I read a good article online about the founder’s role in setting the culture of a startup company. The article talks a lot about Facebook and Zuckerberg as an example, but I’ve seen this one first hand, and it’s been documented by other core writers about corporate culture, like Ed Schein (pp. 91 to 99 in the Corporate Culture Survival Guide). It makes sense to me that founders drive the culture, because they literally own the company. They started it. It was their idea. So if it’s successful, the company is going to generate a culture around the beliefs, assumptions, and behavior of that one or two people that founded it. They will typically be successful in attracting people to the new organization who already think and act in similar ways, thus reinforcing the culture. Those who are fundamentally opposed to it will likely leave or be forced out.
But flash forward to when the founder’s out of the picture, which is the case for many organizations obviously. The company has grown, and as it hit different stages of growth it HAD to change the culture. The growth/sales stage is different than the stage where you are setting up systems and processes to support scaling, and your culture will morph. You’ve maybe gone through a couple of CEOs (ore more) since the founder’s days. You still have a culture, but it’s different than the (now absent) founder. So what drives it now? Is the CEO (non-founder) still the driver of culture?
In most cases, the answer is yes. To be honest, this bugs me. I am a systems guy, and I think command-and-control is going by the wayside, so I’m frustrated to see that single person at the top of the hierarchy driving culture so much. I want culture to be in the hands of everyone. But there’s a lot of evidence supporting the power of the CEO to shape culture. What the CEO says matters most, their behavior is hyper-observed and hyper-analyzed. I see this happening. So why do we give this power to define culture to this single leader, or perhaps a handful of people at the top?
In short, we have to manage complexity. Culture is complex, and it is, in fact, an aggregation of words, thoughts, and actions of everyone in the organization. But as individuals, we don’t have time to analyze the collective totality of all those thoughts and actions. We need a simpler way to understand it, a proxy, so we choose the leader. We give them the power to set culture. It’s not right or wrong. It just is. The leaders’ behavior becomes shorthand for the culture. It doesn’t matter whether we like what the leader does or not, but it defines the culture because we don’t have the bandwidth to do it on our own without a clear and simple guide.
This has implications for culture change. First, for the CEOs, you really don’t have a choice but to make culture and culture shaping a large percentage of your job. Your employees are giving you that power, and you don’t really have a say in the matter. You can choose to put culture lower on your priority list, but that doesn’t remove the power they’ve given to you, or your impact on the culture. You either do it with intention, or you don’t, but either way you are shaping the culture.
And for the rest of us? What if you are NOT the CEO? Can you do anything about the culture in your organization if you’re not in that position? Yes, but you have to make a choice:
- Give the power to the CEO.
- Take back your power, and step up and be a leader.
I don’t mean take over as CEO. I mean be a leader from wherever you are in the organization. Look at your culture, figure out where it works and where it doesn’t, and then work to change the aspects that are holding your organization back. You won’t be able to change the culture single-handedly (after all, everyone else is giving their power to the CEO to shape the culture). So you’ll eventually have to bring the conversation to the CEO. You start by changing things in your corner of the organization and show the leadership the results you’re getting. That might open up the conversation about culture. If it doesn’t, then you keep trying. That’s what being a leader means. If it gets you fired, then that’s probably for the best, in my opinion.
The organizations with the powerful cultures are going to move ahead of the rest in the coming years. These organizations with powerful cultures are going to have leaders at all levels of the organization. Leaders who are not afraid to push culture at all levels. Find those organizations as soon as you can.