Recently, I attended a conference on the future of higher education and, more specifically, its associated technology challenges. Philip Long, chief information officer at Yale, delivered the keynote speech on day two.
His speech was excellent – a clever, impassioned look at the perils of tenure – but one thing in particular caught my attention. Philip was talking about a job interview.
Niceties out of the way, he had started to describe Yale’s technology strategy when his interviewee (a hotshot in the enviable position of choosing as much as being chosen) politely asked him to stop. “Don’t tell me about your strategy,” she said. “Tell me about your culture... Culture eats strategy for breakfast.”
It’s a great line, and I wish I had the balls to say it in an interview (instead, like Mariah Carey, I simper up a heady mix of needy and spoiled).
Is it true?
For employees, yes, it probably is. As much as every CEO would love to believe their ‘associates’ live and breathe strategy, the truth is they don’t. It’s hot air, the annual sermon, picking up impurities as it piddles through layer after layer of management. Spring water in reverse.
But they do live and breathe your culture.
So why do we have so many job titles dedicated to strategy, and so few dedicated to culture? I can only think of one company that has a Chief Culture Officer, and I asked Google (who, um, are that one company).
Why not? In most companies culture is a function of HR, but it should be separated. The phrase ‘Human Resources’ is an oxymoron for any company serious about an empowering culture, or in any way boosting their staff. “I’m a resource? Like paper and toner?” (and don’t think calling it Human Capital is any better: the dictionary definition of ‘capital’ is “wealth in the form of money or other assets owned by a person or organization”. That’s nice like Simon Cowell).
I know that, potentially, ‘Chief Culture Officer’ has ‘Vince Vaughan’ written all over it, but I think that is entirely dependent on whether or not your company is based on: 1) Fraternity Houses; 2) Spring Break. Which, admittedly, rules out investment banking.
Making culture real
In every HP facility they have a pictorial of their company history. Proudly displayed amongst the pictures of William Hewlett and David Packard, and the mind melting increase in turnover from the 1930s to today, is a photo from a staff summer party in 1986. It shows five or so happy folk going up in a hot air balloon. On the side of the basket is a banner sporting the legend “hot air supplied by corporate”.
That picture does more to differentiate and humanise HP than all the other pictures put together. Show me fifty of these company pictorials, and that’s the one I would choose to work for (whether HP need a male Mariah is not the point here).
Will and Dave made their customs and social institutions a real focus: they’re a point of pride for the company. That’s how they got culture AND strategy to eat the competition.