Every joyride has its naysayers. In the last 20 years, tech giants like Amazon and UBER have raked in billions on the backs of tech-fueled innovations and efficiency.
Who can argue with success like that?
Wharton School professor and author Dr. Peter Capelli, that’s who.
Capelli argues that what drives growth is not just automation and processes but employees and teams. The joyride starts to run into speedbumps when the culture is weak. Companies on a roll may short shrift the idea that employees and teams function best over the long haul in a cohesive environment where they are seen, heard, and invested in (aka culture).
Company leadership sees money spent on culture as an expense. Do you know what else is expensive?
Layoffs. 2024 has been a bloodbath of firing in tech. Every month the bright green “Open to Work” profile label pops up on thousands of LinkedIn profiles like an endless Brat summer. Not that we need more research to prove it, but there’s more research to prove it.
We’ve seen anemic investments in culture across the board, and a dirty windshield for the new roles and responsibilities. Teams are asking for a shorter list of priorities for the “smaller, more agile” team that’s left behind. So what’s a leader to do who is balancing both short term financial constraints and all-the-time goals of team performance?
How to know culture when you see it.
What does the culture of a high-performing organization look like? There have been reams written about culture. Luckily, Bain & Company provides a research-based answer from a study of 1200 high-performing companies. In these companies, there are six organizational characteristics where employees and teams are:
- aligned with the company’s strategy;
- capable of executing strategy with the right talent, processes and tools;
- effective at making and executing critical decisions;
- adaptable in the face of rapid change;
- efficient in realizing the benefits of scale and scope; and
- inspired to go the extra mile
Note that efficiency is only one vector. The other five are like fingerprints of organizational culture. Words like “inspired” and “adaptable” might look suspiciously smudgy in some tech C-suites.
We’re not calling anyone out, but Capelli does. He lists the following as examples of proliferating poor management in tech, due in part to the founders’ technical orientation:
“…Tesla’s management based in part on threats and confrontation, Netscape’s notion of employees as replaceable assets in a market, Amazon’s time-and-motion approach to manual labor.”
How does your team measure up against the six characteristics? Ready for an objective POV from some friends at Forshay? Or a little boost of leverage before you close up on year end work and/or kickoff 2025 with a clear plan for high performance?
Culture as R&D, sort of.
Cappelli describes talent as a “fluid resource,” saying that top talent is not a static commodity but a constantly shifting landscape. We agree.
Companies that recognize this approach culture as an investment, similar to R&D. For instance, Google’s emphasis on innovation and autonomy has fostered a culture of top talent. They sponsored programs like “20% time,” where employees can dedicate a portion of their workweek to personal projects. They found that this creates an environment that sparks creativity and drives innovation. But then they did layoffs…time will reveal how this mixed approach will impact team and business performance.
Southwest Airlines, Microsoft, and Netflix have also had some strong investments in culture as R&D, and we’ve talked to alums who will share their truth about the pros and cons of each 
Is this sparking some neurons for you? Shifting the perspective of culture as strictly an expense to an investment in R&D of your people might be an interesting experiment. We’d love to help you with any ideas you want to move into action!
Metrics for Measuring the Impact of Culture Investment
Culture is hard to quantify and measure, no doubt. Deloitte’s 2024 Global Human Capital Trends survey asked respondents, “How important is seeking better ways to measure worker performance and value, beyond traditional productivity, to your success?” and “Where is your organization in its journey to address this issue?”
74% recognized the importance
40% are doing something
8% are doing great things
Where do you see your organization in that mix? We saw a rise in leadership development requests in the past year, as leaders paying attention to their team culture took the bet that it was time for an investment in performance.
Where to Start?
Perhaps with a quick experiment.
As AI begins to transform the workplace (and displace workers), perhaps now is the perfect time to double down on the human factor.
At Forshay we encourage forward-looking indicators vs rear view mirror metrics, for example, we advise our clients to focus on the quality of new hires (balanced with time to fill – an old metric that gives us an eye roll when overly used) and employee net promoter scores. But ultimately team performance is complex and multi-factorial. Sometimes (not always!), year-end is a chance to think about a culture tune-up. At Forshay, culture is meta (not that Meta).
We have an agile, client-focused culture that helps you drive cultural ROI through “just enough” discovery and customization.
Reach out for a culture & performance chat before the holidays. We streamline ideas to action and help quickly metabolize them into the client culture, resulting in cost-effective solutions without large overhead. And we’re fun
