What's your culture really like? Ask the new guy from out of town

Company Culture, Employer Brand, Employer Value Proposition - there's been much written and spoken about these ideas and concepts in the last few years and for the most part a general acceptance has emerged that organizational leaders need to be very aware of internal culture, and its effects on morale, engagement, productivity and performance.

While most HR and Talent pros 'get' that culture is important, and some even taking more proactive steps to promote their unique culture (mostly it seems through enhanced 'cultural fit' recruiting practices), there also seems to be quite a bit less written about revealing or unraveling the existing company culture.Where are the donuts?

If you work in any type of organization today you certainly have your own opinion of 'What's it like to work here?', but I'd imagine most of us don't go around the office asking our colleagues for their opinion of 'What's it like to work here?'

Aside from the annual employee survey where these kinds of questions are raised and the answers to them aggregated and placed in colorful bar graphs and pie charts, (Is there anything better than a pie chart?. I think not.), we can pretty easily get tricked into remaining comfortable that our personal view of 'What's it like to work here' is kind of the universal view of the place.

But a more revealing (and hopefully honest) assessment of a culture or an environment might come from a different source than the aggregated and homogenized survey data, or from the long-held and personal views of organization veterans. It could be that the most refreshing look at the culture of a place comes from its newest members, and in particular, ones that by virtue of their past upbringing and history, would not have many deeply-held biases that might influence their opinion.

Case in point - the impressions on American culture from a new visitor, the NBA's Alexey Shved from Russia, in his rookie season playing for the Minnesota Timberwolves, and enjoying his first extended period living and working in the USA.  

Hey Alexey, what's it like in America?

"Well, everybody loves donuts here, and I eat them too. People mostly drink beer and not stronger drinks, exactly like in The Simpsons.”

Nice. American culture through the lens of a recent entrant, with his primary frame of reference being the Simpsons cartoon. 

It's kind of amusing but also serves as a bit of a reminder that culture and the perception of a culture is a highly personal thing. And it also reinforces the point that no matter how much or how hard we try to shape the culture, (or at least the perceptions of a culture), people are going to have their own take on your place, your people, your vibe - you get the idea.

Our pal Alexey's take about donuts and beer, while pretty funny, should also be a kind of wake-up call to those of us charged or interested in shaping, communicating, and propagating something as amorphous as 'culture'.

No matter how hard you try, how slick your marketing campaigns are, and how much 'fit' drives your hiring, firing, and rewards processes - there is probably a new guy from out of town who looks around and sees donuts and beer.

Playing offense on social media

Some time back the great Paul Hebert wrote one of the best pieces in the last few years over on Fistful of Talent, titled, HR Plays Too Much Defense.  You should stop what you are doing and read it, or re-read it as the case may be, then come back for a recent and I think perfect example of Paul's ideas played out in the corporate social media space. I'll wait.

Ok, back? I told you Paul's piece was money.

So here's my example of playing offense, or at least not sitting back and playing defense, from one of those classic 'Love them or hate them' organizations, Goldman Sachs.

Of course you'll remember the recent resignation flame-out from former Goldman Sachs employee Greg Smith, who took to the New York Times op-ed page to trash Goldman's culture, draw attention to their bad treatment of clients and customers, and essentially portray the firm as a horrible, horrible place to work, one where a high-minded and formerly optimistic, but now jaded person like himself could no longer be comfortable with.

Well last week Smith sat down with the Times once again, to talk about his soon to be released tell-all memoir 'Why I Left Goldman Sachs'.  Turns out that according to the piece in Times last week, the 'tell-all' doesn't really have that much to say, in fact the headline of the piece, 'A Tell-All on Goldman Has Little Worth Telling', paints Smith equal parts greedy, out-of-touch, and disappointed with his personal compensation, as some kind of crusader to protect customers and reveal deficiencies in Goldman's culture.

Goldman, upon seeing the latest Times' piece, issued the below tweet from their official Twitter account:

For the @nytimes latest take on the GS VP they made famous, click here: link.gs.com/r4xW

— Goldman Sachs (@GoldmanSachs) October 19, 2012

Man, that's a burn.  At least from Goldman's point of view, the Times' provided the initial platform for Smith's enmity and accusations, and now after some time and more details are revealed by Smith via his memoir, essentially has to admit there really isn't much there there. Goldman's swipe at the Times is, at least to my view, a great example of taking the offense, in a way that is snarky but still measured, and one that certainly seems to be in line with their reputation and culture.

Let me be clear about one thing, I am not an apologist for Goldman at all, and their role in the financial crisis of 2008-2009 has been pretty well documented. Next year a former Goldman trader will be tried for civil fraud for his role in the subprime mortgage scandals. Goldman's hands are not at all clean.

But that makes their little dig at the Times even more refreshing I think.  It is easy, especially when you might not have the most respected brand, to sit back, to try not to offend, to play by a really restrictive set of rules, but like Paul pointed out in the FOT piece, playing defense all the time is playing not to lose.

Do you want to play to win, whether it is in HR, marketing, recruiting, or social?

Then you have to score some points.

And the Goldman example above reminds us even the 'bad' guys can get over sometimes as well.

'We just pulled the Shuttle through Los Angeles'

I guarantee this is the coolest thing you will see this week.

Check the video embedded below, (email and RSS subscribers will have to click through), describing the final leg of the upcoming journey of retired Space Shuttle Endeavour to its new home, the California Science Center in Los Angeles, as part of NASA's winding down of the long time shuttle program. 

I told you that was pretty cool, right?

And what makes it so cool from a marketing/branding perspective, is that the (essentially) stock Toyota Tundra pickup truck will tow the massive payload, in front of an enormous audience, and in a manner that is shockingly more relatable than just about every other advertisement you'll see for similar trucks.

Most truck marketing and advertising consists of showing the trucks doing incredible, trained professional driver, closed course, dramatization-don't-try-this-at-home stunts that might make for fun TV commercials but don't do anything to actually communicate to the average user the real capability and practicality of the vehicle. And I get that if all ads simply showed pedestrian and utilitarian applications, consumers would get bored, but does a dramatization of a truck launching from a ski jump and barreling down the side of a snowy mountain convince anyone it is the right vehicle for picking up mulch at the Home Depot?

A write up of the Tundra-Endeavour project on the Graphicology blog says it better than I can:

The Shuttle Shuttle is a once in a lifetime event and Toyota is taking advantage of it in a way that isn't terribly obvious (ie: it doesn't commercialize the experience too much). They could single-handedly put an end to an entire genre of television truck demos. If Chevy or Ford shows an ad of their trucks pulling something heavy, all Toyota has to do is point to this. "We just pulled The Shuttle through Los Angeles." Way, way more dramatic and convincing than anything the other manufacturers could tow behind their rigs. Sure, there is a special setup and trailer that is being pulled which makes the whole thing feasible, but that's not something the public will focus on. All they will see is a Toyota pulling a Space Shuttle. And for a brand, you couldn't make this up.

Really cool story and cooler message. You can talk about doing incredible things. You can create some kind of faux reality where amazing things happen, (think every beer commercial you have ever seen during the Super Bowl broadcast), or you can actually do incredible things, and in a way that are understandable and relatable to your audience.

What do you think people will remember?

No, girls allowed

Super quick observation today, I just saw an old-fashioned, print, and on the back cover of a Free weekly lifestyle-type tabloid paper, the kind you pick up while waiting for you oil to be changed or hanging around at the Dunkin' Donuts employer ad that I wanted to share, as it sends out one of the most solid, Employer Branding, Employer Value Proposition (EVP) messages I've seen lately.

Here is a (lousy) image of the ad, then comments after the (metaphorical) jump:

The ad is for a local auto dealership group, Van Bortel, that obviously has committed to and attempted to communicate that they have a welcoming and inclusive workplace, one that probably runs against the tide of typical auto dealerships, (or at least what we think of auto dealerships).

What I like about the ad, aside from the message itself, is it's simplicity. No big complicated marketing spin, no slickly composed background or graphic elements, actual real people in a kind of hastily put together group pose - but adding it all up it makes for a powerful message.

We're different here. This might be a place you want to consider as a female who might typically see the auto industry as unavailable or simply 'not right' for you. Take a look and you'll can see we're not just 'claiming' to be inclusive, just look at all these people, and look at the job titles, ranging from entry level-type roles, all the way up the management chain.

A really cool, low-budget, no way an expensive brarding company came up with this, but outstanding nonetheless.

P.S. - I will leave it to my friend Meredith Soleau to do two things after checking out this post. One, to let me know if gender diversity is truly an issue in the world of auto dealerships; and two, let me know of what she thinks of a potential competitor posting a whole bunch of employee names and titles in a newspaper!

The Best Worst Recruiting Video (so far)

This funny recruiting video from Twitter was posted on YouTube on Friday, and made the rounds pretty quickly across the web over the weekend, so chances are you may have seen it already. The embed is below in case you missed it, or wanted to have a second look, (email and RSS subscribers will need to click through).

The YouTube post on Twitter's official channel was accompanied by this tweet-like update:

#hackweek project: make the best/worst recruiting video of all time. Done.
To find out more about jobs at Twitter visit: http://www.twitter.com/jobs or @jointheflock

So while the video itself looks to have been made in response to a hack week challenge to intentionally create the worst recruiting video possible, it is so bad, cheesy, and done with such low production values that I think it ends up actually being a pretty effective effort nonetheless. 

A couple of things stand out in the video, chief among them the fact that just by devoting one of their hackweek challenges to making a recruiting video, Twitter is sending a subtle message that is actually taking recruiting seriously and its talent needs are top of mind. Typically these kinds of challenges focus on products, features, or other kinds of explorations that possibly could become products or features one day. So focusing on boring old recruiting is to me, kind of telling. Additionally, unlike more technical challenges, really anyone in the company can make a recruiting video, expanding the potential participant pool outside of just the product people and engineers.

And then there is the content of the video itself, in its attempt (mostly successful), to be 'bad', it reveals that Twitter and its employees are open to poke a little fun at themselves - even the CEO gets in on the game with a solid, deadpan performance in the piece. It clearly is real Twitter employees in the piece, not corporate talking heads, they are in their natural working environments, and while going over the top to be cheesy, if you listen to the copy you actually get a pretty simple, straightforward employer branding kind of message. Small teams, important projects, great work environment and so on. And a CEO not above helping send that message. A call to action with the web address of the career page and the recruiting Twitter account, (natch), also make the cut.

Sure, the purpose of the video was to make it bad, but in a way it kind of shows anyone interested in creating these kinds of messages that it can be really easy to overthink them, to wordsmith every line of copy, and to obsess over getting the sets, lighting, pace etc. all 'just right'. If the folks at Twitter can make a bad video still seem pretty good, then I think that suggests any of us could do the same.

What do you think? Is it really just a bad and a spoof and I am reading too much into it?