How work culture can empower or undermine your professional life
And why paying attention to this is an important as working hard
I’m part of a couple of marketing communities that are actually useful, and are great places to see what fellow marketers are up to.
Something I’ve observed with them is that almost every month, there is a rant by a marketer who has joined a new company and is surprised at how the same skills and experience that made them so successful elsewhere seem to have simply stopped working.
I have been in this same situation several times, and I thought I should try to wonder aloud about why this happens so often.
There could be several reasons why a killer marketing talent with a hunger to learn and perform fails. I’ll give you two, just as examples. Perhaps the person is simply not skilled or motivated enough. But no one like that is hanging around marketing communities, no? Maybe they are coming from a larger company to a startup, in which case the above is possible because of the time it takes to relearn how to work at a 0 to 1 situation.
But if things like these are not the issues, then I have found that there is usually only one culprit: Culture.
It took me a while to understand the term, so bear with me while I tell you what it means in this context. Forbes magazine defines workplace culture as "The shared values, belief systems, attitudes, and the set of assumptions that people in a workplace share."
I’ll make it simpler: Culture at a particular company is its way and means of operating, executing, and working together. And the together is important.
I’ve learnt that there are only two types of work cultures. A good, healthy culture is high-trust, and empowers employees, making them better at their roles. A bad culture is low-trust and political, where every employee seems to be looking over their shoulders, and that necessarily brings down the performance of everyone in the company.
And no, in my experience, you can’t change the culture once it is past a point of critical mass, you can only slightly wrestle with it.
And this is why sometimes great operators find themselves stuck, unable to manoeuvre around in their quagmire of a workplace even though they have all the skills and the motivation.
Why is this important as a professional to understand and assimilate?
Because we tend to blame ourselves completely for our failures, and wonder for years afterwards what we could have done better.
Except we couldn’t have done anything. In certain cultures, you will just never be set up to succeed.
This doesn’t mean that we absolve ourselves for our failures in stepping up or taking responsibility, but that we also think about why we failed to step up. Were we being encouraged to do so? Would we have been celebrated for taking a risk? Would an out-of-the-box idea have been accepted and discussed? If not, you know the kind of culture you were in.
And so this is also something you have to consider when joining an organisation. What is their culture? Is it healthy? Are people happy to be working hard? Will there be support for me, both for when I do well, and for when I don’t? A great culture will multiply your potential, a not-so-great one will bring you down, destroying your self belief and mental health in the process. And no, one good boss does not a good culture make.
"We don't rise to the level of our expectations, we fall to the level of our training," wrote the Greek poet Archilochus.
Similarly, we don’t rise to the level of our potential, but to the level of our culture. Understand this, and choose accordingly.
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