Establishing company's culture requires balancing aspirational values with actionable behaviors.
Principles serve as ethical absolutes, while values evolve to align with changing priorities.
Incorporating implicit values like creativity and curiosity drives innovation and organizational adaptability.
Deep dives
Urgency and Business Model Alignment
Urgency is a crucial aspect in decision-making within the business model, ensuring that decisions are made deliberately rather than hastily, considering long-term success over quick fixes. This emphasis indicates a focus on moving decisively, even in ambiguous circumstances, while understanding that urgency should not ignore the necessity for thorough analysis. Balancing decisiveness with thoughtful consideration reflects the culture's commitment to timely yet well-considered actions.
Principles versus Values
Principles, such as honesty, integrity, and decency, are deemed as absolutes that should guide actions consistently, regardless of circumstances, fostering an unwavering ethical foundation. In contrast, values reflect relative importance and can evolve over time to align with changing aspirations and priorities. The distinction between principles and values underscores the significance of upholding timeless ethical standards alongside adaptable cultural values that support growth and adaptation.
Navigating Culture and Values
Establishing a company's culture and values requires a delicate balance between setting aspirational values and aligning them with actionable behaviors. The interaction between culture and values influences employee behavior and decision-making, emphasizing the importance of fostering an environment where shared values are lived and reinforced. Integrating values into everyday practices and decision frameworks ensures that they are more than just words on a wall, driving authentic cultural alignment.
Creativity, Curiosity, and Courage
Incorporating values like creativity, curiosity, and courage can enhance the cultural fabric by encouraging innovation, continuous learning, and risk-taking. These unspoken yet lived values play a crucial role in inspiring employees to push boundaries, experiment with new ideas, and embrace challenges. Recognizing and formalizing these implicit values can further enrich the organizational ethos, fostering a culture of exploration and adaptability.
Values and Cultural Change Within Organizations
The podcast delves into the importance of values within organizations and how they impact cultural change. The discussion highlights the challenges faced when aligning personal and leadership values, emphasizing the significance of explicit communication of values for decision-making and hiring processes. The narrative reflects on experiences of organizational shifts and the role of values in shaping employee engagement and organizational culture.
Balancing Values and Financial Incentives
The podcast explores the dilemma individuals face when financial rewards conflict with personal values. It discusses the complexities of prioritizing values amidst financial gains, especially in environments where wealth creation may influence ethical considerations. The conversation underscores the need for conscious decision-making and being aware of the impact of financial incentives on individual values and decision-making processes.
Oxide and Friends Twitter Space: February 21st, 2022
Engineering Culture
We’ve been holding a Twitter Space weekly on Mondays at 5p for about an hour. Even though it’s not (yet?) a feature of Twitter Spaces, we have been recording them all; here is the recording for our Twitter Space for February 21st, 2022.
Some of the topics we hit on, in the order that we hit them:
Alex Heath’s tweet on FB meeting about updated values: “meta, metamates, me”
[@4:44](https://youtu.be/w9MQJbC26h4?t=284) Can an established company “change its values” in any sense?
[@8:43](https://youtu.be/w9MQJbC26h4?t=523) Draw the owl > Twilio CEO: Yes, it was a meme, but it’s a great representation of our job. > There is no instruction book and no one is going to tell us how to do our work. > It’s now woven into our culture and used as a cheeky, but encouraging reply to > those who email colleagues at Twilio asking how to do something.
[@12:42](https://youtu.be/w9MQJbC26h4?t=762) How do you establish engineering culture?
Copy-paste values?
[@20:44](https://youtu.be/w9MQJbC26h4?t=1244) When are values set down in a company’s history?
Amazon’s brand image, expanding beyond books
Assessing values when hiring
[@27:51](https://youtu.be/w9MQJbC26h4?t=1671) Principles vs values
Principles are absolutes, cannot be taken too far
Values are about relative importance, in balance with other values
Adam: Get it right first, but it’s not a lost cause if you don’t.
Bryan: Look for value alignment in organizations you might want to join, it’s tough to change course after the fact.
Matt: generous compensation has an effect on how closely one cares to scrutinize their organization’s values ¯_(ツ)_/¯
If we got something wrong or missed something, please file a PR! Our next Twitter space will likely be on Monday at 5p Pacific Time; stay tuned to our Twitter feeds for details. We’d love to have you join us, as we always love to hear from new speakers!
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