The hottest Organizational Culture Substack posts right now

And their main takeaways
Category
Top Technology Topics
How to Glow in the Dark 353 implied HN points 20 Jan 24
  1. Lesson from Cloudflare layoff: There are useful lessons for everyone in handling layoffs and difficult conversations professionally.
  2. Lesson from Brittany's experience: Be prepared, question feedback that doesn't make sense, and stand up for yourself in professional settings.
  3. Lesson on organizational culture: Though industries may differ, there can be overlap in challenges like attracting talent and handling social media crises.
Make Work Better 59 implied HN points 07 Mar 24
  1. Organizations tolerating bad behavior by leaders can lead to a breakdown of cultural norms and values.
  2. Google's once revered culture has come under scrutiny, revealing a slow-moving bureaucracy and lack of innovative products, prompting a need for reevaluation.
  3. Job cuts and layoffs at Google have negatively impacted employee morale and hindered the ability to do brave, inventive work.
Suzan's Fieldnotes 98 implied HN points 09 Feb 24
  1. Leadership is a shared experience, not an individual effort. A siloed leadership team can lead to a siloed organization. To shift organizational behavior, start at the leadership layer.
  2. Signs of a siloed culture include individualism, rise of 'poop umbrellas', influence behind closed doors, and apathy turning into fear. These signs can lead to missed business goals and a slipping company culture.
  3. Siloed cultures often form unintentionally due to tough market conditions, organizational changes, focus on individual parts instead of the system, and lack of intentional culture. Realignment starts by rallying the team around shared objectives, identifying desired team culture, and rewarding desired values.
An Innovator's Sketchbook 98 implied HN points 04 Feb 24
  1. Transitioning from feature to product teams involves empowering cross-functional teams focused on outcomes and value.
  2. The localization industry is evolving with AI, leading to job destruction but also creating new business opportunities.
  3. Feedback is important for team growth, and using the 'Situation-Behavior-Impact' framework can lead to effective and powerful feedback.
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Ageling on Agile 78 implied HN points 11 Feb 24
  1. Implementing Agile in an organization goes beyond just claiming to be Agile; it requires a cultural shift.
  2. Having a hierarchical structure, lack of learning culture, and siloed responsibilities can hinder an organization's agility.
  3. Organizations valuing output over outcome, prioritizing individual efficiency, and fostering HIPPO culture undermine Agile principles and hinder effectiveness.
Ageling on Agile 58 implied HN points 04 Feb 24
  1. Ivory towers in organizations can create conflict and hinder collaboration between teams with different objectives.
  2. To foster value creation, it's essential for individuals in leadership positions to step down from ivory towers and actively collaborate with all stakeholders.
  3. Blocking the learning loop by maintaining ivory towers can lead to wasted time, effort, and money, hindering the organization's ability to adapt in a fast-changing world.
Fish Food for Thought 16 implied HN points 07 Feb 24
  1. Collective fallacies like groupthink can stifle innovation by leading to unanimous decisions driven by desire for group harmony.
  2. Social loafing in group settings reduces individual effort, hindering creativity and underutilizing diverse skills.
  3. Herd mentality can suppress creative ideas by promoting conformity to majority opinions, inhibiting risk-taking and diverse perspectives.
The Hagakure 113 HN points 24 Aug 23
  1. W. Edwards Deming emphasized the importance of systems thinking and statistical process control in achieving quality and quantity in production.
  2. Deming's heart and compassion played a significant role in inspiring hope and confidence in the people of Japan, contributing to their rapid post-war recovery.
  3. Leading with compassion, embracing interconnectedness, and nurturing living systems over optimizing machines are key lessons from Deming's story.
Ways of Working 98 implied HN points 19 Jul 23
  1. Our personal relationship with process can impact how we work and interact with others, showing our organizational culture.
  2. Processes are applied in organizations in areas like people processes, team-level processes, company-level processes, and customer processes.
  3. Processes in organizations aim to facilitate work, reduce risk, ensure consistency, but can also hinder creative thinking if taken too far.
An Innovator's Sketchbook 98 implied HN points 02 Apr 23
  1. Large companies must grow through expanding market penetration or entering new markets, either by inventing new products or acquiring other companies.
  2. Challenges of creating successful new products in large companies include bureaucracy, risk aversion, resource competition, resistance to change, and short-term focus.
  3. Skunkworks projects are effective for innovation in large companies, requiring careful planning, autonomy, cross-functional teams, open communication, agile processes, and customer-centricity.
Technology Made Simple 99 implied HN points 12 Nov 22
  1. The Dilbert Principle explains how incompetent employees may be promoted to management to get them out of the way.
  2. The Invisible Man Principle highlights how mediocre employees may end up in important projects when all the top performers are busy with other tasks.
  3. The Peter Principle shows that competent workers may be promoted until they reach a role where they struggle, impacting their career progression.
Pluriversal Planet 19 implied HN points 13 Jun 23
  1. The manifesto calls for organizations to slow down, pause, and reflect on their actions and impact.
  2. Wayfinders are organizations striving to move beyond human-centered designs towards life-affirming organization designs.
  3. Organizations should shift focus from processes and technology to relationships and communities, embracing pluriversality and interconnectedness.
New Frontier 1 HN point 09 Feb 24
  1. The Apollo program teaches us the importance of overcoming failure and learning from mistakes to prevent future disasters.
  2. In a Post-ZIRP world, tech companies need to shift focus to profitability and hard work, moving away from the easy funding rounds of the past.
  3. Embracing a 'Tough and Competent' mentality, focusing on efficiency by reducing unnecessary meetings, avoiding overengineering, and returning to mission-driven cultures can help companies thrive in the changing landscape.
Building Rome(s) 7 implied HN points 18 Mar 23
  1. Processes and systems are not necessarily opposites; in reality, systems are formed by combining effective processes over time.
  2. In the journey from processes to culture, there's a struggle between different perspectives like hedgehogs and foxes which influence how processes evolve.
  3. Balancing attention to detail (hedgehog) and simplicity (fox) is key in progressing processes and becoming a successful Technical Program Manager.
Joseph Gefroh 0 implied HN points 03 Mar 24
  1. When driving meaningful change, it's crucial to formulate your idea and gain approval from various stakeholders within an organization.
  2. Thorough research is essential before proposing any idea to ensure credibility and avoid unknown unknowns that might lead to rejection.
  3. Crafting a compelling narrative is just as important as presenting facts; having a structured story helps decision-makers understand the problem, solution, and value of the proposal.
Adventures in Leadership Land 0 implied HN points 18 Aug 23
  1. Leadership Land has diverse terrains like Boss Forest, Career Swamp, Desert of Good Intentions.
  2. Institute of Conventional Wisdom is a prestigious place for leadership best practices but may hinder innovation by turning secrets into common knowledge.
  3. Leaders in Leadership Land face challenges due to the Fog of Uncertainty and must navigate through conflicting interests and build trust.
PeopleStorming 0 implied HN points 30 Mar 21
  1. Organizational Improv workshops sometimes play a game called World's Worst to envision the worst possible versions of things. This game can help teams understand what 'best' should look like in various aspects of their work.
  2. Participants in the game can creatively come up with vivid examples of utterly horrendous cultures or practices in organizations, which can be both entertaining and insightful.
  3. Teams can apply this game to different scenarios within their organization, such as identifying the world's worst brand for marketing, product launch for the product team, or customer service representative for the support team. It can lead to fun and enlightening discussions.