Corporate culture is a funny thing to put your finger on, but it is arguably the most important aspect for professional happiness. In "Orbiting the Giant Hairball" by Gordon MacKenzie, he describes 2 different corporate cultures: the pyramid and the plum tree. These depictions speak volumes and really resonate with me. I highly recommend you pick up his book. Throughout my career I have worked primarily for pyramid organizations, while at the same time I have attempted to create plum trees for organizations in my charge. So let's talk about the differences and what it means to be a pyramid or a plum tree.
Pyramids are a top down organization where the leaders make all of the decisions and the people and individual contributors carry out those orders. Growth is by decree. Creativity and innovation often stagnate because mistakes and failures are punished. No one is willing to go out on a limb for fear of failures. Amazingly, the leaders often fail to hold themselves accountable to the same levels of rigor and instead blame those under them. They truly believe that they are surrounded by a poorly performing organization and fail to see that they are often the reason. In pyramid organizations employees are often a commodity.
Several Quotes from the book further illustrate this:
Executives: "We must grow or die!"
Leaders: "We'll need to increase production!" "We need to motivate the workers to produce more" "You down there! How can we (the leaders) motivate your?"
Workers: "Let us out from under this crushing mountain."
The workers are trapped under the bureaucracy. They aren't given the freedom nor support needed to be more productive let alone innovative. Demotivated is the norm and it only gets worse. These companies are often "circling the drain". They are desperately trying not to lose, but unwilling to make any meaningful changes. This may prolong the status quo, but it eventually catches up. These companies are at various points of death spiral and very few are able to come out of it. Pyramids are tombs, which is a great analogy.
Plum trees are the opposite. The organization is fundamentally designed different. Instead of the executes and leaders on top, the workers and product producers make up the top of the tree. They have sunshine, they have air, and they can see from their vantage point. They produce the fruit (cash crop). Managers and Leaders make up the branches of the tree. Their job is to support the producers at the top. The trunk is the executives who are supporting the entire organization. They work to ensure the managers and individual contributors have what they need to be productive but they also provide the support to how high the producers can go. Resources flow from the roots through the trunk to the branches and leaves where they are used to promote growth.
Workers: "On a clear day we can see forever" "We got what we need: sunshine and air"
Managers & Executives: "What do you need to motivate you?"
Unlike the pyramid, the plum tree model is a living organism. It is flexible and can adjust with the times. The plum tree can create opportunity through support of those that are closer to the solutions. It breeds innovation and value by enabling change and creativity.
Often in today's corporate environment the executives and leaders often dictate not only where they want the company to go, but how it is going to get there. Often larger corporations fail to see the policies, procedures, decisions that may have made sense at a given point in time are now making a hairball that is inhibiting their ability to adapt, create, and innovate. Leading to an inevitable and unenviable corporate normalcy.
If you are a leader within your organization, I challenge you to look at the decision making process. Do you find yourself pulled into even the most mundane topics so you can help make a decision? Do you or your employees require permission to do what they need even while staying within the guidelines? Are you unsure what you or your team is working toward or what the long plan is? If you answered yes to any of these, there is a good chance you are working in a pyramid and you would be better off working on creating a more supportive plum tree environment. I also highly recommend that you pick up a copy of Gordon MacKenzie's book for inspiration.
