Weird corporate cultures and its bad managers

Five unnecessary but common people management mistakes

Corporate cultures are just so... weird?

This way of "let's define values about how people should behave by writing them out on sticky notes" and then telling HR to hammer them into people's heads always felt artificial to me, especially while the management/leadership culture was at the same time completely dysfunctional.

It's no surprise that I keep getting into calls with people who are tired of it... especially the more experienced ones go in any company, 'here we go again, the culture workshop is coming, time to put the brain on standby and pretend to be "Young and Dynamic".'

I'm not saying that there's not a genuine desire behind it to make life at a company better, but the way we try to make people friendly to each other often misses the point entirely.

Some major mistakes that are still committed way too much by managers:

Waiting too long to deal with disruptive team members.

Not firing inappropriate or low performers fast, stop dilly-dallying around by keeping them on for years because they might change.

Someone who disrupts other people constantly is not a high performer, no matter what critical system they're sitting on. And sometimes you have to make this decision based on intuition rather than hard evidence. You're a company, not a court system. The well-being of the rest of your team matters. It sucks, and some people will resent you for it; that's your job.

I remember this happening a couple of times in my career, in both good and bad ways. The bad way is obviously if a company doesn’t do anything about it despite constantly telling you that they will.

You start to get disillusioned and wonder why this person over there still has a job while you work your ass off to get a good performance. It’s so demotivating that you start to perform worse and ultimately care less.

At some point in my career, I was convinced that this is just how it is, and that’s it’s all a dystopian nightmare to work in a startup environment because of all the empty promises.

When the opposite happens, though, someone is getting removed and dealt with that you felt was untouchable (especially C-Levels)… that feels like people actually do care, and a place that is worth being at.

It’s a difficult topic as a manager because, ironically, I had the experience that only after I let someone go, people started to tell me what really happened behind the scenes. They didn’t before in its entirety (probably for fear of repercussions), and that only happened to me when I had a management title.

To this day, I’m not sure what the solution is. If you hold power over people with a title, it changes the dynamic, and they become cautious towards you, probably because of bad experiences in the past.

All you can do is lead by example and not punish others for voicing their opinions.

Ravi Mehta

wrote years ago on Product Leadership that "you should focus on strong performers and their strengths” as a manager, rather than trying to fix and hyperfocus on people who struggle without limit.

I still live by this advice today.

No accountability

Managers have to hold people accountable, especially themselves. When you mess up, you have to admit to it in front of everyone, say what you do to make sure it doesn't happen again, and move on.

On the flipside, it’s also important to teach people that when things are being promised or asked of others, they have to happen and not just be a formality.

I find in general, being mindful and asking (and promising) less of people is a good way to do that, while keeping a laser focus on those asks.

It’s very easy to slide into a culture where people promise each other things as a way of ending uncomfortable situations and meetings because they know that nothing’s gonna happen anyway.

Personal Growth is beyond the job

Investing in your team members should not be just transactional. I was pushed by some managers to go beyond the company that I was in, and I still am in contact with all of them in the most positive way.

I’d work for them any day of the week if they just asked me to, because they didn’t limit my horizon to just the job I had at the time. It felt genuine and not like someone was just keeping me from leaving, even if it was not in my interest.

A great advice I picked up is from the book “Radical Candor”, it’s impossible to really care about a person if you’re not genuinely interested in what their dreams and aspirations are beyond the job.

Besides it just being a good thing to do, there’s also a good commercial reason behind it:

How you treat your employees, for instance, on the way out, teaches those who are in the company whether you really care about who they are. Making it hard for people to leave by playing with their equity and being pedantic about legal details can destroy a ton of goodwill when someone who is loved by others wants to just leave.

Double standards, IC vs. Managers

Hold yourself to the same standards when you make decisions that you expect from others. If you want your team to bring a case for ideas, then so should you.

In important meetings, try to voice your opinions last and listen so people aren't anchoring on your word just because it's yours.

It’s really, really easy for a manager or leader to mandate something even though that was not the intention.

I had it happen a couple of times that people thought I gave them an order to do something when all I wanted to do was to throw an idea into the mix.

Stealing someone’s thunder & lack of praise

Stealing someone else’s achievements by making them your own is one of the most demoralizing things you can do. Your payment is your salary, and you can brag about it with your wife, how cool you are for managing 200 people.

Having said that, managers generally underestimate how much they should give genuine praise and how much it matters to the team that someone is recognizing their work.

It took me some time to realize that some people care about my opinion and validation simply because it’s mine as a manager.

You really can’t outsource this as a leader; it needs to come from your mouth, even if you have impostor syndrome.