Crafting Culture
People often talk about how an individual should rewrite the culture of their institution but rarely explore the non-obvious consequences of doing so. While culture can very effectively shape a governing structure’s behavior, wielding it as a tool is difficult.
A great example of this can be seen in some “rationalist” groups, which devolved into dominance hierarchies in which knowledge of academic research determined a person’s position in the hierarchy. Sadly, this lowered the value of information backed by well-supported research and elevated obscure, counterintuitive, or alarmist information (in the same way obscure anime knowledge would help the anime nerd dunk on others at an anime convention). Eventually, these communities were consumed by apocalypticism—with non-apocalypticist ideas barely getting any breathing room.
When designing a culture, ask yourself: “What will be used to signal status? How will pursuit of that status produce unintended consequences?” Consider a group defined by a hatred of racism: Once racism has been stamped out entirely within the group and all members see each other as totally equal, what will determine dominance hierarchy then? Groups don’t dissolve once they achieve their mission; they either find new types of racism or redefine racism.
This is why within the Pragmatist Foundation, we define moderation and openness to new ideas as key values. While this encourages more “out there” ideas, we hardly regard the consideration of some wacky concepts as a worst-case outcome.
Culture can also backfire when a voice is given to the wrong people. Cultures by default give a voice to those who are loudest and those with the most time. In many online communities, for example, those with the most time to sort through, produce, and interact with the most content are often heard most. When those communities are dedicated to something like funny animal pictures, this is not a problem, but in groups dedicated to news and philosophy, this is catastrophic. This issue can be addressed via a two-layer vetting system like liquid democracy, in which users can either vote directly or delegate their vote to a more informed community member whose votes will therefore have more weight.
The 360 Review Problem
When talking about crafting institutional culture, there is perhaps no issue more acute than that of the “360 Review Problem.” 360 reviews involve performance evaluations in which feedback about people is solicited from all directions (such as managers, coworkers, and direct reports), typically on a regularly-scheduled basis.
This tool and others like it assume that institutions are made up of individual players with firmly held and accurate understandings of the areas of improvement open to other individuals. Assessments like these are supported with the assumption that these evaluations will produce individual improvement. Neither of these things is true: Not only do most individuals not think that much about other people, but when they are forced to offer feedback, that feedback is often for the benefit of the giver—not the receiver.
360 reviews aren’t just not helpful; they’re often harmful. People generally ignore how others could improve outside of when another person’s work causes an immediate inconvenience or when they are forced to craft a “narrative” about another person. 360 reviews force individuals within an organization to regularly craft negative narratives about coworkers where none may have existed before. When people are forced to list what’s wrong with another person, that negative narrative sticks around well after the evaluation passes. (“What’s wrong with Shelly? Well, I guess she makes mistakes sometimes” turns into “Oh look, there goes mistake-prone Shelly.”). Essentially, 360 reviews create environments in which individuals are encouraged to secretly look down on each other while offering no real benefit.
Here you may be bristling, thinking: “How can an individual improve without negative feedback?” The correct way to run these types of feedback processes is through the use of immediate, task-specific negative feedback. Set up a culture in which people’s mistakes are discussed in the moment—and emphasize that poor actions rather than overall traits are the subject of focus. Offer feedback for improving someone’s ability to undertake the task, not their core character.
For example, telling someone to make fewer mistakes is transparently a fool’s errand and is borderline abusive. Instead, focus on each particular mistake and work with that person to find out what led to the mistake and what might be done to avoid those conditions in the future.
If you have hired an individual and they need to change the core of their character to be good at the job, you made a mistake in hiring.
Quarterly or annual individual reviews can be useful tools for resetting positive emotions toward coworkers if they are focused around only positive feedback and reviews of how the subject of evaluation has made the evaluator’s life better. Rather than force people to regularly craft negative narratives around their colleagues, routine gratitude sessions have the potential to improve regard among people and even boost an organization’s overall mood.
But what about long-term improvement? Clearly not all improvement can be task specific. There are leaders who can competently draw individuals toward self-improvement in a way that makes them more effective—there are also leaders who can’t. Leaders who can naturally cultivate improvement in others will not need or benefit from 360-review-like processes, which compromise their autonomy in how they handle that implementation. Leaders who do not naturally inspire improvement in others aren’t going to magically grow that capability by adopting structured practices that encourage them to develop negative narratives about others.