I like Stowe Boyd in general — one time we got in a fight about me supposedly lifting a quote from him without attribution — and his new newsletter is solid. Here’s a good section about “corporate culture,” which has now been discussed roughly 25M times since 2016, without any real progress having been made on it in that time:
A lot of what motivates the concept of ‘building culture’ is wrongheaded, or maybe wronghearted is a better way to put it.
Deep work culture transcends the quarterly business goals, the strategic KPIs that the C suite has laid out to meet the dream of an unstoppable business model, and the supposedly unique corporate values created by a consulting firm in a three-day offsite with the senior executives and the communications department.
Deep work culture is based on the connection between each contributor and their desire to do good work, in a company organized to help them do so.
I would agree with this wholeheartedly. And yet, now we arrive at a problem.
How exactly could this happen?
That’s where I think the rubber meets the road.
Work is almost entirely and consistently about tasks. That’s all that matters to most execution-level employees — because…
