Stan Slap on the Art of Building Effective Employee Cultures - Commonplace Expertise Podcast

Until this podcast the most insightful articulation of company culture I have read was The Culture Code by Daniel Coyle, still a solid read.

Stan Slap brought a new way to think about company culture for me, a few ideas I found interesting

Quotes From Podcast

• “A culture, your culture, is an independent organism living right inside the enterprise with its own purpose and all the power to make or break any management plan. Its purpose is to protect itself, not you, not the company. It will do all those things, but only if it perceives a reliable through line between what happens for the company and what happens for the culture.”
• “Cultures just hate change. That is so unfair, so pejorative to a culture. A culture doesn’t hate change. A culture is focused on understanding the known rules of survival and emotional prosperity. What does any strategic or organizational change do? It screws with the known rules of survival and emotional prosperity.”
• “[…] And this is what I’m saying in the book is it’s like you’re stepping on the gas without checking to see if there’s any fuel in the tank, because anything you want new from your culture, start doing this, stop doing that, do more of this, less of that. Anything like that requires its discretionary energy and it’s using almost all of its energy already.”

Summary

• Cultures need context, predictability, and a sense of self to function effectively.
• Introducing change to a culture requires explaining what isn’t changing as much as what is.
• Managers should set context, show a pattern, interrupt the narrative, and invite the pressure test to engage with the culture.
• Declaring company values can be dangerous if those values are not genuinely held and protected.

Cedric, has a summary of Stan Slap Under The Hood book, it’s solid summary of the book. The summary lists paths/approaches to avoid regarding culture in an organization and what to do instead.