

You don't create a culture - pbnaidu
http://www.37signals.com/svn/posts/1022-you-dont-create-a-culture

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maxklein
What the hell!? 37 signals are SO full of themselves. They are a small
business, yet they keep posting articles like they have discovered the secret
to changing the world. The restaurant round the corner to my house make more
income than them, but I do not see the owner standing outside telling others
how to run a restaurant instead of inside cooking.

37 Signals is one of the more annoying Web 2.0 companies. Yes, I know you're
trying to drum up interest so people invite you to hold talks, but why do all
articles always seem to be about how wonderful you are, how great your company
is, and you reinvented something or the other.

Get over it, you guys are not in possesion of the fountain of wisdom.

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steveblgh
It's just part of their business model, that's how they stand out from the
crowd. Otherwise how do you think yet another to-do list would be a viable
business app. Same thing holds for Joel Spolsky and Fog Creek. Yet another bug
tracker. It wouldn't go anywhere without Joel's writings on how to do
software.

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carterschonwald
I think a better question would be

"How do I improve the culture?" or "How do I maintain this culture, now that
we have it?"

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mattmaroon
You don't create it, but I think it can be artfully guided. By being cognizant
of the incentives and disincentives you create every day, you can exert a good
deal of control over it.

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anaulin
So obvious, and yet so difficult for bigger companies to get right.

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tdavis
Mostly because for monolithic companies process and procedure are more
important than culture for keeping the wheels greased.

In the same vein, you'd have to be pretty naive to think that culture at
places like Google, Apple and Microsoft (to an extent) can remain how they are
without some steering and work by higher-ups to foster said culture. Maybe it
wasn't forced to begin with, but there is certainly an upkeep cost as employee
numbers rise.

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edw519
An artificial culture is obviously phony and worse than no culture at all.

I once worked at a company that "claimed" a culture with emphasis in employee
training (which was obviously false).

The employees referred to the corporate culture as:

 _B_ ig _U_ ltimate _L_ arge _L_ ame _S_ pecial _H_ igh _I_ ntensity _T_
raining

