Interesting read on the difference between culture and cult in companies. The scene described by the author here is played out in some variation is most big tech companies. If the founder is still around, they are treated like God and words they said casually, in the passing back two decades ago are repeated like mantras all the day long by employees.
When I recently attended the weekly “get-together” of a leading US tech company, I found a packed auditorium and an audience who started the session with what I later learned was the standard introductory “cheer”: people screamed the company’s name three times. After this, the CEO, who had invited me, handed out the weekly service awards, and each recipient received a deafening applause. I felt as if I were at some evangelical revival meeting. A barbecue followed the prize-giving and nearly everyone attended, all dressed (like the CEO) in black and gray.
My theory is that the cultism takes root because the person or people at the very top of the food chain are incredibly rich - by several orders of magnitude. Furthermore, their place at the top is far more certain than if they were executives of a company they did not found. So they longer the stay, the richer they get and it make sense that they would have everyone work incredibly hard . All of that is somehow conflated with being incredibly smart, gifted, prescient, visionary and so on. While some of that is definitely true or they would not be where they are, its not like if the words that dropped out of their mouths if repeated like a mantra will vastly improve the lot of the folks down in the trenches.
The advice for executives is spot-on "you should always be on the lookout for signs that your culture has become psychologically coercive" I am not sure they would do anything about it though. It is much easier to herd a cult to make them more money which is what this is all about anyway.
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