In my personal career I’ve worked at the following companies and experienced the following cultures:
- Strong paternalistic culture. IBM was my first professional work experience and, at the time, I thought I would be a lifer. There was a very hierarchical culture and sets of values that made things work for execution, but didn’t cultivate cutting-edge innovation. One of IBM’s mantras was, “You can be a wild duck, but you have to fly in formation.” Every manager was trained on “dos and don’ts.” Employees used to jokingly call this “lobotomy” school. There was also emphasis on providing mentoring and feedback. The company invested a lot in its people and did very little external hiring; more often the company promoted from within. It offered great benefits and prioritized making its people feel safe and nurtured. It also expected you to put IBM first—employees moved wherever IBM wanted them to—but as long as you performed, you had a job for life.
- The haves and have-nots. When I started at Figgie International I expected that everyone treated people fairly and with respect and dignity, which is what I had experienced at IBM. But that wasn’t the case at Figgie, which was a holding company with a portfolio of 42 companies, including Caterpillar and Rawlings Sporting Goods. The corporate campus was like a high-end resort with three beautiful brick buildings connected by a tunnel system. Mrs. Figgie picked out the art for everyone’s offices—there was no choice or freedom for personal expression. There were basketball courts and an extravagant cafeteria and every Director at the company was given a Jaguar, which they also washed for you every week. However, the satellite offices had nothing like this, and corporate milked them of everything they brought in. Figgie would buy these companies, hold them and try to make them more profitable, and then jack the value up and sell to someone else. They really bled these businesses. The CFO had to sign every request over a certain amount—and he usually denied them. As a result, everyone in the satellite offices was always nervous they would get fired and there was a constant culture of suspicion and misery outside the corporate campus. I had never experienced such a delta between the “haves” and “have-nots.” I left within a year.
- Culture of control (and hard work). The CEO I worked for at Thomas Conrad fired people for no reason, which produced a culture of suspicion. If he walked into someone’s cube, we knew that this person was going to get their butt kicked. We worked entire weekends. During my time there, the only day that I ever called in sick was on a Sunday. Although we were the product leaders, it was not a fun or inspiring place to be because of the negative way people were treated.
- Political culture that prizes pedigree. Quantum was known for having a good culture, but it was very political. They made it clear that I was not destined to be a top executive because I didn’t have the “look” or the Harvard Business School degree. They executed well and were very cost conscious—every penny mattered.
- Wild West culture of innovation and fun. Bay Networks, a router and hub company that was driving the Internet, was created by merging an East Coast company called Wellfleet that acted like a West Coast startup, with a West Coast company called Synoptics that acted more like an East Coast company (they wore suits on Fridays). At this point in my career, I started joining boards and flourishing, and they enabled me and celebrated my success. No one cared about pedigree; they cared that people got things done. The company had high expectations and demanded hard work from everyone, but it was a very loving and fun place.
- Culture in flux. When I joined Gateway, it was in the middle of a metamorphosis. There was a brand new CEO, and they were migrating out of the corporate HQ in South Dakota and moving to San Diego. It was a nice place and they treated me well. I only stayed for a year, so I don’t know how the culture evolved and eventually set.
- Dual cultures, but both vectored towards success. At eBay, we really had two cultures, one on the business side and one on the product/engineering side. On the business side, there was a lot of striving and competition for the top jobs, although everyone generally executed and communicated professionally. On the tech side, we were good teammates, but I called us the “pack mules” because we knew if we went off the cliff we all went off together. The business folks didn’t mind knocking a colleague off the cliff, as they saw that as one less person to compete against for the top job. On both sides, there was a culture that prized success based on facts and metrics.
- A culture divided. When I joined LiveOps, the teams were very split. Sales and administration were in one camp, and engineering was in another. It was so bad that they had different buildings. We needed more of a unified culture, so we moved to a space where everyone was together, and we did things to bring everyone together—paper airplane contests, Thursday night happy hours, Olympic competitions, and other fun events. We got people involved in activities that spanned departments. We had a team of volunteers to create and to manage our foundation, and we also had a team of volunteers called Team LiveOps to help us manage interactions and fun.
- A service-driven culture. Marc Benioff cared about philanthropy from the very beginning of founding Salesforce. He pioneered the 1/1/1 model (1% of employee time, 1% of profit in the form of product donations and 1% of equity all goes back to the community), and has made it front and center for 17 years at Salesforce. He also focused on innovation and inspiring a revolution in how software was delivered. He had a relentless focus on execution and used his V2MOM process religiously to monitor and drive it. As a board member at Salesforce for 10 years, I have found it marvelous to be a part of this journey and see it evolve. Marc has created a culture of accountability and giving, and cares about all stakeholders succeeding (not just shareholders)—and we see this in how he fights for equal pay and against discriminatory bills.
- A process-oriented culture. When Marissa Mayer became CEO at Yahoo, she radically changed the company by implementing a weekly FYI meeting Friday afternoons, letting employees have a voice about what were the biggest problems, and systematically knocking them off with her PB&J system (process, bureaucracy and jam). People appreciate having the opportunity to listen and contribute, especially in tough times.
- Culture in progress. At Visa everyone is polite and service-oriented, but now they are working on also being innovative. They’re trying to become more of a technology company. While they’re open about the need to change the culture, it will still be hard.