Culture is Priority One (2010) | Hacker News Reader

Culture is Priority One (2010)

ecorner.stanford.edu

36 pointswallflower15 comments

Tony's a genius, but it's important not to cargo cult this.

"Culture-first" worked at Zappos because of the specific culture they chose to pursue, namely an intensely customer-centric one. At that point, their culture is not merely culture but also strategy: we will win in this market by rejecting short-term optimization (charging for returns, spending less on customer support agents) in favor of long-term thinking that will produce customer loyalty and thus long-term success.

I know, I know. Culture eats strategy for breakfast. But the reality is that if you want to build a successful business that isn't a daily soul-sucking grind (strategy only) or a fluffy wannabe 'startup' flapping in the wind (culture only), you need both.

Or put another way, culture isn't separate from strategy, but rather the type of culture you have must be part of your strategy, or it will undermine it. If your strategy is to spit out tons of different ideas and productize the best, maybe a culture of "move fast and break things" makes sense. If you have a strategy of "ensure both regulators and customers trust we manage money effectively" maybe a culture of risk-aversion makes more sense. The "Culture eats strategy for breakfast" is really a shortcut for that fact that rapid business-change is a reality for all businesses now, not just startups, so a culture that supports innovation and creativity will trump others given time. But that needs to be integrated into other cultural values as part of the strategy and environment that will allow it flourish.

I don't know you, but I know I'd like working with you. Spot on framing, and thanks for the clarification on breakfast — I didn't realize that was the original context for it.

Not everyone liked culture at Zappos.

That's probably true, but "it's okay to have a corporate culture that a few people like intensely at the expense of other people disliking it, so long as the few people are enough people for the business to operate," is a lesson in itself. That is one reason why it's good for there to be more than one business in the economy. :)

Exactly. Great cultures are different and not everyone is a great fit for every culture. That’s OK!

There are people who are very happy at a well-run BigCo, with a well-defined cadence for making decisions. Others chafe at that level of process, and instead thrive at an entrepreneurial startup. (This of course is a gross generalization.)

A culture that has generic values is in some ways meaningless.

>A culture that has generic values is in some ways meaningless.

That seems true the way you put it, but there are some cultures that are legitimately insane and awful. "Generic values," usually meaning a secular average of the ambient culture in the geographic locale of the office, can be a whole lot better than some other options. "Generic values," are actually quite distinct, for example they will be different between New York and Boise, or different between 2001, 2019, and 1974.

I think you’re saying there are good cultures and bad cultures, which is a statement I find impossible to disagree with.

This is also why he emphasized self-selection by paying generous (for service sector) severance bonuses and encouraged people to take it early on if they didn't think they were a fit.

It is a slippery slope: "it is ok to have borsderline abusive culture, if the majority of employees likes it."

It is a higher-order concern. Ethics trumps culture and strategy. It certainly seems plausible the "good ole boys club" style of corporate management can be be effective. Diverse voices have benefits, especially in not being blinded to many aspects of the market, but nevertheless homogeneity has some efficiencies. Yet, it is just plain wrong in most cases, independent of relevant benefits.