Is it a great company culture or just a collection of great talent?

Lots and lots of folks like to push 'culture' as the primary driver of organizational success. I have written and presented pretty extensively on why I think that's wrong. Check any of my 'Rock-Paper-Scissors' posts in case you are interested.

One of the many reasons I get a little skeptical about this 'cult of culture' is that by its very nature culture is hard to define, to measure, and hard to draw any kind of a direct (or even a dotted) line from culture to actual results. I'm not saying it's impossible, but just really, really, tough.

But another reason why culture gets too much emphasis is how easy it can be to confuse a great culture with what is really just a collection of great talent. This challenge was discussed, I think very effectively, on of all things an NBA podcast I was listening to recently, by ESPN writer Kevin Arnovitz on the July 6 episode of The Lowe Post Podcast.  Lowe and Arnovitz were discussing the recent decision by NBA star Kevin Durant to leave the Oklahoma City Thunder and join the Golden State Warriors - a team famous for their 'culture'.

Here's Arnovitz' observations on culture v. talent, then some comments from me after the quotes:

On an NBA team is culture permanent? Or is it really just transient? Is it this fancy word people like us to describe what is really just a concentration of good talent, but it seems like culture? But actually what it is is just really good basketball players there? Which is why they (the Warriors) win, it's not because they have any special connection to the community of San Francisco like people like to talk about. 

Steve here - I think these observations are spot on, especially in a business setting like an NBA team where individual talent and excellence plays such a critical role in organizational success. Said a little differently, it is almost impossible to achieve the highest level of team success in the NBA without at least one superstar player, and one or two other All-star caliber players. You simply can't win without that talent level no matter how fantastic your team's culture may be.

And I know that I get a fair bit of heat from folks for trying to make these kinds of HR/talent points using sports analogies, as some folks think that an NBA team and its dynamics offer little to us to learn from, back here in the real world. But I continue to think that they are valid ones to make, especially as more and more organizations and work teams have to rely on ideas, innovation, creativity, and quite simply talent, in order to succeed in a hyper-fast, hyper-competitive world.

Ask yourself some of the questions about your organization that Arnovitz hints at.

What would really drive increased performance at your shop? More talented people? Or a somehow 'better' culture?

Which one of those levers is easier for you to influence? To measure? To replicate?

This isn't about me trying to convince you that culture = bad and talent = good.

It's about making sure we keep both in mind, (along with Strategy, if we really want to get back to my Rock-Paper-Scissors take).

When you put 4 of the best 10 or 12 best basketball players in the world on the same team you are going to win A LOT of games. If at the same time you have a great culture, you may win one two extra games.

But the great culture without the great players? Good luck in the draft lottery next year.

Have a great week!  

Revisited: Talent vs. Culture in Hiring Philosophy

Let me be very, vet clear about this: If you only have time for one podcast in your life that podcast should be the HR Happy Hour Show. We are closing in fast on 250 shows in the HR Happy Hour archive, and Trish McFarlane and I have lots more great stuff to come this year and beyond.

 But if you are like me (a little bit of a podcast nerd, admittedly), you like to mix up your podcast diet and sprinkle in some other choices. For me, one of the podcasts I almost always catch is the Bill Simmons podcast, which is probably 85% about sports, but mixes in enough other topics (pop culture, politics, tech and business), to make it a good listen even if you are not a massive sports fan.

Recently, Simmons did a show with Silicon Valley investor Chris Sacca, most well known for being an early investor and advisor to companies like Twitter and Uber. Prior to his pivot to investing in startups, Sacca was a relatively early employee of Google, (from about 2003 - 2007), helping the search giant build out its data center infrastructure. 

In the podcast Sacca talks about life at Google and what makes Google so different as a company and a place to work. The most interesting part of the discussion starts at about the 13:30 mark, where Sacce talks about the hiring philosophy at Google, and why that was imporant. Have a listen, then some quick comments from me.

In case you didn't catch the key comment, I will repeat it here.

Sacca: 'One of the things they (Google) did that is kind of like an NBA team, is that they hired just for sheer capability, not necessarily for culture fit. And so they were just like 'If we get the smartest, most driven, ambitious people in the world all to work here and we will see what happens. 

And so other teams were like 'Well, I don't know if this guy is going to work well with this other guy, you know a lot of raw talent but, if you look at Eric Schmidt and Larry and Sergey the owners and general managers, they said 'Let's just get the smartest people in the world here and then see what happens.'

In the podcast Sacca goes on a little more about what the focus on talent and raw capability above this idea of 'fit' meant for Google, but I think you can get the idea from the excerpt above.

Looking back through all the posts I have done on this topic over the years, I would say at least philosophically that I come down way towards the Google/Sacca point of view on this. I think raw talent, the ability to assemble enough of it at one time and in one place will have the most significant impact on organizational success, certainly when a company is smaller and growing.

Focusing solely on talent and ability may result in hiring a few bad apples, and Sacca admits as much in the podcast, but in the end whether its the NBA or a tech company, the team with the best talent almost always wins.

Have a great week, and make sure you check out the HR Happy Hour Show too!

HRE Column: Rethinking Culture and Strategy

Here is my semi-frequent reminder and pointer for blog readers that I also write a monthly column at Human Resource Executive Online called Inside HR Tech and that archives of which can be found here.

As usual, the Inside HR Tech column is about, well, HR Tech, (sort of like I used to write about all the time on this blog), and it was inspired by a recent HR Happy Hour Show that Trish McFarlane and I did with Anthony Abbatiello from Deloitte, and that focused (primarlily) on the connection between organizational culture and business strategy. This was a great conversation, and I encourage you check it out.

On the show, Anthony also talked about a new software product from Deloitte called CulturePath, designed to help organizations not only understand and assess their culture, but to also help HR and business leaders with the critical task of aligning culture with business strategy. Since I thought the show was so interesting, and the product incredibly interesting, it was the topic of my latest column for HR Executive.

Here is an excerpt from the HRE column, 'Rethinking Culture and Strategy': 

From HR Executive...

The "Culture is King" folks sometimes would make us think that a "fun" or "flexible" or "inclusive" culture (or whatever other adjective you prefer that connotes some kind of healthy or desirable culture) is all, or at least nearly all, any organization needs for success.

This point of view conveniently ignores the idea that, no matter how much free food, foosball tables and flexible-work arrangements an organization has, if they don't have a compelling product or service that meets a true market need, and have recruited and retained the "right" set of talented people to execute on the strategic plans, then all the great organizational culture in the world will still result in failure.

Plus, it ignores the fact that, for just about every successful organization, the business strategy was formulated first, and then the culture developed around that strategy and through the organization's people.

So what I am really saying is that culture can't  -- and doesn't -- exist in some kind of vacuum. It has to co-exist and be in alignment with the organization's strategy and resonate with the actual people who inform the culture and execute the strategy.

My belief that we can't consider culture alone when thinking about what makes an organization successful is probably why I am really impressed with a new technology solution I have recently become familiar with: CulturePath, from the consultancy and advisory firm Deloitte. This solution represents an interesting and important evolution in how we think about culture, strategy and people in the organization.

The CulturePath solution surveys employees in the organization and then analyzes the aggregated data to measure the organization's cultural attributes across a spectrum of core indices such as collective focus, external orientation, and change and innovation, as well as differentiating indices such as courage, commitment and shared beliefs. The goal is to assess how well the attitudes and behaviors of employees align with, and support, the desired business strategy...

Read the rest at HR Executive... 

Good stuff, right? Darn right it is. Ok, just humor me...  And be sure to check out the HR Happy Hour Show where Anthony Abbatiello from Deloitte talks culture, strategy, and technology.

If you liked the piece you can sign up over at HRE to get the Inside HR Tech Column emailed to you each month. There is no cost to subscribe, in fact, I may even come over and take your dog out for a walk or dig your car out of the snow if you do sign up for the monthly email.

Have a great day and rest of the week!

FOLLOW-UP: Culture Can't Be Wrong

I was doing some spring cleaning this past weekend, (on a mid-May day that was so cold it hardly felt like Spring), and discovered in a not-touched-in-a-long-time pile of books not only a rare first edition print copy of original The 8 Man Rotation book on Sports and HR, but also one of my favorites of the last few years, Chuck Klosterman's excellent book titled 'IV: A Decade of Curious People and Dangerous Ideas'. 

On Saturday evening when resting up from my busy day of charitable volunteer work, rescuing stray animals, and helping little old ladies cross the road, I decided to thumb through and re-read some of the Klosterman book, as it is a collection of essays, it is kind of easy to simply jump in at any part that seems interesting. As he is a pop culture observer and critic, many of the essays are about, well, pop culture, and when re-reading an essay titled 'Cultural Betrayal', I had two thoughts. One, was I really get this idea and it makes sense. And the second -  I am pretty sure I blogged about this essay at some point. The fact that I had dog-eared the page and underlined a couple of sentences in the piece was another giveaway.

So I checked the blog archives and sure enough I did riff on the'Cultural Betrayal' essay with a blog post titled after a concept from the piece, 'Culture Can't Be Wrong', which ran back in February 2010. It was a short piece about cultural elitism, mainly framed through this idea, (which was kind of common in our little HR space back in 2010): that somehow the folks that were actively blogging, tweeting, patting each other on the back for how 'with it' we all liked to think we were somehow 'better' than the ignorant or lazy folks that were not on the bandwagon with us. There is also a solid take on Farmville.

The blog post from 2010 also got several really interesting and well-thought out comments, (which on this blog anyway almost never happens anymore, despite there being at least 4x or 5x more readers today than there was in 2010. That is a topic for another day.).

So for this mid-May day in 2014 I am going to run the piece again, mainly because it is interesting to me to see what we were talking about almost four-and-a-half years ago, and two, since despite a couple of the specific references being a little dated, I think the main points still hold up. Here is the full post from 2010:

Culture Can't Be Wrong - February 26, 2010

On the way to an event last week I read Chuck Klosterman's excellent book titled 'IV: A Decade of Curious People and Dangerous Ideas'. 

One of the articles 'Cultural Betrayal', contained the observation 'Culture can't be wrong'. The main point of the piece is the idea that if 25 Million people watch 'American Idol' each week, and you can't see the point and despise the show, that the 25 Million people are not 'wrong'. You may not share their tastes or affinity for pop singing, or karaoke-bar style performances, but in a way you are the one that is 'wrong'.

What does all this have to do with technology, workforce, or anything remotely near what we typically cover on this site?

Not much probably, but let me take a crack at what I see as the connection, a take on technology and perhaps even social media elitism. At times in the new media echo chamber there is a kind of self and mutual reverential society happening.  Like we are all in some cool, elite clique and boy the folks that have not jumped on board, or don't 'get it' are somehow not in our cool kids group.

So here is my take:

You are not 'better' or smarter than your buddy who has never heard of Twitter while you are sitting feeling cool about hitting the 1,000, 2,000 or whatever follower mark that is currently consuming your thoughts.

You are not of more value to society simply because you refuse to play 'Farmville' on Facebook. Something like 60 million people play Farmville.  Some of those people are your friends, co-workers, nurses, firefighters, teachers, and coaches.  60 million people!

How many of your suppliers, customers, and shareholders are in that group? How many of the people that can directly and impactfully influence your organization's success are in a group that participates in a game that you may have shown public disdain for?

Failing to understand that group shows a marked lack of awareness and appreciation for what is actually happening in the world. Ignoring that group will result in missed opportunity.  Insulting that group (and you know some of you do) could be a disastrous error.

Stop acting like a smart-aleck social media smartypants.  Don't be an elitist. Don't be that person.  Don't.

Culture can't be wrong.

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What did you think? Does this still apply in 2014? Are we still caught up in our little echo chamber? 

Have a great week!

REPRISE: On the display of the spoils of victory

Note: The blog is taking some well-deserved rest for the next two weeks (that is code for I am pretty much out of decent ideas, and I doubt most folks are spending their holidays reading blogs anyway), and will be re-running some of best, or at least most interesting posts from 2013. Maybe you missed these the first time around or maybe you didn't really miss them, but either way they are presented for your consideration. Thanks to everyone who stopped by in 2013!

Spending a couple of hours combing through the 2013 archives to find the ones to re-run these last two weeks made something incredibly clear to me - I was obsessed with robots. So for the last REPRISE post I had to find something that was not about automation or scary robots or our increasingly frightening future. The below post was one that I liked a lot, and it was NOT ABOUT ROBOTS. This was a look at where and how we choose to display things like trophies or awards says about us, our workplaces, and what we value. The piece originally ran in September 2013.

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On the display of the spolis of victory

Last night I attended the back to school open house and curriculum review event held at the middle school that my son attends. It was altogether an interesting and well-run event, the school is one of the finest in all of New York State, the teachers were energetic and engaged, and the administrators are committed to high academic standards and to creating an environment of respect, inclusion, and student success.

Actually in the several years my son has attended schools in this district I have been continually impressed with the quality of instruction and the emphasis on achievement.  And by that I mean academic achievement. Sure, the school has all the requisite sports teams that most other schools do, but I never get the feeling that the sports teams are all that important, and certainly not nearly as important to the overall school and local community as they can be in other parts of the country.

The tour around the school progressed and at a point late in the program we reached a large, windowless  classroom located sort of in the way, way back of the school that is the home to for lack of a better term, the 'gifted' or 'extra special' classes. You know the kinds of classes where students that are doing well in their regular courses get to extend and stretch into new and different kinds of assignments and activities. Some of the projects the kids take on involve exploring in greater detail aspects of their more formal course work, while others are completely new endeavors like movie making or creating school and community service projects.

One of the activities associated with this 'extra' instruction class is the classic Academic Challenge Competition, that I remember from back in the day as the 'College Bowl'.  You know, this was the contest that pits teams of students against other schools in a Jeopardy! like setting to see which schools team has the most, (and fastest), knowledge of math, science, history, geography, and so on. As the teacher was describing the Academic Challenge team and telling us parents about how the team competes in various competitions, she remarked how our school's team had been pretty successful over the years, winning or placing in many top-level competitions. 

As evidence of this success, she pointed to a large shelf on one side of the long room that was the home of two or three rows of similarly sized and shaped trophies, and said something like 'And you can see a few of the trophies our teams have won over the years over there."

I thought, as I looked at the dozen or so trophies that were won for academic successes and were being kept in a room way in the far back corner of the school, that it was kind of funny that even in a school not known for and all that focused on sports that the similar prizes won for winning the odd volleyball or lacrosse or soccer title over the years were prominently displayed in a custom and large glass covered trophy case in the school's lobby, within the sight lines of everyone entering the school.

I suppose it matters, at least some, how we present, display, and commemorate our successes. 

Note: That is it for REPRISE WEEK(s), thanks for checking out some of these older posts and I will be back with fresh, juicy content next week. I hope you have a fantastic 2014!