How and Why Do So Few Companies Establish and Maintain Great Cultures?

Glassdoor listed HubSpot, Bain & Company and DocuSign as the top three in its “Top 10 Best Places to Work in 2020”. Certainly, nearly all (if not all) companies espouse or at least desire or attempt to establish great cultures that will attract the best of talent. Surely many, such as those recognized in “Top Culture” lists, achieve some level of greatness or perhaps have a smaller margin between the culture they set out to establish and the culture they actually have. Of course, many companies have a very wide gap between the idealized culture stated in their charters and the actual experience of that cultural in the lives of their employees.

Why do some companies miss on this effort and furthermore, why do some miss by so great a margin? A culture could fail at the top; the highest-level executive could act in direct opposition to the values of the company’s cultural vision. The opposite is also true; a company could be congruent with its own cultural values and standards at the top and move farther away as you examine life at the ground level. The larger the company, the more this inconsistency would seem to be a possibility.

Is it in the proper execution of a well thought out cultural vision? Is it the quality of the leaders? Is it the quality of every employee? It would seem that in the top companies named by Glassdoor that there must be inconsistent people and inconstant behavior…because people are fallible…the more people, the more fallibility.

So then, is it the strength or utility of the values themselves that maintain such great cultures? Great culture seems subject to mystery and serendipity, a combination of the right chemistry, talent and will. How then do we learn to build more great cultures?