8 Rules For Creating A Passionate Work Culture

BY Paul Alofs

Several years ago, I was at the Thomson Building in Toronto. I went down the hall to the small kitchen to get a cup of coffee. Ken Thomson was there, making himself some instant soup. At the time, he was the ninth-richest man in the world, worth approximately $19.6 billion—certainly enough to afford a nice lunch. I looked at the soup he was stirring. “It suits me just fine,” he said, smiling.

Thomson understood value. Neighbours reported seeing him leave his local grocery store with jumbo packages of tissues that were on sale. He bought off-the-rack suits and had his old shoes repaired. Yet he had no difficulty paying almost $76 million for a painting (for Peter Paul Rubens’s Massacre of the Innocents, in 2002). He sought value, whether it was in business, art, or groceries.

In 1976, Thomson inherited a $500-million business empire built on newspapers, publishing, travel agencies, and oil. By the time he died in 2006, his empire had grown to $25 billion.

He left both a financial and an artistic legacy, but his most lasting legacy might be the culture he created. Geoffrey Beattie, who worked closely with him, said Ken wasn’t a business genius. His success came from being a principled investor, surrounding himself with good people, and staying loyal to them. In return, he earned their loyalty.

Thomson understood that for the long-term viability of any enterprise, you needed a viable corporate culture. It, too, had to be long-term. So he cultivated good people and kept them. Thomson worked with honest and competent business managers, giving them his long-term commitment and support. From these modest principles, an empire grew.

Thomson created a culture that extended out from him and has lived after him. Here are eight rules for creating the right conditions for a culture that reflects your creed:

1. Hire the right people

Hire for passion and commitment first, experience second, and credentials third. There is no shortage of impressive CVs, but you should try to find people who are interested in the same things you are. You don’t want to be simply a stepping stone on an employee’s journey toward his or her own (very different) passion. Asking the right questions is key: What do you love about your chosen career? What inspires you? What courses in school did you dread? You want to get a sense of what the potential employee believes.

2. Communicate

Once you have the right people, you need to sit down regularly with them and discuss what is going well and what isn’t. It’s critical to take note of your victories, but it’s just as important to analyse your losses. A fertile culture recognizes when things don’t work and adjusts to rectify the problem. People also need to feel safe and trusted, to understand that they can speak freely without fear of repercussion.

The art of communication tends to emphasize talking, but listening is equally important. Great cultures grow around people who listen, not just to each other but also to their clients and stakeholders. It’s also important to listen to what’s happening outside your walls. What is the market saying? What is the zeitgeist? What developments, trends, and calamities are going on?

3. Tend to the weeds

A culture of passion capital can be compromised by the wrong people. One of the most destructive corporate weeds is the whiner. Whiners aren’t necessarily public with their complaints. They don’t stand up in meetings and articulate everything they think is wrong with the company. Instead, they move through the organization, speaking privately, sowing doubt, strangling passion. Sometimes, this is simply the nature of the beast: they whined at their last job and will whine at the next. Sometimes, these people simply aren’t a good fit. Your passion isn’t theirs. Constructive criticism is healthy, but relentless complaining is toxic. Identify these people and replace them.

4. Work hard, play hard

Obtaining passion capital requires a work ethic. It’s easy to do what you love. In the global economy, we can measure who has a superior work ethic and who is leading in productivity. Not many industries these days thrive on a forty-hour work week. A culture where everyone understands that long hours are sometimes required will work if this sacrifice is recognized and rewarded.

5. Be ambitious

“Make no little plans: they have no magic to stir men’s blood.” These words were uttered by Daniel Burnham, the Chicago architect whose vision recreated the city after the great fire of 1871. His ambition results in an extraordinary American city that still has the magic to stir men’s blood. Ambition is sometimes seen as a negative, but without it we would stagnate. You need a culture that supports big steps and powerful beliefs. You can see these qualities in cities that have transformed themselves. Cities are the most visible examples of successful and failed cultures. Bilbao and Barcelona did so and became the envy of the world and prime tourist destinations. Pittsburgh reinvented itself when the steel industry withered. But Detroit couldn’t do the same when the auto industry dived.

6. Celebrate differences 

Most universities consider more than just marks when choosing students for a program. If you had a dozen straight-A students from the same socio-economic background and geographical area, you might not get much in the way of interesting debate or interaction. Great cultures are built on diverse backgrounds, experiences, and interests. These differences generate energy, which is critical to any enterprise.

7. Create the space 

Years ago, laboratory scientists were often in underground bunkers and rarely saw their colleagues; secrecy was prized. Now, innovation is prized. In cutting-edge research and academic buildings, architects try to promote as much interaction as possible. They design spaces where people from different disciplines will come together, whether in a workspace or a common leisure space. Their reasoning is simple: this interaction helps breed revolutionary ideas. Creative and engineering chat over coffee. HR and marketing bump into one another in the fitness center. Culture is made in the physical space. Look at your space and ask, “Does it promote interaction and connectivity?”

8. Take the long view 

If your culture is dependent on this quarter’s earnings or this month’s sales targets, then it is handicapped by short-term thinking. Passion capitalists take the long view. We tend to overestimate what we can do in a year, but underestimate what we can do in five years. The culture needs to look ahead in months, years, and even decades.

The writer Arthur Koestler said that a writer’s ambition should be to trade a hundred contemporary readers for ten readers in ten years and for one reader in a hundred years. Lasting influence is better than a burst of fame. Keep an eye on the long view.