I thought it offered a practical perspective on creating company culture by focusing on embodying the values you’d like to see instead of just preaching them and hoping others embody them.
That sounds like an advice on parenting. What your kids will do, is what they see you doing. Actually no, that would be too easy—your kids will instead do a more stupid version of what they see you doing. Like, you use a swear word once in a month, but then they will keep using it every five minutes.
And, I don’t know, maybe this is where the (steelman of) preaching is useful; to correct the exaggerations. Like, if you swear once in a while, you will probably fail to convince your kids that they should never do that; copying is a strong instinct. But if you tell them “okay kids, polite people shouldn’t be doing this, and yes I do it sometimes, but please notice that it happens only on some days, not repeatedly, and not in front of your grandparents or teachers—could you please follow the same rules?” then maybe at some age this would work. At least it does not involve denying the reality.
And maybe the manager could say something like “we said that we value X, and yes, we had this one project that was quite anti-X, but please notice that most of our projects are actually quite X, this one was an exception, and we will try having fewer of that in the future”. Possibly with a discussion on why that one specific project ended up anti-X, and what we could do to prevent that from happening in the future.
Managers keep trying to sculpt a company culture, but in reality managers have limited control over the culture. Company culture is more a thing that happens and evolves, and you as an individual can only do so much to influence it this way or that way.
Intentionally influencing other people is a skill I lack, so I can only guess here. It seems to me that although no manager actually has the whole company perfectly under control, there are still some more specific failure modes that are quite common:
Some people are obvious bullshitters, and if you are familiar with this type, you just won’t take any of their words seriously. Their lips just produce random syllables that are supposed to increase your productivity, or maybe just signal to their boss that they are working hard to increase your productivity, but the actual meaning of the words is completely divorced from reality. (For example, the managers who regularly give company speeches on the importance of “agile development”, and yet it is obvious that they intend to keep all 666 layers of management, and plan everything 5 years ahead… but now you will have Jira and daily meetings, in addition to all the usual meetings, so at least that will be different.)
Some people seem to actually mean it, but they fail to realize that incentives matter, or that in order to achieve X you actually need to do some Y first, as if the mere act of stating your goal could magically make it true. (For example, the managers who keep talking about how work-life balance is important, and yet all their teams are understaffed, and they keep starting new projects without cancelling the existing ones or hiring more people. Or the managers who tell you to give honest estimates how long something will take, but they consistently punish employees who say that something will take a lot of time, even if they turn out to be right, and reward employees who give short estimates, even if they fail to deliver the expected quality.) Here I am sometimes not sure what is actual incompetence, and what just strategical pretense.
I may be unfair, but the older I get, the more I assume that most dysfunctions at workplace are there by design, not by accident. Not necessarily for the good of the company, but rather for personal benefit of some of its managers, like making their job more convenient, or getting a bonus for bringing short-term profit (that will lead to long-term loss, but someone else will be blamed for that).
That sounds like an advice on parenting. What your kids will do, is what they see you doing. Actually no, that would be too easy—your kids will instead do a more stupid version of what they see you doing. Like, you use a swear word once in a month, but then they will keep using it every five minutes.
And, I don’t know, maybe this is where the (steelman of) preaching is useful; to correct the exaggerations. Like, if you swear once in a while, you will probably fail to convince your kids that they should never do that; copying is a strong instinct. But if you tell them “okay kids, polite people shouldn’t be doing this, and yes I do it sometimes, but please notice that it happens only on some days, not repeatedly, and not in front of your grandparents or teachers—could you please follow the same rules?” then maybe at some age this would work. At least it does not involve denying the reality.
And maybe the manager could say something like “we said that we value X, and yes, we had this one project that was quite anti-X, but please notice that most of our projects are actually quite X, this one was an exception, and we will try having fewer of that in the future”. Possibly with a discussion on why that one specific project ended up anti-X, and what we could do to prevent that from happening in the future.
Intentionally influencing other people is a skill I lack, so I can only guess here. It seems to me that although no manager actually has the whole company perfectly under control, there are still some more specific failure modes that are quite common:
Some people are obvious bullshitters, and if you are familiar with this type, you just won’t take any of their words seriously. Their lips just produce random syllables that are supposed to increase your productivity, or maybe just signal to their boss that they are working hard to increase your productivity, but the actual meaning of the words is completely divorced from reality. (For example, the managers who regularly give company speeches on the importance of “agile development”, and yet it is obvious that they intend to keep all 666 layers of management, and plan everything 5 years ahead… but now you will have Jira and daily meetings, in addition to all the usual meetings, so at least that will be different.)
Some people seem to actually mean it, but they fail to realize that incentives matter, or that in order to achieve X you actually need to do some Y first, as if the mere act of stating your goal could magically make it true. (For example, the managers who keep talking about how work-life balance is important, and yet all their teams are understaffed, and they keep starting new projects without cancelling the existing ones or hiring more people. Or the managers who tell you to give honest estimates how long something will take, but they consistently punish employees who say that something will take a lot of time, even if they turn out to be right, and reward employees who give short estimates, even if they fail to deliver the expected quality.) Here I am sometimes not sure what is actual incompetence, and what just strategical pretense.
I may be unfair, but the older I get, the more I assume that most dysfunctions at workplace are there by design, not by accident. Not necessarily for the good of the company, but rather for personal benefit of some of its managers, like making their job more convenient, or getting a bonus for bringing short-term profit (that will lead to long-term loss, but someone else will be blamed for that).