Culture is harder to "do right" in organizations today because so many of the little things that once occurred without effort don't happen as often anymore. 1/
Just one example: because it has never been easier to do work alone than today, the interpersonal, culture-building interactions that once happened accidentally (yet frequently) hardly happen at all. 2/
When I first started practicing law, nearly half my time was spent with my peers in our firm's law library researching and talking about our work. Though I didn't realize it at the time, the partners took turns doing their own research with us. 3/
In the library, we didn't just talk about our cases, but also shared stories of our families, weekend plans, etc. We also learned from our bosses as they shared with us their own stories. 4/
These informal sessions didn't just make us better lawyers, they gave us an opportunity to get to know and like our peers. To new lawyers -- and many other knowledge workers -- these kinds of interactions don't exist in today's work-anywhere, computer-centric workplaces. 5/
And because the "accidental" culture-building things that once happened without effort don't happen as often (or at all), it requires an intentionality to build them back into an organization. 6/
It isn't that people are worse at culture than they used to be, it is that building great culture today requires using a set of tools to drive engagement and interaction that we don't always have easily at hand -- because we'd never needed to use them before. 7/
So when someone complains that newer hires "don't do what it takes" ask what investments they've made to replace the interactions with managers, peers, and customers they leveraged to become successful, but that no longer exist for those they're complaining about. /end
