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When a person is offered a job, he thinks first of all about what he will have to do in a new place, or about the role that he will play in the company. is that enough?
Of course, finding a suitable job, position, salary is very important, but the environment in which you have to work is no less important. Therefore, Adam Grant from the University of Pennsylvania recommends paying attention to corporate culture – the values, ethical standards adopted in the company. It is from them, in his opinion, that job satisfaction and success will largely depend.
But how do you understand the culture of a company if you’ve never worked there before? How is one company different from another? The answer can be obtained in the form of stories by asking people to tell stories that happened in their company but could not have happened elsewhere. If the cases told by different employees of the company overlap in some way, this is a good sign, meaning that there is a coincidence between people on the issue of values.
The researchers found that employees of different companies tell similar stories. Three decades ago, a team of researchers led by Stanford professor Joanne Martin analyzed people’s stories about work. They found a tendency to exaggerate the uniqueness of their company and its corporate culture. Regardless of the size of the company, form of ownership and field of activity, seven stories are repeated over and over again in the stories of employees. Here are four of them.
Story 1. Is the boss a human too?
The main character is the boss, who has the opportunity to demonstrate that he is better than others. Two polar options: the president of the company includes his name in the general duty schedule at the multi-channel telephone – which means he is one of us. An executive who won’t let you use his parking space, even when he’s on vacation, emphasizes his superiority.
Story 2. Can a small person make a career?
An optimistic version of this story is the story of Colleen Barrett, who began her career at Southwest Airlines as a secretary and ended it as president, and Jim Ziemer, who started at Harley-Davidson as a freight elevator operator and rose to one from directors. In the pessimistic version, they talk about a low-status employee who achieved a lot, but never got a promotion.
Story 3. Will I be fired?
What will the manager do if the company needs layoffs? Former Walmart CEO Michael Duke laid off more than 13 employees and made $19,2 million in profits, while Charles Schwab bank executives cut salaries and paid massive bonuses to retirees to avoid layoffs.
Story 4. How does the director react to mistakes?
Many companies get fired for mistakes, but there are also positive examples. The most famous case occurred in the 1960s at IBM. An employee made a $10 million mistake and walked into CEO Tom Watson’s office ready to be fired. “Fire you? Watson said. “I just spent 10 million on your education.”
We see that all these stories are about three fundamental aspects – fairness, workplace stability and control over one’s future in the company. The remaining three stories are “Will the company help me if I get sick or move?” “What happens if the director breaks the rules?” and “How does the company overcome challenges?” are associated with the same problems.
Joan Martin’s team did their research 30 years ago, and today we would certainly hear about the ping-pong tables installed in the company and how management encourages innovation by allowing employees to spend up to 20% of their working time developing new ideas. But the essence remains the same – people are interested in justice, stability and control.
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