valuation is “only” $66 billion, but Salesforce sells no consumer products — ads are products — therefore has a much smaller market.

Revenues aside, Benioff is a much better leader and role model.

Not just a philanthropist, but an activist philanthropist who is not afraid to use his clout and get in the face of his peers.

Given the same clout, would you do the same thing?

A guy who believes a company’s concerns should go beyond its investors to include all its stakeholders, direct and indirect.

How far beyond yourself do your concerns go?

Tech’s been on the hot seat lately for a host of reasons, with gender issues front and center, especially equal pay.

Most, including the “role models” listed above, have been vocal in their promises to address the pay disparity.

Benioff, however, has put his money where their mouths are.

In 2015, his company did a salary study, and it turned out they needed to make some changes. So they spent $3M to level the playing field. A year later, they put salaries under the microscope again and found they had to spend another $3M to close additional pay gaps.

Now Benioff has pledged to evaluate salaries on a regular basis. For this and more, he was named a “Global Champion of Women in Business.”

And before you whine about not having enough cash to do that stop and think.

If you pay your people equally when you hire and promote there wouldn’t be a pay gap for you to erase.

Image credit: HikingArtist

Although both articles I refer to are aimed at startup founders, I believe they are applicable to bosses at any level and in any company.

First, no boss ever accomplished their goals by being a jerk.

As Bob Sutton explains in The Asshole Survival Guide, treating people like dirt hurts their focus and saps their motivation. (…)  In the podcast, Reid [Hoffman] describes his test of a great culture: Does every employee feel that they personally own the culture?

Most jerks point to Steve Jobs to justify their actions, but consider how much more he could have done if he had been a better leader/manager.

It’s hard to find any boss who doesn’t recognize that culture is the most critical element in a company’s success.

However, what “culture” is has been twisted and warped out of all recognition.

These days “cultural fit” is the excuse of choice to indulge whatever biases, prejudices, and bigotry moves the hiring boss.

So, what does cultural fit really mean?

To answer that you have to understand what culture really is.

Culture is a reflection of the values of the boss.

Values have nothing to do with perks, food, or office buildings and everything to do with attitudes such as fairness, merit, transparency, trust, etc.

The point of cultural fit is to hire people whose personal values are, at the least, synergistic with the cultural values of the company.

Period.

That means that if the boss is biased, bigoted or a jerk, they will hire people who have similar values.

Image credit: Matthias Forster

A Friday series exploring Startups and the people who make them go. Read all If the Shoe Fits posts here.

The last thing you need today is yet another autopsy of Travis Kalanick. If you indulge in any form of media you know TK isn’t the first to founder to go down in flames (and he won’t be the last)for creating a rotten culture.

A larger question is where was the adult oversight that kept other young founders from similar shenanigans?

Steve Jobs didn’t want to create a Windows-compatible version of the iPod or an app store for the iPhone; it was his lieutenants who pushed him to do it. Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg and the Google founders, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, were guided by strong, experienced and extremely sober operators — Sheryl Sandberg and Eric Schmidt, respectively. Mr. Kalanick, meanwhile, was allowed to operate more or less solo, to micromanage a company that grew to enormous scale, and was left alone even when the firm’s problems became plain to see.

In its fifth year, Facebook had net income of $200 million in 2009 on revenue of $777 million; in its seventh year Uber lost $3 billion.

So instead, I thought I’d point you to a Glassdoor’s 2017 list of best CEOs as rated by their employees, so you could find positive role models.

In the large company category the top slot went to Benno Dorer, CEO of The Clorox Company.

“Excellent communication on vision, strategy, and where we are going. Constant access to leadership through round tables and other company events that allow all employees to feel like they are part of our decision making and strategy.”

In the small/medium category it’s Justyn Howard, CEO of Sprout Social.

There are many reasons why Sprout Social is an amazing place to work. Some of the pros include sensible managers that really care about you and your goals, and help you grow and advance your career. The company culture is inclusive, open and friendly. I have honestly not seen this many talented and hardworking people together prior to working here. Both individual and team initiatives are highlighted and praised often, communication is very transparent and you feel like your voice is heard.

Notice that the employee comments all focus on similar things.

They are what people of all ages want from their bosses.

Founders/bosses set the tone and values.

They shouldn’t be surprised when the people they hire have similar views.

Image credit: HikingArtist