Getty

If you are an avid traveler, you may be familiar with Away, the fast-growing luggage maker, but you may not have heard of its toxic work environment. A recenttell-all article about Aways internal practices sheds light on the risks of using values and mission to build a cohesive culture. At Away, employees may have faced nightmarish scenarios not because their employer lacked a strong corporate persona, but as a result of it.

Consider the following: People were routinely scolded for falling short of the companys values; they were prevented from exchanging private emails and messages; and they were cajoled into ignoring their feelings of exhaustion and into acting as the extraordinary team players the company needed them to be. Aways story is just the most recent case of an incoherent culture that strides away from its best intentions.

Like Away,Thinx, another purpose-driven startup that became known for its abusive practices, orNetflix, an organization with an unvarnished commitment to culture that was also exposed for unsavory rituals and norms, are only some of the examples from the large universe of companies that start with an inspired purpose and end with a dysfunctional workplace.

Yet, the idea that values and purpose should be used to build a robust core makes intuitive sense and there is evidence to support it. In fact, not only can sharing a common purposebind people together, but it caninspire and direct effort. Indeed, that unique ability that both values and purpose have to glue a group together is also why they can become dangerous liabilities for an organization and its leadership.

The Implicit Demands Of Cohesion

Getty

People intuitively know that some groups have a stronger sense ofgroup-ness and feel more like a real group than others. For example, a tight-knit circle of friends will feel more wholesome than a temporary committee created to complete a specific task. Scientists refer to the quality of group-ness, the extent to which a group feels like a coherent and meaningful whole, asentitativity. The more entitativity a group has, the deeper the level of intimacy its members sharein such groups, people are not solely pursuing some transient goal or outcome, but they are bound together by deeper bonds and commonalities.

Whether a group is more intimate versus business-like also has an impact on the type of expectations that people hold with respect to how group members shouldrelate to one another. In tight-knit groups, people are comfortable with a more communal way of sharing and pitching in as needed. Importantly, of all the factors that can generate entitativity,interdependence and communication are the two conditions most likely to produce it. This is why building a culture with an inspiring purpose and strong values can be equated to the intentional practice of equipping the organization with a high dose of entitativity.

At Away, for example, the veneer and popularity of the brand had the effect of attracting young employees who were sucked into the cool factor and seduced by the idea of joining an exclusive organization. As employees were inducted into the practice of refraining from personal communications and using only group conversations on Slack, they were also subjected to the subtle yet powerful effect of feeling greater interdependence amongst one another. Simultaneously, the impact of communication on the organizations everyday life was strengthened, creating another condition for people to feel part of a tight-knit group.

When purpose and values are devised to shape a strong sense of who people are and trigger an equally deep aspiration of who they should be, they can shift the way in which employees perceive themselves and the organization. Upon being hired, Aways employees would hear from leadership that they were joining a movement, and everyone wanted to be a part of this. But, even more deeply, internal practices were used to, wittingly or unwittingly, make people feel the effects of Aways strong cultural identity. Take the companys obsession with its image and how this deeply ingrained value was mirrored by the use of a consequential way to control how people were made to appear in front of their colleagues - employee shaming. As one ex-employee noted, the CEOs tirades felt like having your pants pulled down in front of the company.

The Risks Of Expecting Communal Sharing

Getty

For businesses that seek high engagement, the fact that employees are inspired by the companys mission and join without the purely transactional mindset that task-oriented groups are more likely to elicit is a boon. At Away, as leadership kept evoking the companys values (i.e., thoughtful, customer-obsessed, iterative, empowered, accessible, in it together) to prescribe and injunct behavior, people were made immediately aware of the tall order that awaited them: meeting ever-unfulfilled and overly ideal standards of conduct.

But while a purpose-led, values-based organization may earn extra goodwill for free, it does so at the cost of stepping into the murky and more complex dynamics that characterize intimate groups. When some of Aways employees were told that the only way to respond to all customers inquiries in a timely manner was to plow through on New Years Eve and New Years Day, people felt unable to refuse because they didnt want their colleagues to be caught in it alone. As one ex-employee noted, they exploited the fact that we were close.

Indeed, abusing expectations of communal sharing becomes an ever-present danger when leaders fall into the trap of raising and fostering such expectations (e.g., our shared purpose and values, etc.) without the required and necessary maturity. The power asymmetries that exist between employees and management combined with the higher personal stakes that tie leaders to their business make it much harder to draw the line once a leader starts applying the norms of a more intimate group to his/her own team. Whether this results in loving and long, but manipulative, messages sent to employees or the leader name-calling and berating people, as the Away story shows, it remains a dangerous breach into the personal sphere that few or no leaders can pull off without catastrophic consequences for the organizations culture.

This is even more likely because when employees joinwith and in a communal mindset (e.g., we are in it together, etc.) they themselves then hold expectations that their communal sharing will be reciprocated - a promise that businesses can hardly fulfill. Thus, in the case of Away, as in the case of any other company that finds itself in the same predicament, its no surprise that people would end up thinking that the mission was just a smokescreen to make people work harder and longer. But, while this feels like a foregone conclusion, it also does irreparable damage to the culture to the point of rapidly eroding any free goodwill the organization may gain because of its underlying mission.

Indeed, for values and purpose to correctly and successfully inform the culture, they cannot be eagerly appropriated, nor can they be used to conveniently erase boundaries. Instead, they must be put to task to re-draw the groups internal boundaries in a way that is devoid of any double standard. This requires a process of humble self-awareness, shared learning and continued personal growth that must start with and from the most senior leaders in the organization.

Follow this link:
From Being Purpose-Led To Fostering A Toxic Culture: Why Companies Like Away Fail To Live Up To Their Promises - Forbes