Charity Majors:

Success in business is what earns you the right to devote more time, attention, and resources to cultural issues, and to experiment with things that matter to you.

Martin Gonzalez and Josh Yellin:

In addition, people often conflate hierarchy with bureaucracy because they often expand in tandem. All else being equal, 50 people will always need more meetings, documentation, and approval processes than five. Nevertheless, it’s possible to reap the positive aspects of hierarchy in a growing startup without suffering from the downsides of too much bureaucracy. Maverick managers get into trouble when they ban hierarchy in the hopes of minimizing bureaucracy, but unleash chaos instead.

Phil Le-Brun:

Rather than pretending you can craft the perfect organisation chart and operating model, I advocate starting with principles and tenets to guide your organisation. The former method is an overly logical and static approach to human issues, as I described in my first post on untangling your organisational hairball. Principles have (I hope) shifted from outdated concepts, such as spans of control, in search of elusive efficiencies to those better suited for an era where complexity, speed, and innovation define organisations. Previous blog posts give in-depth examples of principles and decision-making tenets. But remember, the most beautifully crafted principles in the world mean nothing unless a comprehensive understanding of them cascades throughout the organisation.

Mandy Brown:

This is one of my answers to the question of, why give a fuck about work? Why love your work? It won’t, of course, love you back. It can’t. Work isn’t a thing that can love. It isn’t alive, it isn’t and won’t ever be living. And my answer is: don’t. Don’t give a fuck about your work. Give all your fucks to the living. Give a fuck about the people you work with, and the people who receive your work—the people who use the tools and products and systems or, more often than not, are used by them. Give a fuck about the land and the sea, all the living things that are used or used up by the work, that are abandoned or displaced by it, or—if we’re lucky, if we’re persistent and brave and willing—are cared for through the work. Give a fuck about yourself, about your own wild and tender spirit, about your peace and especially about your art. Give every last fuck you have to living things with beating hearts and breathing lungs and open eyes, with chloroplasts and mycelia and water-seeking roots, with wings and hands and leaves. Give like every fuck might be your last.

Luca Dellanna:

Leaders who think organizational culture is a set of concepts attempt to change it using words and concepts – and inevitably fail, because organizational culture is not a set of concepts.

Kandi Wiens:

However it manifests, it’s important to remember that workplace cynicism isn’t due to some sort of character flaw or being a “glass-half-empty” person. It originates from the workplace environment, not the individual. Many experts, in fact, see workplace cynicism and depersonalization as a form of defensive coping: Becoming distant and withdrawn is a self-protective measure that places a buffer between an employee and the emotional exhaustion and energy depletion their job is causing. Even relentless optimists’ protective measures can be broken down when they’re exposed to high degrees of stress, especially when that stress continues unabated.

Timothy R. Clark:

Low-velocity decision making. In a nice culture, there’s pressure to go along to get along. A low tolerance for candor makes the necessary discussion and analysis for decision making shallow and slow. You either get an echo chamber in which the homogenization of thought gives you a flawed decision, or you conduct what seem to be endless rounds of discussion in pursuit of consensus. Eventually, this can lead to chronic indecisiveness.

Rands:

Process is documented culture. How a team gets a familiar thing done should be broadly understood by the team. This is how we fix a bug. This is how we do a code check-in. This is how a feature is designed. This is how executive sign-off occurs.