Culture (of a Company)

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  • I don't like the lowest-common-denominator culture at most companies. I don't like having junk food as the free food, I don't like having drinking as the company activity. I think there may need to be a separation between the working environment a person operates from and the particular company they're working for, which would mean working remotely. I think that separation may be the only way to allow people to work in the environment they most want to work in while also allowing them to work for the employer who is willing to compensate them the most for their time.


For all employees

  • Employees should be able to challenge the ideas of their supervisors.
    • Examples
      • Peter Thiel did this at PayPal
        • I need to find the page number in the PayPal Wars that describes this, or wherever else it's discussed
      • Charles Koch set this up when he took over at Koch Engineering
        • https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nrfUUiD7W3I&t=18m30s
        • Very, very interesting stuff.
        • "We need this kind of challenge culture, this skepticism, in our company, so we're going to build this culture of challenge; that is, if you're a supervisor at any level, and your people don't challenge you, you've got to change your ways or you can't be a supervisor, because you're not using the ideas of your people."

Bias for action / sense of urgency

Problems

Employees advancing their own interests at the expense of the team's interests

  • Comments from a friend who dealt with this issue:
    • i am tired of working hard for promoting my colleagues and bosses
      I feel like they just profit off me
      i feel some other people just get all favorable projects and reviews
      though in my opinion their work quality is sub par in some instances
      i am all collegial and for "lets do it for the team"
      but seems they just use that spirit and do not reciprocate
      they will run me over if that gives them a 5k raise
      literally two of my bosses left
      at the first chance of better opportunity
      entire organization is now fucked
      i was like
      dude
      you could have promoted 3 people had you stuck around for 2-3 more months
      they will fuck you over if it gives them a momentary advantage
      major cause of anger is "Team Spirit" or working for team means finding people who will do your work
      or shitty work.
      ...
      maybe there can be a incentive mechanism that can be come up with
      but personally i just don't want to deal with it
      in my case i dont think some of the people are malicious
      this whole thing is just way above their head
      they don't know how to run and manage the product
      so they are incompetent due to lack of experience

Diversity


Drills / Exercises

  • When I have a company I want to have team building games like elon musk and his Lan parties. They should be almost like drills, like you would do for soccer. But I'll need to come up with a list of things that I'll want do drill. For example, one thing might be to increase the communication between two particular groups of people, so I could have a game that emphasizes their communication.
  • I think what you want to do is train people to get better at the 14 leadership characteristics Jeff Bezos came up with, along with whatever other characteristics you think are worth training.
  • It can be a really powerful emotional experience to be in a situation where you get a large group of people together and have everyone functioning as a single unit.
  • One thing that may make it better is if you have people practice some individual contribution on their own, and then bring them all together. That's what we did with the orchestra.
  • Another thing to try is to make them competitions between departments.
  • I don't like the idea of firing people. I think it really hurts morale. There's got to be some way to avoid that. (I think this is related)

Teambuilding exercises

  • I want to develop teambuilding exercises that foster the

Crew

  • Have people go out in a boat once a week for a few months.

Paintball

  • Have people practice moving in teams, firing and moving, etc.

Band / Orchestra

  • I've never forgotten how amazing it felt to be part of the orchestra in 7th grade when we were playing a song I really liked. It was a really powerful experience.
  • On the other hand, when we were playing a song I didn't like, it was boring.