Something for Everybody

The emergent company is more like a city than an army.

Photo by Pedro Lastra on Unsplash

Quote of the Moment

Cities have the capability of providing something for everybody, only because, and only when, they are created by everybody.

| Jane Jacobs

Cities are the only human artifact that increase in productivity as they grow larger. Companies — at least so far — have not.

Jacobs could have been talking about non-linear, emergent companies, which will be created by everybody working in them. That requires the greatest transformation of work and business we have ever seen, a bigger shift than industrialization or computerization.

I am now calling this the Retransformation, and I plan a series on the theme over the next few months.

Work Culture > Company Culture

Rafat Ali on why businesses should not actively try to create company culture, a principle I support.

Rafat refers back to something he wrote in 2014:

Company culture..is a strategic function that helps keep your employees aligned with your brand, and your brand aligned with your customers … The best employees — the ones who’ll drive innovation, break barriers, and grow into a new generation of leaders — aren’t motivated by workplace comforts or feel-good HR policies. They’re motivated by the opportunity to do their best work, to understand their customers better, to discover new ways to think about markets and opportunities, to connect with their peers more effectively around their core work, and beyond work.

He then adds:

If you’re able to do that, people want to work here, not because of the patina of culture, but because of the quality of work you create.

I think Rafat is getting at the distinction I made in We Need A New Work Culture:

We need a new work culture, one that is larger than company cultures, and one that is not the product of corporate mythologizing or the propaganda of internal communications. We need a deep work culture grounded in science and centered on the welfare — financial, psychological, and physical — of working people, not a shallow culture that glorifies bronze age charismatic leadership while downplaying the strength of emergent order that arises from the messiness of social self-governance.

We need a new work culture that relies on the primal drive for autonomy and mastery in our work, the sense of belonging that comes from sharing goals and meeting them, and the impulse to gain the respect of those we respect.

Rafat equates this with Bo Burlingham's notion of 'company mojo'

The answer, I believe, has more to do with the people than with the businesses. To me, the owners and leaders of these companies stand out for being remarkably in touch with, and focused on, what most of us would probably agree are the good things in life. By that, I mean that they are very clear in their own minds about what life has to offer at its best — in terms of exciting challenges, camaraderie, compassion, hope, intimacy, community, a sense of purpose, feelings of accomplishment, and so on — and they have organized their businesses so that they and the people they work with can get it. When outsiders come in contact with such a business, they can’t help but feel the attraction. The company is cool because what’s going on inside it is good, it’s fun, it’s interesting, it’s something you want to be associated with. From that perspective, mojo is more or less the business equivalent of charisma. Leaders with charisma have a quality that makes people want to follow them. Companies with mojo have a quality that makes people want to be part of them.

We need a new work culture that relies on the primal drive for autonomy and mastery in our work, the sense of belonging that comes from sharing goals and meeting them, and the impulse to gain the respect of those we respect.

A lot of what motivates the concept of ‘building culture’ is wrongheaded, or maybe wronghearted is a better way to put it.

Deep work culture transcends the quarterly business goals, the strategic KPIs that the C suite has laid out to meet the dream of an unstoppable business model, and the supposedly unique corporate values created by a consulting firm in a three-day offsite with the senior executives and the communications department.

Deep work culture is based on the connection between each contributor and their desire to do good work, in a company organized to help them do so.

What Comes After Teams? Unteams.

Eric McNulty led me to Do We Still Need Teams? by Constance Noonan Hadley and Mark Mortensen. Hadley has frequently shown up in my work futures research but I had missed this article, somehow.

In their research, they have found that the costs associated with building and maintaining white-collar teams may be too high relative to their results. Maybe we need something else. Here’s their pitch:

We love teams. We really do. Between the two of us, we’ve spent more than 40 years studying, teaching about, and coaching teams in organizations — which is why we’re surprised to find ourselves writing an article in which we question whether teams are as practical or as necessary to knowledge work as they once were.

They cite their late mentor, J. Richard Hackman, who said in an interview,

Research consistently shows that teams underperform, despite all the extra resources they have. That’s because problems with coordination and motivation typically chip away at the benefits of collaboration.