I’m an organizational culture and change management professional looking to make the transition from industrial to technology orgs. If you would pick one big internal culture challenge that you could fix in Tech, what would it be? Thanks in advance for your insights.
How’d you get into org culture and change management work? Academic training?
Kind of stumbled into it from brand and marcomm to culture and internal Comms. Have had a few roles leading culture and engagement efforts combined with Lean Six Sigma.
What culture challenge would you consider top of your “ripe for a fix” list at Tableau?
What company do you work for?
GE
I know AMZN has its LPs which are very ingrained in the org. What would you change in org culture? Anything?
Internal competition. I'm not referring to the fact that some are just more skilled than others. I'm talking about lots of people feeling the need to prove they're smarter, better, and worth more than others. It's an entitlement problem that makes them behave like jerks. It's not everywhere and not everyone, but when it happens it's a major distraction and stress factor. People get butthurt about their code, won't listen to reason, or will not even try to understand a differing side. They want to be one who enlightens all yet they don't seek enlightenment themselves.
This. It prevents so many talented folks (and intelligence/value etc isn’t binary like most folks would like to think) from working with each other.
Seconding this. It’s probably the core, “root cause” of most difficulties and misery in tech companies. I’m not sure how effective holacracies are at solving it, but in addition to the challenges for engineers, you see the same behavior in other disciplines. Like, product managers desperate for a promotion at Amazon are really painful.
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This is great feedback. Thank you!
Identifying the “agreeable takers” in an org who are great at managing up but make their teams miserable. (See Adam Grant’s framework)
I remember reading about givers and takers before, but I had to look it up to refresh my memory. I liked that behavioral interview question he suggests: “Tell me about 4 people whose careers you’ve improved.” Takers talk about people up the chain.
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I feel like the feeling of forced progressiveness is the biggest issue at Google right now. Everything is about diversity and unbiasing things, as opposed to building cool things. Don't get me wrong, I think it's way better for the world for tech oligarchies to be super lefty progressive than for them to be completely amoral free market entities like the American banks are -- I just feel the pendulum has swung pretty hard to the left recently.
Where does Facebook fall on that spectrum? I'd put them on the right since they have close to zero regulation to follow.