Culture Bank: Insufficient Funds

In the early 2000s, one of the top-ten largest companies in America had the following words carved in marble in their office lobby:

“Integrity. Communication. Respect. Excellence.”

The company was Enron. Its leaders committed one of the most systematic frauds in corporate history, destroyed the company, and went to jail. You can almost taste the irony.

The Taoists have a word, “Te,” which means a type of integrity, where your thoughts, words and actions are all aligned. Eric Ries, in his new book “Incorruptible,” calls this “coherence.”

Enron had a bad case of “incoherence.”

Coherence is not complicated. If you want to be known for putting your customers first, put your customers first. If you want to be known for being a great place to work, be nice to your colleagues.

But this coherence, this Te, is built at the cultural level, not the operational level. The former influences the latter, not vice versa.

One model you can use is the “culture bank.”

Basically, a culturally coherent act adds to the bank, an incoherent act empties it.

Enron had removed every last farthing from its culture bank, and then some.

The language-learning app, Duolingo, has something similar which they call their “Trust Battery.” A coherent act charges the battery, an incoherent act depletes it.

Deplete it long enough, and the very least, you destroy the culture. At worst, you destroy the company altogether.

But what about “Just this once, just this one time?”

Well, yeah, sure, you can get away with it. In fact, you probably will.

But it’s like cheating on your spouse. Once you’ve done it the first time, it’s a lot easier to do it a second time. And then a third. Next thing you know, you’re in divorce court, living in a studio apartment, washing your undies in the kitchen sink.

As Clay Christensen said, it’s much harder to do the right thing 98% of the time than 100% of the time. One hundred percent means you never have to argue with yourself.

Ultimately, it’s up to you. But if there’s one thing history tells us, it is that powerful cultures are really, really hard to build, but surprisingly fragile, and can unravel quickly.

You might sleep easier at night if you follow Ries’s simple rule: “Don’t make withdrawals from the culture bank. Only make deposits.”