It never leaves your heart and mind—in a phrase, that's the essence of a healthy communal culture. And then no wonder companies with a communal culture are such formidable competitors. Who, after all, would choose to go up against a company that so engages the intellect and emotion of its employees? Talk all you want about competitive advantage through technology, innovation, and customer service. First, all of these—once in the public domain—can be imitated. But more important, all of these forms of competitive advantage are driven by employee commitment. And no type of culture delivers commitment more intensely than the communal.
That is, communal culture is powerful if it is not skewed, weakening, or otherwise dysfunctional. As we have noted before, there are inherent characteristics in sociability and solidarity that make them very difficult to maintain simultaneously and in equal measure. High sociability, for instance, would make it awkward and unpleasant to confront a co-worker about poor performance. High solidarity would demand it. Similarly, high solidarity would prompt rapid response to an external threat. High sociability would demand that everyone's commitment be obtained first.
These contradictions easily lead to the communal becoming unbalanced—too much sociability takes the lead, or too much
solidarity. In other cases, one or both express themselves in behaviors that are not beneficial to the organization. Whatever the impetus, it adds up to a negative communal form.
When sociability goes into overdrive in a negative communal setting, you get the first rule of survival: Leave your family. The organization goes from being close-knit to clubby to clannish. Co-workers become family to one another, much to the detriment of real family. The wife of an executive at a negatively communal investment company tells a revealing story. She and her husband were sharing a glass of wine after the children had gone to sleep, and she was just about to raise the subject of how much time he was spending at work—too much, in her opinion—when the man excused himself to make a phone call. From the next room, she could hear him speaking with the company's head of IT. "How's the dog?" he was asking in a concerned voice. "Did he make it out of surgery OK?"
"This is the same man who has never attended his daughter's piano recitals or seen his son play soccer," the woman complained to us later. "But someone in his company was undergoing a crisis, with his dog, for God's sake, and he was all over it."
Thus, in a negatively communal company the family becomes exclusive. Outsiders don't understand; they don't get it—the mission, the passion, anything. This kind of community might be fun for the employees involved, but it puts enormous pressure on and creates resentment from the employees' real families. Many can't withstand it.
Excessive levels of solidarity leads to the next two rules in the negatively communal form: Neglect the competition and Educate (stupid) customers. The negative communal gets carried away with itself: Its products are so good that the company is unassailable. No company can beat them, so why bother looking out for customers? And customers who don't like the product are, in a word, wrong. The product shouldn't change, goes the thinking, the customer must be educated.
In other words, a certain kind of communality can spawn a
smugness, and often complacency. So taken are they with themselves that some communal companies find it difficult to understand why anyone would want to leave. This leads to a /' dangerous labor market insensitivity. First, the company stops a §S ress i ve ly seeking employees from outside the organization, losing them and their potentially exciting or contrarian new ideas—to competitors. And second, it stops paying attention to the kinds of programs or incentives that encourage good people to stay. In really closed communal cultures, star performers often leave. Why shouldn't they? They are treated just like everyone else, which isn't bad, but it's not particularly motivating either.
The fourth rule of the negative communal —Trust your colleagues to know —is a function of the smugness sociability and solidarity can sometimes combine to create. 7 This, like the other rules, illuminates the challenge facing all managers who strive to create the communal culture. Its behaviors are so attractive, it is easy to encourage them too much.
A negative communal company also takes the leadership dynamic of this culture too far, thus the rule Surrender to the leader. The leader doesn't have followers but disciples. At the same time as he inspires, the charismatic leader in a negative communal culture can have a stifling effect on dissent. 8 In overawing or intimidating his followers, the leader's views become accepted as doctrine. To challenge those views is considered heretical and can be dangerous (to one's career, at least). Therefore, it is no surprise that one of the weaknesses of the communal culture is that widely accepted notions about the competitive environment or the "right" way to do things often get ossified. And it's pretty easy for competitors to run faster than something that is set in stone. Just as bad, it is possible that the leader's notions are simply wrong. Finally, another problem with the communal culture's strong leaders: With their charisma and defining visions, it is no surprise that when they retire, quit, or die, the organization can quickly and painfully become fragmented. One
company that avoided this common phenomenon, much to its credit, is HP. We say much to its credit because the company's two founders. Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard, were revered by the time they decided to retire from the company's daily operations in the mid-1980s. Their graceful exit might have been helped by the fact that there were two of them—their power was already somewhat diffused. The two men also segued out of HP gradually, moving into advisory roles for a two-year period before leaving completely. Finally, Hewlett and Packard were succeeded not just by another individual but by the HP Way. On some levels, this magna carta had become more embedded at the center of the company than the two individuals who designed it. This again is a testament to their extraordinary accomplishments as the cofounders and builders of a healthy communal organization.
So what is it that distinguishes those who are successful in this corporate type? Here, once again, are some key characteristics and behaviors of those who do well in the communal culture.