When I first read it a few years ago, this blogpost quickly became foundational to how I think about culture. I recently pinged Malcolm about crossposting it because I thought it was essential to have on the Communication Cultures tag.
First, I think “Tell Culture” is pretty good when done right, and I think Malcolm correctly identified some important failure modes it was likely to fall into. I’m not 100% sure whether “Reveal Culture” is quite the platonic ideal of the culture, but I do think it’s a net-improvement. And fleshing out the gears has solidified my distinctions between Guess, Ask and other variant cultures that play with similar clusters of norm.
I think my only serious criticism of “Reveal Culture” is that the name is a bit more clunky. I think it’s a slight improvement of “Tell” because it avoids the impulse to think “Tell culture means I’m allowed to tell people what to do”. But, it’s two syllables long, and it’s not quite intuitive the way “Interrupt Culture” is.
Culture In General
I think more importantly, this post lays out some key mechanics of “what is necessary to have a culture.” And this has shaped all my thinking since about various types of cultures I’ve wanted to build or understand. The post was a key piece of my “Rationalist Culture Lit Review” in The Real Hufflepuff Sequence Was The Posts We Made Along The Way, because it helped me make sense of all the other “communication culture” posts.
Curated.
When I first read it a few years ago, this blogpost quickly became foundational to how I think about culture. I recently pinged Malcolm about crossposting it because I thought it was essential to have on the Communication Cultures tag.
First, I think “Tell Culture” is pretty good when done right, and I think Malcolm correctly identified some important failure modes it was likely to fall into. I’m not 100% sure whether “Reveal Culture” is quite the platonic ideal of the culture, but I do think it’s a net-improvement. And fleshing out the gears has solidified my distinctions between Guess, Ask and other variant cultures that play with similar clusters of norm.
I think my only serious criticism of “Reveal Culture” is that the name is a bit more clunky. I think it’s a slight improvement of “Tell” because it avoids the impulse to think “Tell culture means I’m allowed to tell people what to do”. But, it’s two syllables long, and it’s not quite intuitive the way “Interrupt Culture” is.
Culture In General
I think more importantly, this post lays out some key mechanics of “what is necessary to have a culture.” And this has shaped all my thinking since about various types of cultures I’ve wanted to build or understand. The post was a key piece of my “Rationalist Culture Lit Review” in The Real Hufflepuff Sequence Was The Posts We Made Along The Way, because it helped me make sense of all the other “communication culture” posts.