Public meeting / Culture / Considering the emergence of a strong culture when a creative startup navigates a revolution

Reference

• Reference meeting: "a06-990 — culture — observing the emergence of culture in a startup environment 3ba8eea7-ab3f-4af2-8a54-d704cdf7d029 Saturday, February 8⋅4:30 – 5:30pm".
• Parent project: Course on Culture and Leadership, Creativity and Culture
• Participants: Marcio S Galli
• Text language: en-us
• Tags: Leadership, Culture, Blitzscaling, Peter Drucker
• People: Peter Drucker

• Context: Study notes taken from the book Measure What Matters - about Intuit collaborative structure and goal impact.

• Document status: Copyright, draft.

Consideration topic - that the culture arises from creative generalizations driven by shared purpose in the team’s communication environment

The following text was drafted inspired by The First Technological Revolution and its Lessons, by Peter Drucker.

“Or take science. We now know that no early civilization excelled over China in the quality and quantity of scientific observations. And yet we also know that early Chinese culture did not point toward anything we would call "science." Perhaps because of their rationalism the Chinese refrained from generalization. And though fanciful and speculative, it is the generalizations of the Near East or the mathematics of Egypt which point the way toward systematic science.“ Peter Drucker

Consider a team, one that is navigating the early start-up phase, and the following characteristics:

• Context of the startup team — they are navigating a stage of search and discovery; they don't have product-market fit; there is a strong vision and purpose; they can be considered active in the kind of design work that explores an offering that relates to a change in the world, in the direction of something partially revolutionary. What they do relates to what the authors from Play Bigger call Category Design;

• The team is driven by a vision — mainly influenced by the leadership team, the team of founders. Imagine that this is the team that had the big vision, they were able to see the new other world, or what’s next. The opportunity that is behind the big wall.

• Its constituents form an alliance — Consider the set of people, starting with the leadership team, and reaching out to all constituents. Consider these as the protagonists that are responsible for observing their workplace, their environment, their operating cycle of interactions.

• On resources — the team have knowledge and norms. The team uses current technology.

• On the revolution — the team builds new technology, develops new knowledge.

Consider the unbalanced nature of a team creating a revolution

• Their target is a revolution — it's a revolution, at least from the vision and goals standpoint. It may not really matter much if such revolution will stick, yet.

• The standard, rational working environment is not enough to the vision — consider a standard rational environment, based on current or obsolete knowledge and way of acting. Consider how people would act, work, deploy knowledge, if they were working at another team (a team of the past, a normal company).

The target — a new working environment is considered

As they communicate, they engage in the opportunity to tackle new challenges using their creative power. Their capacity to come up with generalizations will affect their prior rationalizations, will allow them to institutionalize new rationalizations to their operating environment.

Therefore, it emerges a team’s special way of operating that aligns with the creative generalizations driven by vision, mission, and values.

When successful, it becomes visible and perceived as a driving component for how they innovate and achieve their purpose. The rise of new rationalizations, out from these creative generalizations, materialized as methods of operation, can be strong elements of a strong culture. Some characteristics:

• It rises new communication methods (associated with tactics and strategies) characterizing team behavior,

• These communication methods are influenced by purpose and values (ideology)

• These methods can be the elements supporting growth, driving change, allowing the performance towards the vision.

When new culture emerges, when it is perceived by teams, they account how a rationalized (operating method) ties with the generalizations. They acknowledge the benefits that governs new efficiency. And when there is harmony in flowing those methods they develop new institutional approach for being innovative towards that vision.

References

Drucker, P. (1966). The First Technological Revolution and Its Lessons. Technology and Culture, 7(2), 143-151. doi:10.2307/3102079

Al Ramadan, Dave Peterson, Christopher Lochhead, Kevin Maney. (2017). Play Bigger, How Pirates, Dreamers, and Innovators Create and Dominate Markets. Harper Business, New York, NY USA.