The Power of Culture
I recently blogged about preventing the NNPP through better hiring practices. Though I feel that a strict hiring practice is key to ensuring consistently higher quality developers, I wanted to talk a little bit about what comes after an employee is hired.
Companies should have a serious view of employees as an asset. One that should be about individuals being nurtured and grown into something and someone greater. This is a large part of why I advocate pair programming, because there is no better way to raise the skill level of developers than have them constantly working hands-on with other skilled members of their profession.
I think though, that there is a more important point here that is difficult to define: a company has to have a culture of wanting the best people and facilitating the continued growth of those people. It’s so intangible because it doesn’t come from a CEO proclaiming a set of values that came out of a management book. It’s about what the individual people in company actually believe and embody.
Using Thoughtworks as an example again, I was initially very surprised at how ever present the culture of the company is. It’s telling that we call ourselves thoughtworkers. We identify as part of a group, not just as employees of a company. We want to be part of the group. I’ve met people that fit the culture and continue to refer to themselves as Thoughtworkers even after they’ve left the company to move on to some other career pursuit. In particular, an aspect of the culture is that of excellence.
How did this come to be? Well, I can’t say for sure - it’s an evolutionary process. However, I think that it happened for the same reason that many organizations develop a culture of excellence, whether it be great sports teams or great universities.
First, the organization has to try to select the best. There has to some amount of pride in getting in. Then, once you get in, and you meet many people that are more skilled than you (or perhaps, strongly skilled in different ways), and you see how you can improve. In fact, you want to improve - you want to live up to the standard of excellent that the organization has set. You don’t want to consider yourself below average in your group.
In teams and organizations with really strong and successful cultures, it’s not just the leadership that wants everyone on the team to be superlative, but it’s the team members as well. At Thoughtworks, I’ve met other thoughtworkers that give me suggestions on books that I should read, or technologies that I should learn. I’ve developed student/teacher relationships with some people, and I’ve developed teacher/student relationships with others. With many, it’s been peer to peer, but with us debating and sharing views and opinions.
I use Thoughtworks as an example of a strong culture, but I don’t want to make it sound like it’s perfect. It has it’s flaws too, but as an organization, it’s the best of what I’ve experienced. On the other side, I’ve worked with/at companies that have what I consider to be a poor or negative culture, but my ranting about that will have to wait for another day.