What You Can Learn From The Facebook Culture Crisis
Lessons from Facebook's cultural challenges and how to avoid similar pitfalls.
How Mark Zuckerberg lost control of his company's culture.
As a CEO of a scale-up company you can learn a lot about how to develop and invest in your company's culture by studying the companies that have successfully "blitzscaled" and come to dominate their markets. A great example of a dominant high-growth company whose leadership continues to scale its strong culture effectively is AirBnB. Brian Chesky the CEO seems to have taken Peter Thiel's advice to not mess up the culture to heart.
You can also learn a lot from companies who seem to let their culture slip. Facebook appears to have wrestled the mantle from Uber for attracting negative press around its company culture.
The problem with company culture is that it becomes a serious liability if you have invested heavily, then let it slip and focus on other "more important" business issues. As soon as you stop focusing on developing and managing your culture bad habits and practices take hold in the company and become unconsciously, as well as consciously, embedded into the "way we do things around here."
Looking at the issues Facebook has been dealing with; a picture starts to emerge of a neglected culture. Take one example, the area of diversity and inclusion. There has been a proliferation in the number of pages and groups on Facebook that exist primarily to promote white nationalism and/or anti-Muslim agendas. Reports have surfaced that in some Facebook offices, there are more Black Lives Matter posters than black employees.
The company is facing a culture crisis that is difficult to contain. The narrative about the company is to an alarming extent being shaped by external forces, meaning that the company has less control over it than any culture-driven leader would like. Culture is the key competitive advantage that a CEO can have full control over, but in Facebook's case, it almost feels as if it is spinning out of control.
The case presents a warning to entrepreneurs, founders and CEOs everywhere. When company culture is neglected, tiny hairline cracks start to appear. They do not seem important at the time but if the neglect continues, those cracks eventually become gaping holes.
For entrepreneurs at all stages of running their companies, the lesson is simple: do not neglect your culture. As your company scales, the culture will change, attend to it and invest in it continuously. If your culture spins out of control it is incredibly difficult to get control back.
