my thoughts on culture

A few months ago, I had a conversation with the COO of Rise, Awa Ekekwe about a topic... culture.

For a long time now, I’ve been wondering “what is culture” and “why is it important” because I noticed a lot of people in the corporate and the startup world threw it around a lot.

To get started with this study, I started with the etymology (origin) of the word “culture”. It originates from the word “colere” which means “to till, to cultivate”.

Now, when I was thinking deeply about this, I realized that the word “culture” has come to mean two different things, but one influences the other.

The first word is in the sense that you “culture” something. For example, you till the land or you teach a child etiquette to be “cultured”.
This was interesting because when I really thought about it, we have all been cultured. One day, your mom put a buba and iro on you and told you that was the way to dress to events like weddings.
One day, your dad looked at you strangely when you quickly collected a gift from one of his friends without refrain.
These little experiences come together to effectively “culture” you.

Civilization has even taken a wild man that lived in caves and effectively cultured him to follow etiquette and when eating, to never allow his mouth to meet the spoon halfway.
“It’s bad manners”, they said.
And to me, it was interesting how this process goes on as long as you are alive. You are being “cultured” from your experiences every day. That’s why you have your own pattern of behavior, your non-negotiable values, the way you treat people, what’s “right” to you and what can never make sense to you.

But there’s also another version of the word “culture”.

To understand this, I studied philosophers like Raymond Williams, Herder, Hegel, Geertz, Becker and they all answered the question in different interesting ways but to be honest... I don’t personally think it’s a philosophically deep question.
I believe the primary school definition is the best way to describe culture.
And it’s simply “the way of doing things.”

So, in your home, you might have a culture of waking up at 4am for morning prayers, others might have a culture of having morning prayers anytime the head of the family is awake. Some companies might have a culture of kindness and empathy some might have a culture of “the work is the only thing that matters”.

Culture just describes the way things are being done. It’s why the Yorubas have “fila”, and it’s why a manager in a company believes it’s OK to call someone at 3am for a status report just because they are in different time zones.

Then I ask what I believe to be a deeper question: why this culture?
Why does every community have their own version of “how we do things”?
Why would a company say it’s OK to assign work to you on Saturdays despite it being a 9-5?
Why do Yorubas wear fila?

And the only reasonable answer I could come up with was…. someone decided.

Someone, a very long time ago, decided to shape a piece of cloth and put it on his head. That man was probably not thinking about legacy or culture or tradition. He was probably just cold, or wanted to look different, or was showing off. But people saw it. They copied it. And today, generations later, the fila is a marker of Yoruba identity.

A manager in the US decided to check in with his top engineer in Nigeria but he forgot the time difference and woke him at 4am. The engineer probably didn’t dispute this. And since nothing was said to confront or address it, the manager would continue pinging him at such ungodly time. Then, a culture of “always on” starts to take shape.

So, then I thought: “If culture is the way of doing things and someone decided, what makes that person to be in a position to influence culture?”

Imagine this, a team member ghosts his manager on Slack for three days before replying and nothing was done to address it. That just effectively set a precedent that it’s now fine to ghost on Slack and other team members have seen that signal. Sooner or later, if care is not taken, late replies would be the “way of doing things”, and the business would suffer for it.

Let me tell you a short story.

On my first day of work, I dressed corporately to my office (as-per I’m a CU student 😅) and the first thing I noticed was that everyone else in the office was in casual, and I don’t mean “corporate casual”.

So, the next day, can you guess what I wore?

A BEACH SHIRT!

Why? Because I saw the HR look the other way when someone came in with just a casual tee despite the fact I came in.

This gave me the signal that corporate wear wasn’t necessary to the company, and I adjusted to the “culture”.

I’ve noticed that the reason why cultures are born through small decisions and actions and even retained is because of one thing: survival calculation.

We see something being played out and since people reacted to it positively or neutrally, we continue to do it because we can “survive” it.

It’s why those team members can continue that culture of late replying in Slack. It’s why I wore a beach shirt on the second day of my work. And it’s why companies either have a bad work culture or a great one.

And if I remember what my Primary 5 teacher taught me properly… culture is very dynamic.
What you do can influence culture ever so slightly.
And being in a position of leadership increases the chances of your decisions and actions being “survival-worthy” since you have more influence and the other team members may not have the guts to tell you if you are wrong.

If you take a good or bad action in a team, community, or environment and it “survives”, there’s a chance someone else would copy your action and this spreads, eventually establishing a culture.

Now, a few months back I got on a 1 hour-ish call with the COO of Rise, Awa Ekekwe to fully understand how to build a culture at a company and to get his experience building the team at Rise. And it was really cool to see Awa take an intentional approach to culture at Rise. From our conversation, he pointed out a few things I thought were really valuable.

• Figure out what’s important to YOU as a team or company. Make it clear to everyone.

• Reward it publicly when you see it.

• Address it when it’s not happening.

• Most importantly, don’t just talk about it… LIVE IT!

It’s funny how these pieces of advice are relevant to companies, startups, teams, and even families!

I believe you can influence the culture by paying very close attention to the dynamics of your environment and try through constant and intentional actions to shape it into something you’ll love better. And the crazy thing is that it’s extremely possible because that’s how culture is born!

If you want a culture of kindness and empathy, take great effort to show this to people every day.
If you want a culture of doing great work despite constraints, do the great work despite constraints.
And eventually, it’ll get noticed and spread into your environment.
Like I said, culture starts with the fact that someone decided. Let that someone be you.

O dabọ!