What is “company culture”?

Boeing had a recent embarrassment when SpaceX replaced the Boeing Starliner as the shuttle for stranded astronauts at the International Space Station. And the problems may cost $1.5 billion.

Everyone keeps saying the Starliner’s quality problems (and other, very public quality disasters) can be traced to “company culture.” What does that really mean?

Most definitions you can find say that “company culture” means an organization’s “beliefs, values, attitudes, standards, goals and practices,” or a similar set of language. To me, that means the unwritten things people say and do at an organization when the bosses aren’t around, typically because “every has always done it that way.”

I have often found company culture to emanate from the top leadership of the organization. And it can manifest itself in ways the leaders may not intend.

For example, I worked at an organization at which the CEO extolled the values of togetherness and community. Despite this idea, he also often joked about trying to get as much money as possible from our top supporters. The CEO also denigrated customers who didn’t pay enough, even suggesting on occasion that they were not deserving of the same level of service.

I believe the staff heard the jokes more clearly than the supposed “values.” The disdain for the small customers ended up permeating the organization. It manifested in our customer service practices, our priorities and the ways we thought about our work. Everything focused on the big dollars to the detriment of both “togetherness” and “community.”

Not surprisingly, these small customers see the company as elitist and uncaring.

Changing this culture can be really hard, but a great way to start is to change language. A different company where I worked started every meeting with a safety notice (even if it was in our headquarters offices, in which the safety notice was about how to exit the building in case of fire). I truly believe that this focus had some effect on the entire staff’s priorities.

Think about the words you use regularly at work.

When your managers meet with their teams, do they have “supervision” or “coaching”? Or do they call it “creative visioning” like I did?

When you talk about customers, do you hear words like “complainers” or “long-term partners”? When you talk about staff, do you hear people call them “workers” or “team members” or "experts”? Making small changes to the ways you speak and act can have long-term effects.

Boeing could use some of those changes.