Heroes and Rituals in Startups, Companies and Government

I’m posting a series of articles on family, startup culture and careers. These vignettes are about how I’ve lived my life trying to make a dent in the universe. Hoping they’ll give you a point of view about the vast possibilities in life. I’ve posted six so far: the first post is here; the second here, the third here, the fourth here, the fifth here and the sixth here.

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Innovation in an existing company or government agency is not just the sum of great technology or great people. Innovation only flourishes in a culture that matches and supports it. Startups have the luxury of building values and culture that support innovation from scratch, but at times existing organizations must reboot an existing –and at times deeply rooted- broken corporate culture. It’s not an easy task, but failing to change the culture will doom any innovation efforts.

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Corporate and Government Innovation Requires an Innovation Culture

All too often innovation initiatives start and end with a board meeting mandate to the CEO or from a head of a government agency, followed by a series of memos to the staff, with lots of posters, and one-day workshops. This typically creates “innovation theater” but very little innovation.

The book Corporate Cultures: The Rites and Rituals of Corporate Life points out that every company has a culture – and that “culture” was shorthand for “the way we do things at our company.” And that an organizations culture has four ingredients:

• Values/beliefs – these set the philosophy for everything a company does, essentially what it stands for

• Stories/myths – are stories about how founders/employees get over obstacles, win new orders…

• Heroes – who gets rewarded and celebrated, how do you become a hero in the organization?

• Rituals – what and how does a company celebrate?

It took me a few decades to realize that the most successful organizations I’ve worked in and with had values, stories, heroes and rituals.

The Power of a Corporate Culture
It was in my third startup, Convergent Technologies, that I started to understand the power of a corporate culture. The values and basic beliefs of working in this crazy startup were embodied in the phrase that we were, “The Marine Corps of Silicon Valley.” If the notion of joining the Marine Corps of technology wasn’t something that interested you, you didn’t apply. If it was appealing (typically to high testosterone 20-year-olds), you fought to get in.

By the time I joined, the company already had a store of “beating the impossible odds” and “innovation on your feet” stories. It was already lore that the founders had pivoted from simply building an entire computer that fit on a single-circuit board with a newfangled Intel microprocessor to selling complete desktop workstations with an operating system and office applications (the precursor to the PC) to other computer companies. And the CEO had done the pivot in front of a whiteboard of a customer who went from “we’re not interested” to a $45 million order in the same meeting.

Each subsequent deal with a major computer customer was celebrated (deals were worth ten of millions of dollars) and our salespeople were feted as heroes. When any special custom engineering effort was required to match the over-the-top sales commitments (almost every deal), the engineers were treated as heroes as well. And when marketing went out to the field on red-eye flights to support sales (often), we also became heroes.

Finally, there were rituals and celebrations that accompanied each big order. Bells and gongs would ring. The CEO would hand out $100 bills, and gave out a $25,000 on-the-spot bonus that was talked about for years. Once he even spray-painted an exhortation to ship a new product on time on our main hallway wall (so crude I can’t even paraphrase it, but still remembered 30 years later).

While my title, business card and job description described my job functions, these unwritten values, stories, heroes and rituals guided the behavior that was expected of me in my job.

Organizational Culture Diagnostic
You can get a good handle on an organizations culture before you even get inside the building. For example, when companies or agencies say, “We value our employees” but have reserved parking spots, a private cafeteria and over-the-top offices for the executives/seniors that tells you more than any PR spin. Or if a CEO or agency head proudly boasts about their their incubator, but if the incubator’s parking lot is empty at 5:15 pm you can read past the B.S. and see the disconnect.

I’ve learned more about a company’s or government agency’s beliefs, heroes and rituals by sitting in on a few casual coffee breaks and lunches than reading all of its corporate mission statements or inspirational posters in the cafeteria. In Horizon 1 and 2 companies (those that execute or extend current business models), stories revolve around heroes and rebels who manage to get something new done in spite of the existing processes. Rituals in these companies are about the reorganizations, promotions, titles, raises, etc.

These core values and beliefs and the attendant stories, heroes and rituals, also define who’s important in the organization and who the company/government agency wants to attract and retain. For example, if a company values financial performance above all, its stories, myths and rituals might include how a hero saved the company 5% from a supplier. Or if a company is focused on delivering breakthrough products, then the heroes, stories and rituals will be about product innovation (e.g. the Apple legends of the Mac, iPod and iPhone development). Or if a government agency is focused on rapid deployment of new systems to the warfighter or an ally the heroes, stories and rituals will be about cutting through all the paperwork and process to get what’s needed to the field.

Hacking a Corporate Culture
For innovation to happen by design not by exception, organizations need to hack their own culture. This is akin to waging psychological warfare on your own company/agency. It needs to be a careful, calculated process coordinated with Leadership, Human Resources and Finance.

1. Assess your organization’s current values and beliefs as understood by the employees

2. Define the new values and beliefs the company wants to live by

3. List the disconnects between where you want to be and the reality of where you are

   • What are the obstacles?

4. Modify or eliminate processes (and at times, people) that impede these changes

   • Align the company’s incentive programs (compensation plans, bonuses, promotions, etc.) to the new values

   • (Note that a failure to simultaneously realign incentives and processes doom any new culture change)

5. Communicate the need for new values and work to move employees to a new way of thinking

   • Create a new set of stories, heroes and rituals around those values

To create an innovation culture around disruptive innovation, organizations need heroes, stories, rituals and rewards about the employees who created new business models, new products and new customers. Stories about new product lines created out of a crazy idea. Or a government lab who reached out to a startup to cut years out of a development and procurement process. Or an old-guard program manager who got of the building and found new suppliers, or a division general manager who acquired a product and built it into a successful product line, or engineering teams who got out of the building, saw a customer/warfighter need and built and delivered solution to serve it.

Obstacles
Culture change almost always runs into problems – resistance to change (we’ve always done in this way), obsolescence (the world changed but not our values), inconsistency (we give lip service to our values, but don’t really implement them). But the combination of hacking the culture and reinforcing it by changing the incentives can make it happen.

The result of an innovation culture is a large organization with a unified purpose that can move with speed, agility and passion.

Lessons Learned

• Innovation in large organizations requires an Innovation Culture

  • Innovation culture consists of values, stories, heroes and rituals

  • Startups build values and culture focused on innovation from scratch

  • Existing organizations who want to (re)start internal innovation must reboot an existing corporate culture – this is hard

• You can hack the culture

  • It requires careful, calculated and coordinated process with Leadership, HR and Finance

• The result is an organization that supports innovation and can deliver with speed