Finding the Right Work Culture for You
Times of impasse often bring with them an appraisal of our surroundings: Is this where I want to be living? Is this organization the right place for me? Where have you chosen to live and to work? No doubt, you spent a lot of time considering the relative attraction of a home in the suburbs, the city or in a rural area. Have you given this much thought to the place where you work? Organizational culture is important for everybody. In my experience, people learn the importance of organizational culture the hard way, through trial and error, usually in their 20s (though it takes some considerably longer). It is not uncommon for me to listen to a young professional in her late 20s who tells me how she has focused thus far in her career on looking for a match in terms of function and industry but is only now coming to realize that, for her at least, organizational culture is as important if not more so.

I have found that many students and a good number of more seasoned business professionals (who should know better) underestimate the importance of fully assessing an organizational culture before making a decision to accept a job offer. Organizational culture is, in fact, difficult to assess. Good information is hard to come by and sometimes can be acquired only after an actual job offer is made, giving the prospective employee the opportunity to ask some more pointed and direct questions about the people and the working atmosphere that she is about to join. Annual reports and recruiting materials are often full of similar buzzwords concerning culture. The best source of information on organizational culture is a former employee of that organization who clearly has no "axe to grind ", one way or another, with his former employer. Second best is a current employee who stands at a distance from the hiring process and who has reason, through either friendship or other affiliation, to be open and honest.

It is also important to realize that culture is constituted at many different levels. Industries themselves have some very general cultural attributes; most would agree that investment banking environments are generally different from, let us say, retail apparel environments. Within industries, individual organizations will vary in terms of culture. This is the level of culture that people speak of most often, and whose image is deliberately cultivated by the public-relations efforts of the company itself. But culture can vary substantially within any one organization; therefore the next level of cultural analysis is the level of the individual business unit or business area. A sales organization within a company may have a notably different working atmosphere from a finance or production unit.

The fourth and final level of cultural analysis concerns the personality of a particular boss. There is a very great advantage in knowing the person to whom you're going to report in advance of your accepting a position with an organization. Spending time with this individual, as much time as possible, before making a decision about a particular job offer is highly desirable. This may seem like an obvious point, but the fact of the matter is that many students except job offers, particularly when those offers are coming from large corporations, without knowing who their specific boss will be.

One very mundane, but for some people very important, aspect of culture is physical working environment. I have worked with many individuals who, if in love with the essence of the job itself, can perform well in virtually any environmental setting. But I've also worked with people who have left otherwise exciting work opportunities because of their feelings about the work space itself. I remember one client in particular who told me about conducting a long and ultimately successful job search and who, after many interviews, accepted a position in organization that he felt had a great culture, good management, and exceptional career opportunities. He apparently had not taken these interviews in the building where he would be working. On his first day of work, when the elevator door opened onto his new workspace, he stopped and stared at a vast expanse of cubicles and their connecting alleyways; he quit the position shortly thereafter. Not everyone should expect a corner office or any office at all, but those individuals who know that they are particularly sensitive to their physical environment need to take the extra steps necessary to assess what that environment is going to be.

If you have high interpersonal transaction needs, you need to understand, as well, how to assess a particular role in terms of its level of interpersonal transaction. In this regard, it is very helpful if you know someone in a similar role and can produce a vivid imagination of what an actual workday would be like for this individual. If you do not know anyone who fits the bill, it is very important for you to make the effort to interview someone in such a role, or a very similar role. You should not focus the questions in such an interview solely on your contact's liking of the work or her ideas about the company or industry. The focus should include questions concerning the contact's hour-by-hour experience during the working day, including the frequency and the specific types of interpersonal transactions that he or she experiences.

One way to think about culture is in terms of personality. You can think about an organization, its values, its setting and the type of people that it attracts in terms of the three motivational dimensions of dominance, affiliation and achievement. You can then analyze the organization, at any level (industry, company, business unit, boss), the same way that you have analyzed your own social motivation profile. The final step, of course, is to assess the match of the organizational profile and your own personal profile.

All organizations have power hierarchies, encourage and reward achievement and provide a social setting within which work is accomplished. But, as with individuals, the emphasis varies considerably. Organizations as diverse as universities, mutual fund companies, and sales driven organizations often have a primary achievement orientation. The "stars" in these settings are often identified by quantifiable achievement: papers published, the performance of stock picks, quarterly sales. These settings tend to attract achievement-dominant individuals. At senior levels of management you will of course often find need for dominance oriented people, but the professional core are typically achievement- dominant.

In some corporate environments there is a strong emphasis on power and competition for formal authority. Such organizations have more pronounced hierarchies and clear differentiation in the compensation, status and privilege that is afforded at each level. They are sometimes described as "command and control" environments modeled on traditional military structures, where directives and initiatives flow almost exclusively from the top down. The power structure of other organizations is characterized by a more "flat" structure and a more collegial sense of information sharing and decision making. Authority is deliberately pushed down the chain of command so that decisions can be made by those closest to the customer or those most directly involved in the immediate problems faced by individual working units. When evaluating the power profile of an organizational culture, try to place it on a continuum from a strict command and control model on one pole and a truly collegial, more informal and high information-sharing structure on the other.

Clearly organizations vary along the dimension of affiliation or people focus. In high affiliation cultures it is clear that most people there have made choices based on the interpersonal environment. There is a palpable sense of belonging to a team and new team members are chosen, after competence has been determined, with an eye to being contributing members of the work community. Collegiality and civility are valued. Birthdays are remembered and important personal achievements celebrated with a group lunch or after-hours get-together. People "cover" for each other during times of high demand and this behavior is taken for granted. Social connections often form outside of the work environment, a least among peers.

The management of high affiliation cultures takes career development seriously. Managers are expected to provide a mentoring role (or designate a mentor) and career development of subordinates is an important and explicit dimension of their own performance review. There is an active focus on employee retention and a substantial budget for training and development. Policies for parental leave and childcare are progressive. Such organizations discuss work-life issues openly and take action when possible to help employees achieve a better balance. If you are a high-affiliation person these aspects of culture are exceptionally important. They should find their place at the top of your criteria for accepting a job.

The emphasis on dominance, affiliation and achievement, as do other aspects of culture, may vary significantly from business area to business area within the same organization. The Sales or Research and Development areas may be strongly achievement oriented and be set up to reward achievers who reach specific goals or evidence of productivity. At the same time the senior corporate culture may have a strong need for dominance orientation. Human Resources attract high affiliation individuals (who often feel counter-culture in strong dominance-oriented cultures).

The final level of culture, the personality of your boss is also worthy of analysis. Which of the social motivators seems dominant for her? Does she have a close secondary? How does her motivation profile compare to yours? Based on her profile, what types of behavior and productivity is she likely to value more than others? Is she aware of her bias? If you are a highly task oriented achievement or need for dominance oriented person with a high affiliation boss, you had better reserve time to socialize and inquire about her weekend plans.

If these orientations are reversed, you had better be clear what the performance objectives of your boss are. A high achievement oriented manager has specific standards or performance goals in mind, whether or not they are explicit in the job description. You need to know what they are and check in frequently to make sure that they have not changed and you are on track. A need for dominance oriented supervisor may micro-manage, or, paradoxically, not allow sufficient time for your mentoring and development. You need to have a sense of what her power objectives are and how your contributions might advance them.

The "culture" of your boss also includes his deeper motivations- his deeply embedded life interests. What are his two core function personal highs? You can count on a Enterprise Control and Influence through Language and Ideas manager to have a style that is very different from a high Creative Production and Theory Development and Conceptual Thinking manager. The former will likely have a high power orientation and have a very strong no-nonsense task focus. The latter will be imaginative, enjoy big picture thinking and probably reward intellectual prowess and innovation. Take the time now to review the eight core function model and assign a tentative personal high profile for your current boss. Over the next week observe his behavior and decision making more closely to gage your accuracy. Determine, as well, the profile of his social motivation. This is a worthwhile exercise for anyone with whom you interact on a regular basis.

Finding a Home for Vision
There has never been humanity without a tribe. Consider any group that deeply matters to you: family, extended family, a faith community, a club of people who share a passion, or the place that you choose to call "work" and where you spend such a large portion of your life. It is a marvel how these organizations come into being, grow and take care of those who belong. What a task is set before them everyday. Each member of these groups is unique, with his or her own deeply embedded life interests, his or her own social motivations, and his or her own strivings, yet all come together to accomplish something as a group, as a whole. How can any organization possibly meet the needs of those who form it! How can any organization form an identity and a purpose when composed of such difference! And yet it happens.

It happens best when we know what to ask of each other, and are clear about what we can give in return. In my experience, it is often the asking that is more difficult, especially when we are younger and not yet truly clear about what we want. Many times I have worked with people who come to me disillusioned with their workplace and what they see as a lack of recognition and opportunity there. Sometimes they are seeing things clearly: poor management has overlooked talent and dedication that is waiting to be harnessed. Many times, though, my client has failed to do two things. The first is to get clear on what is really important for him in terms of his truest interests and his needs in terms of power (authorization to act), achievement (goals that have meaning) and opportunity to connect with people in an energizing way. The second thing in need of doing is asking for what he wants once he has become clear.

How many times have you gone to your boss, or to your colleagues, and said, "This is what I want to do next. It will make a real contribution. I am deeply motivated and committed to getting it done. This is what I need from you in terms of support…" You may indeed work in an organization where there has been little encouragement or modeling for such behavior. You may even work in a setting that explicitly censures such behavior. If that is the case, it may indeed be time to leave. Much of the time, however, it works. The tribe moves forward with the energy of each member's vision. There is no other source for its growth.

Deep Dive
The Importance of Place
In the Deep Dive for Chapter Eight of Getting Unstuck: How Dead Ends Become New Paths, you created a diagram representing the relative strength for you of the three central social motivators: dominance, people and achievement. Consider now your place of work. Create a similar diagram to represent the strength of these motivators as dimensions of the culture of your workplace. Use your immediate department (rather than the whole organization) as the level of analysis (you can repeat the exercise for the organization as a whole).

Be sure to think about the distance between your graphing of the dominance and affiliation motivators. Even if you work in a very hierarchical and internally competitive organization with a high need for dominance culture, there will be a considerable difference in cultural tone if the organizational valuing of the affiliation motivator is relatively close to the value level of need for dominance versus relatively distant.

To this analysis you can add your analysis of your answer to question number two in the Career Vision Image Gathering Exercise. That question asked you to give five adjectives that described the atmosphere or culture of the workplace in your vision. Review those adjectives now. What information do they add to the social motivation analysis of culture? Pay attention to how both doing the social motivation analysis and reviewing your answer to question number two affect your current imagination of an ideal work culture. Using the Life Vision Image Gathering Exercise, you can extend this assessment to the culture and environment that you seek in non-work settings as well.