The true company culture

Do you think company culture is some BS made up by management? Well, there is a difference between “management-mandated” culture, and the actual culture coming from employees. Let me explain:

If you ever worked in a bigger company, or better yet, a multinational corporation, you might have seen “Company Values” being shown to you, almost like propaganda posters. They will proclaim virtuous statements and support for specific actions, saying for example “We hold the user in our highest regard” or “We care about the planet”.

Those are mostly inaccurate, to say the least, and placed there in a misguided effort to boost morale and reduce employee turnover. When it comes to management, sad to say, the users and the employees will never be the center focus. Growth, healthy finances, and shareholders will. Recent rounds of layoffs, often dictated by shareholders’ financial expectations, prove this point beyond any doubt. However…

That’s OK!

After all, it’s their job to keep the company afloat. Only a part of their that is to keep employees happy and motivated, but creating a culture artificially isn’t the right way to do it.

There is another way to create the right culture, that will propagate from bottom to top, not the other way around. How to achieve it?