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Leitura de 14 min

How Culture Might Eat Your Values For Breakfast

Summary

The episode explores the complex relationship between values and culture, both in engineering organizations and personal careers. The host frames the discussion by explaining that while purpose is often connected to values, and fulfilling work connects to those values, culture presents a significant challenge. Values are described as unique aspects we care about enough to act upon and invest resources into, but they exist within a broader cultural context.

The core insight is introduced through an extended garden metaphor. Values are likened to plants we intentionally cultivate in a patch of soil. However, culture is defined not just by these cultivated plants, but by “what you allow” to grow. If weeds (unwanted elements) are allowed to thrive, they can choke out the valued plants, regardless of the initial intention. Thus, culture can threaten the very values we seek to uphold.

This concept is applied to practical scenarios. An engineering team that values collaboration can see that value choked out if it allows a culture of blame and harsh criticism instead of openness and learning. Similarly, an individual who values work-life balance can have that value eroded by consistently allowing career opportunities that require sacrificing that balance. The host emphasizes that we create a “mini culture” for ourselves through what we permit.

The episode concludes by urging listeners, especially those in leadership, to grasp this insight: the things we allow can overpower the things we invest in. It’s a call to be intentional about cultural cultivation, ensuring that the environment (the garden’s soil and what grows in it) supports, rather than undermines, our stated values.

Recommendations

Tools

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Topic Timeline

  • 00:00:00 — Introducing the complex topic of culture vs. values — The host introduces the episode’s focus on culture, specifically from the lens of an engineering organization and personal career. He explains the podcast’s goal is to help find clarity, perspective, and purpose, noting that purpose is often connected to values. The episode aims to explore the difference between culture and values, setting up the core discussion.
  • 00:02:05 — Defining personal and unique values — The host discusses what constitutes meaningful values, distinguishing between universal values (like oxygen) and unique, personal values (like time with children or valuing authority). He explains that true values are things we act upon and invest time, energy, and resources into, not just aspirational statements. This sets the stage for understanding how these chosen values interact with the broader culture.
  • 00:06:42 — The garden metaphor for culture and values — The host introduces a central metaphor: a garden. Values are the specific plants we choose to cultivate and make space for. However, culture is the entire garden—it includes not only the cultivated plants but also what was there before we arrived and what will remain after we leave. The critical point is that culture is heavily influenced by what we allow to grow alongside our chosen plants.
  • 00:08:24 — Culture as “what you allow” can choke out values — Expanding the metaphor, the host describes a neglected garden where valued plants are dying, choked by weeds. The problem isn’t that the gardener valued weeds, but that they allowed the weeds. The key insight is presented: “The things you value may be threatened by your culture.” Culture, defined by what is permitted, can overpower and kill the values we intentionally cultivate if we are not vigilant.
  • 00:10:18 — Applying the insight to engineering teams and personal careers — The host applies the garden insight to concrete examples. An engineering team that values collaboration can have that value choked out if it allows a culture of blame and harsh criticism. Similarly, an individual who values work-life balance can erode that value by consistently allowing career opportunities that require sacrificing balance. The conclusion is that we each create a “mini culture” through the things we allow to grow.

Episode Info

  • Podcast: Developer Tea
  • Author: Jonathan Cutrell
  • Category: Technology Business Careers Society & Culture
  • Published: 2024-09-05T07:00:00Z
  • Duration: 00:14:01

References

Podcast Info

Transcript

[00:00:00] Today, we’re going to cover a subject that is difficult to figure out exactly how to

[00:00:19] cover.

[00:00:20] Because it’s complex.

[00:00:24] And there are a ton of podcasts and books about this subject.

[00:00:30] There’s a lot of sayings about this subject.

[00:00:33] And I want to cover this from the lens of an engineering organization, but also from

[00:00:42] a personal career lens.

[00:00:45] Today I want to talk about culture.

[00:00:48] And more specifically, I want to give you a backdrop to think about culture and the

[00:00:55] difference between culture and something like values.

[00:01:01] This podcast exists to help you find clarity, perspective, and purpose in your career.

[00:01:08] And one of the parts of purpose is likely connected to your values.

[00:01:15] Everybody has a slightly different way of thinking about developing a clear sense of

[00:01:20] purpose for themselves, but most people connect purpose to their values.

[00:01:26] And your work will be most sustainable, most fulfilling if you can find some way to connect

[00:01:33] your work to your values as well.

[00:01:35] That doesn’t mean necessarily that you’re trying to save the world or that you’re trying

[00:01:40] to make every single action you take a fulfillment of your values.

[00:01:44] That’s a very hard thing to optimize.

[00:01:49] And the extension of this is the idea of culture.

[00:01:55] It’s not an extension on values, but rather values are kind of a carving out of culture.

[00:02:03] And I’ll tell you what I mean by that.

[00:02:05] So if we think about values, essentially, the meaningful values that we have, there

[00:02:12] are some values that are shared, right?

[00:02:14] Human beings tend to value oxygen.

[00:02:18] It’s not a particularly useful value to point out in any context that matters for this show.

[00:02:28] But what is another value that is not necessarily universally held?

[00:02:33] I value, for example, time with my children.

[00:02:37] Now, again, this is not incredibly unique, but it is a value that I have that the next

[00:02:43] person may not necessarily have.

[00:02:45] It is not a universal value.

[00:02:48] Another value or a value statement at least might be I value public speaking.

[00:02:54] And usually if I have a report or if I’m coaching somebody through a discussion about their

[00:03:00] values and they say that they value public speaking, I might ask them to identify the

[00:03:06] underlying kind of common ground value that that represents.

[00:03:11] So public speaking may mean that you value your public image or the way that people perceive

[00:03:20] you.

[00:03:21] You value having authority.

[00:03:25] would be a unique and defining value that not everyone necessarily shares with you.

[00:03:31] Some people value a sense of homeostasis more than they value a sense of progress.

[00:03:39] In other words, they would rather have, let’s say, a job that feels stable and secure and

[00:03:45] doesn’t have a lot of variation over a job that has a lot more variation or a lot more

[00:03:51] risk even, but that risk is accompanied by a sense of progress.

[00:03:58] So this is kind of how values take shape.

[00:04:00] They are potentially unique aspects of things that we care about that we would act on, that

[00:04:08] we actually can prove, hey, you know what, I actually took action to show that I value

[00:04:14] this thing.

[00:04:15] It’s not just an aspirational value, which might be more reflective of a value that you

[00:04:21] care about what people think about you, but rather it’s something that you truly value,

[00:04:27] value in the in the sense that you’re willing to invest time, energy, resources, whatever

[00:04:33] into that value or into realizing that value in your life.

[00:04:38] So what do I mean by carving out of culture, that values kind of carve out your culture?

[00:04:45] That’s what we’re going to talk about right after we talk about today’s sponsor, Unblocked.

[00:04:58] Velda T is sponsored by Unblocked.

[00:05:02] How long should it take your average engineer to write seven lines of code?

[00:05:08] Should it take a couple of minutes, an hour?

[00:05:12] What if it takes five days?

[00:05:13] Are you looking at this at these metrics this way?

[00:05:16] You might be tempted to think that the developers on your team need help writing the code, but

[00:05:22] that’s usually not the case.

[00:05:24] The biggest drag for most developers isn’t writing code.

[00:05:27] It’s having enough context to know what code to write.

[00:05:30] And in a perfect world, your engineering team wouldn’t waste time, days on end even,

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[00:06:19] Get started today at getunblocked.com.

[00:06:22] That’s G-E-T-unblocked.com.

[00:06:25] I want you to imagine a patch of dirt.

[00:06:42] A patch of soil, hopefully.

[00:06:45] This patch of soil is maybe the future home of your next garden.

[00:06:52] And the soil is, you know, 20 or 30 feet by 30 feet.

[00:06:58] And you can walk around the whole thing.

[00:06:59] You can kind of see every part of it.

[00:07:03] And so you start to plan it out and you identify what plants you care about planting.

[00:07:11] These, in a way, are your values.

[00:07:15] You are actively choosing to make space.

[00:07:22] For these.

[00:07:23] And they create parts of the culture of the garden.

[00:07:31] They are cultivated explicitly, but this is not the whole of the garden’s culture.

[00:07:40] Cultivation happens before you ever plant your plants,

[00:07:45] before you ever put flowers in the ground, before you till up the soil.

[00:07:52] Cultivation happens long before you arrived and it will continue to happen after you leave.

[00:08:00] And so your impact on culture is dependent heavily on how your values play out

[00:08:09] and how you invest in those values.

[00:08:13] But the most important thing to understand about culture,

[00:08:17] at least in this metaphor, is that culture is what you allow.

[00:08:24] Imagine you walk up to somebody else’s garden.

[00:08:28] You recognize that they have a handful of plants that they’ve planted in sporadic locations,

[00:08:36] but many of them are dying, being choked out by weeds.

[00:08:39] You might believe, by just looking at this, that those people don’t value those plants at all.

[00:08:47] In fact, you might believe that they value weeds.

[00:08:51] That doesn’t seem quite right.

[00:08:54] The truth is, those people probably did value those plants, but they allowed for the weeds.

[00:09:02] For the weeds.

[00:09:04] The culture of the garden became such that the things they valued were choked out

[00:09:10] by the things they allowed.

[00:09:13] This is the insight I want you to grab a hold of and never let it go,

[00:09:18] especially if you’re in a position of leadership.

[00:09:21] The things you value may be threatened by your culture.

[00:09:27] The things you value may be threatened by your culture, like weeds that you allow into the garden,

[00:09:37] the plants that you care about, those values that you’ve spent a lot of time cultivating, perhaps.

[00:09:46] Those values begin to die out.

[00:09:49] So in this specific way, values carve out culture,

[00:09:55] because culture is not just what you do see, but also what you don’t see.

[00:10:03] The culture of the garden is not just the plants that you’ve planted,

[00:10:09] but all of the time that you’ve spent ensuring that nothing else can impede on those plants.

[00:10:18] An engineering team that says that they value collaboration.

[00:10:23] They encourage everyone in the company to comment on everyone else’s PRs.

[00:10:28] They get together for annual offsites, and they have quarterly meetups.

[00:10:35] But that value of collaboration becomes challenged by a culture of blame and harsh criticism,

[00:10:46] rather than, say, openness and learning.

[00:10:50] By allowing blame and harsh criticism, we’ve allowed our value of collaboration to be choked out.

[00:11:02] In your personal career, you may say that you value balance,

[00:11:08] and you have a clear definition of what that balance means.

[00:11:13] But then, the next career opportunity comes along,

[00:11:17] and it requires you to give up a little bit of that balance.

[00:11:22] At what point does that begin to choke out your value?

[00:11:28] You’re creating a mini culture for yourself.

[00:11:34] The things that you allow to grow are your culture.

[00:11:40] Thank you so much for listening to today.

[00:11:42] Thank you so much for listening to today’s episode of Developer Tea.

[00:11:44] I hope this is at least prodding some good thought for you.

[00:11:50] Maybe you’ve encountered this sense of your culture being impeded on,

[00:11:56] or your values being impeded on by an out-of-control or unintentional culture.

[00:12:02] The things that you’re allowing are overpowering the things that you are investing in.

[00:12:10] If you enjoyed this, or if you think someone on your team, maybe your manager,

[00:12:14] could use to listen to this, I’d encourage you to send it to them.

[00:12:19] That is one way you can help Developer Tea continue to reach more engineers and managers

[00:12:25] and other senior leaders, and hopefully help move things in a positive direction.

[00:12:31] That was kind of the goal of this show when we began.

[00:12:36] Hopefully that is happening actively as this show spreads, so feel free to share this.

[00:12:43] If you are listening in a podcast provider, please consider subscribing.

[00:12:47] This is another way you can help Developer Tea continue growing because

[00:12:51] you’re much more likely to continue listening if you subscribe.

[00:12:55] Finally, the most important thing that we can have is more reviews and ratings,

[00:13:01] primarily in iTunes.

[00:13:02] Hopefully you know that this is incredibly helpful.

[00:13:05] If you haven’t left a review, if you are getting some value out of this show,

[00:13:09] then that is the only ask that I really have for you, is to leave a review and let others know

[00:13:14] so they can find the show as well.

[00:13:15] Thanks so much for listening.

[00:13:17] Thank you again to today’s sponsor, Unblocked.

[00:13:19] This is our final episode with Unblocked.

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[00:13:48] That’s G-E-T, Unblocked.com.

[00:13:52] Thanks so much for listening and until next time, enjoy your tea.

[00:14:00] you

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