Know who you are, know what you do
Last month I was at the Los Angeles Lakers brand new training facility in El Segundo, California. Tim Harris, the organisation’s Senior Vice President of Business Operations, talking about the culture of the club said that it’s important to ‘know who you are, know what you do’. This, he said, provided a solid foundation to not only build a great team culture, but also a strong brand identity too.
I don’t disagree. It reminded me of a time pre-COVID, when the Netflix culture deck went viral on LinkedIn. Almost every senior leader I spoke to about culture change at that time wanted ‘a Netflix Culture'.
My pragmatic (yet very positive!) answer was always ‘you can’t have a Netflix culture'. That’s not to say that there weren’t learnings from the way that they worked that we could incorporate, there were and we did. However, it comes down to the fact that you need to understand who you are and what you do and build a culture to match that, rather than confusing everyone and trying to be something that you're not.
Many office-based employees will see this when the latest fad, method or technology becomes popular. Often there’s a rush not to get left behind whilst competitors adopt new ways of doing things.
There’s merit to that, but only if it’s assessed against ‘who you are and what you do’. Blindly following the herd can actually worsen your culture, rather than improving it, should thoughtful consideration not be given to how it will enhance how work gets done.
I saw a great example of this last week. Emirates is my airline of choice when I have to do long haul travel because the service they provide is excellent (which is a reflection of their culture) and is strongly aligned to who they are and what they do.
Many airlines now feature celebrities, singing and dancing in their safety videos, but not Emirates.
They allude to this in their safety video saying ‘...we don’t feature celebrities singing and dancing in our safety videos’. This works for other airlines such as Air New Zealand (also a favourite of mine) and is similarly a representation of their ‘safe, but fun' culture.
However, that’s not who Emirates are or what they do and I have a lot of respect for any organisation that leans into their brand and cultural identity.
Inspiration for creating a great place to work lies everywhere and as long as you’re intentional in experimenting then choosing only those ideas that are aligned to who you are and what you do, they will always be embraced by growth mindset employees looking to continuously improve the way work gets done.
If you try too hard to be something that you're not, then change aversion will be a slam dunk!
