Tagged with: culture • group affiliation • group identity • self-awareness • social clues
A project can have its own culture. I am all in favor of that.
Providing a common understanding, shared beliefs and having a culture ensures the group stays together in rough times and communicates effectively.
I even encourage you to cultivate a fun group culture by means of metaphors.
But the notion of culture and identity must be considered with some caution.
Too much bonding in a group can create exclusion from outsiders, the bullying of deviants, resistance to change and a strong risk of groupthink.
Not good.
A project culture can be very different from the organization it is operating in. When your team is communicating its incredible superiority above the rest of the organization … well … not productive.
A group culture can create a healthy boundary with the host organization. Something that emphasizes a commonality between the team members. It’s not a judgment about the larger organizations and its employees.
Blogger Havi Brooks calls these boundaries “velvet ropes”. Habits, clues and rituals that create a distinction between her blog and the rest of the blogosphere:
“For me, it’s about distinctions and healthy boundaries. It’s easy to make the mistake of thinking a red velvet rope will make you come across as diva-ey or a total snob — that’s it’s about saying haha I’m in and you’re not.
But that’s not it.It is about distinctions, but again — in a positive way.
Your red velvet rope is about showing your Right People that you have a place for them, and making them welcome. The keeping-out part of the distinction is also useful — for keeping out the shoe-throwers and general asshats.”
So. Healthy boundaries.
These boundaries are not fixed and are determined by you. In essence, it’s your identity that sets the boundaries.
If you talk about projects as if you are conducting a war, using words like marching orders and the troops, thinking about friends and foes, you might be creating a boundary with enemies at one side, and allies at the other.
If your project only gets rated between financial success or failure, you might get the impression that the only identity a project can have is red or green. You might get the impression that the only choice you have is “Culture Of Titanic” or “Culture Of Sweet Success”.
Some even think that there is no choice.
Amartya Sen formulated this elegantly in “Identity and Violence” (affiliate link): “Given our inescapably plural identities, we have to decide on the relative importance of our different associations and affiliations in any particular context.”
This is a creativity we have to find ourselves, and not rely too much on external classifications. Amarty Sen again: “Despite our diverse diversities, the world is suddenly seen not as a collection of people, but as a federation of religions and civilizations … Our shared humanity gets savagely challenged when the manifold divisions in the world are unified into one allegedly dominant system of classification.”
To keep the boundaries healthy under various circumstances, we have to be creative and flexible in changing the relative importance of our plural (professional) identities.
Image by CarbonNYC.
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Excellent identification of the good/bad of project team culture. The team culture link to groupthink is spot on. I’ve tried to capture the perils of groupthink and the negative effect it can have on a team in a post I did a bit ago: http://bit.ly/WyjDH
It is amazing how fast a strong, close knit team and become combative with the stress of delivery dates looming and project deliverable pieces and parts not coming together smoothly.
Great post!
Your point about demonstrating team superiority above the rest of the organization reminds me that if the team is functioning well, with no boundary issues, and it shows the rest of the company what good project work looks like, so be it.
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This is excellent.
I have a situation in my project team where there is a operations manager. The Project team answers to the operations manager thus things run according to the Operations Manager (who happens to be the Marketing Manager), so things are quite out of control.
Also, how would you deal with projects which are run like a battalion. It’s either a success or failure. If it fails, then there is someone to blame.
H John,
I really liked your example of groupthink! (people should follow the link
) The opinion of the first speaker in a meeting can highly influence the opinion of the entire group.
Earlier this week I read a nice article about this mechanism and the abilene paradox;
http://mikeclayton.wordpress.com/2010/08/19/groupthink-abilene-and-risky-shift/
For those who want to know more about the Abilene paradox (great story)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abilene_paradox
Hi Laura,
Of course, great point. You are quite right. If it’s not being judgmental on host organization, functioning well and no boundary issues (and some other criteria I cannot think of right now
), by all means, you have an excellent role model and should definitely use it as such. I talk about this topic a little more here:
http://www.basdebaar.com/shock-wave-and-footprint-projects-with-a-different-culture-2143.html
Hi Bas,
I quote from your response above to John “The opinion of the first speaker in a meeting can highly influence the opinion of the entire group”
Amazing! we published yesterday on SlideShare a presentation in which we studies using four different approaches the effect of the first comment on subsequent comments. We arrived at similar conclusions.
The link is
http://www.slideshare.net/hudali15/a-four-pronged-approach-to-study-comments-on-slide-share
Hi Samuel,
I hope these two articles might provide some insight:
How To Turn A Blame Fest Into A Productive Meeting?
http://www.gantthead.com/blog/The-Project-Shrink/2062/
How To Tell Your PM His Leadership Skills Are Terrible?
http://www.gantthead.com/blog/The-Project-Shrink/2053/
Especially the comments can be useful.
Hi Ali,
Exactly! It is just like an applause, if someone starts loud enough it propagates. If the start is soft and hesitant, it mostly dies out quickly.
I encourage everyone to check out our presentation.
http://www.slideshare.net/hudali15/a-four-pronged-approach-to-study-comments-on-slide-share
More and more prominent about this early this week.