This last decade has travelled in the reverse direction of what many of us predicted.
With access to more information than we’ve ever had before, surely we would become more informed. But instead, we have become more ignorant.
It was hard to predict what has actually happened. Instead of using this abundance of information to better inform ourselves, we have better isolated ourselves. On our social media accounts, we have followed the sources of information that we prefer to process, and blocked anything we prefer not to process.
Unfortunately, in this extremely complicated modern world, we must face up to important existential problems such as climate change, technological disruption and the impact of globalisation. These issues are so overwhelming and difficult to comprehend, that we prefer to just ignore them.
But it tends to be the things that we prefer not to process that lead to us being more informed. The things that contradict what we know about the world in surprising ways. The things we’d never even considered before. And especially, the things that go against everything we believe in.
What has happened, it seems, is that people have been overwhelmed by the sheer volume of information available. It is cognitively taxing to have to adjust our set of beliefs on a frequent basis. Not only is it taxing, but it can involve uprooting every map of the world we base our existence upon.
For an educated, international and dare I say it, open minded individual like myself, it is easy to laugh at people who dismiss the theory of evolution in favour of creationism. But in reality, there are probably good reasons some people do so.
Imagine if since you were born, you were raised by extremely religious family members who dismissed the theory of evolution as the work of the devil. At school, you were also taught that evolution is the work of the devil. Furthermore, you were warned of the terrible consequences of believing in it.
Not only could you suffer the fate of burning in hell should you show God a lack of faith, but you would also experience the very immediate consequences of shaming and being ostracised from potentially everyone in your social network. In some extreme cases, the people you love and depend upon for survival, may even turn upon you and even threaten your physical safety, perhaps even your very survival.
But it is not just for motivational reasons that these people find it easier to believe in creationism over evolution. They probably also have very good logical reasons.
Whereas a Biologist looks at a bone fragments from an ancient human species and can deduce how we evolved from that, a creationist can just as easily recognise that we were formed by the will of God. To the Biologist, their interpretation makes a lot of sense. But the Creationist’s will of God interpretation makes just as much sense to Creationist as well.
That’s because they both have had numerous sign posts in their life experiences pointing to their unique interpretations.
The Biologist went through years of education, from well recognised authority figures who are easy to trust, at institutions that are just as easy to trust, with all sorts of evidence to back up the theories they have absorbed. Why would they doubt their interpretation?
But the Creationist also went through years of education, from well recognised authority figures who are easy to trust, at institutions that are just as easy to trust, with all sorts of evidence to back up the theories they have absorbed. Why would they doubt their interpretation?
Their experiences have shaped them in exactly the same way.
The Biologist trusts their teachers as much as the Creationist trusts their Priests. The Biologist trusts their University as much as the Creationist trusts their Church. The Biologist trusts their scientific experiments as much as the Creationist trusts their Bible and life experiences.
The Biologist and Creationist have far more in common than they might realise.
Sign Posts Everywhere
I could go and explore the evidence for evolution myself by taking a trip to the Shanghai Natural History Museum.
If I wanted to do so, I would open the map app on my phone, that I trust. I would type in the characters for the Shanghai Natural History Museum, and this app, that I trust, would give me directions.
I would follow these directions, taking the various forms of public transport, that I trust, to reach the location.
As I step out of the subway station, I would then look for the nearest sign posts, that I trust. They would point to the Shanghai Natural History Museum and I would walk towards that.
I would then see a building with the name “Shanghai Natural History Museum” printed in big writing on it, that I trust.
And then, I would enter it.
That entire journey is much like the journeys that led to the Biologist and Creationist creating their different world views. Throughout their lives, they have had numerous sign posts that pointed them in certain directions. The Biologist learnt early in life that if they study hard they will get good grades, and they did. The Creationist learnt early in life that if they pray for good things they will get good things, and they did.
In fact, the history of our entire species has been shaped by this very process. And we can use this same process to shape the culture of the teams and companies that we work with.
From Hunter Gatherers to Farmers
Hunter gatherers lived with the spirits of the natural world. There were spirits in the trees, in the animals, in the wind. They lived in harmony with these spirits, because the world always provided for them.
Nature provided them with patterns, the footsteps of a deer, the colour of a fruit, the direction of a flock of birds, and when read correctly, rewarded them with everything they needed to survive.
There were no boundaries. The world was unlimited. Everything was there for the taking, so long as the rules of nature were respected.
Hunter gatherers were always on the move. They moved across the world, and took with them the patterns they had been conditioned to recognise.
We like to think of hunter gatherers as living in harmony with the world. But that wasn’t quite the case.
As they moved to new territories such as Australia, North America and Madagascar, they entered rich lands that had never before been influenced by human beings. These undisturbed, virgin lands were the perfect place for giant mammals to survive. Mammals such as the giant python, giant marsupials, rhino-sized wombats and so on.
Human beings had first evolved in Africa, alongside the the giant mammals that still exist in Africa today. As these species co-evolved, the giant mammals learnt to read human beings as a dangerous pattern, and responded accordingly. That is why these giant mammals are still alive today.
But in these new, undisturbed, virgin lands, these giant mammals had not evolved to read human beings as a dangerous pattern. Our ancestors were blessed to find such easy prey. Rather than run when approached, these giant mammals would continue sleeping, grazing, or doing whatever it was that they were doing. As humans raised their spears, they did not flinch.
Our ancestors in these lands enjoyed big, easy dinners.
But our blessing was a curse to these lands. Within a few thousands of years of our arrival, these giant mammals would be extinct. That is why we don’t see them anymore.
Perhaps this was a driving force that led to our ancestors settling down as farmers. But there was also another driving force.
Along with giant mammals and fruits, another one of the foods we gathered was cereal such as wheat and barley.
Cereals grew in the wild, and reproduced when their husks fell and shattered, dropping their seeds to the ground.
But every so often, genetic mutations resulted in husks that didn’t shatter. They would lie there just waiting to be picked. When we found these husks, we took them back to camp, where we planted them.
Over time, we accumulated more of these mutant cereals. But because their husks were too strong to spread seeds in the wild, this forced us to depend on planting them.
We spent more time planting more cereals in one location. Over more time, the need to stay at one place, outgrew the need to move to new places. When this happened, we shifted from hunter gatherers, to farmers.
With this shift, came a dramatic shift in our values.
Hunter gatherers lived without boundaries. When the resources of one land were used up, they would move on to another land.
But farmers were now limited to one piece of land. They settled down. As they settled, they built houses, and villages. As they accumulated property, they no longer lived in the natural world, they lived apart from it. Nature was no longer a giver, it became something to be controlled and managed.
Hunter gatherers lived in the present moment. When they found food, they ate it, in that moment. What was the point in leaving it there? There was no need to plan or think ahead, all they had to do was read the patterns nature was giving them, and respond in harmony, in the moment.
But farmers needed to think ahead. What if there was a drought? They stored grain. They forewent instant gratification, to save food for an uncertain future.
As they stored food, they needed to protect their food from neighbouring farmers, and hunter gatherer raiders who were extremely pleased to discover what nature had put in their path.
This separation from nature, and future anxiety was extremely significant. When we were a part of nature, we looked to it for the patterns we needed to read in order to get what we needed. Now we were apart from it, we were at the mercy of something more significant than nature. We looked beyond the natural, physical world, to an imagined cosmos, with gods controlling our destiny. We had already conquered nature. But we were still at the mercy of destiny.
Land took on a new meaning.
In the hunter gatherer world, land was nothing, and everything. It was free, to say the least. But to a farmer, land took on value.
The concept of value entered our consciousness.
Some people could now own land that had more value than others. This created hierarchies, and inequality.
This meant people who had spent their entire lives building up wealth and prestige now had to worry about losing it all upon their death. So they started to take action to preserve everything.
Women became commodities, that males could utilise to preserve their wealth beyond their lifetime by giving birth to an offspring that could continue their legacy. This then led to new values of honour, virginity and sexual fidelity.
Fast forward 10,000 years or so, and here we are today, with our extremely sophisticated, complicated, and different sets of values that have led to the kinds of divides that we see between the Biologist and Creationist.
In essence, the environment provides sign posts, which simultaneously influence and are interpreted by our beliefs, which then create our values, that drive our behaviour.
Shared Beliefs = Cooperation
We can take the historical process described above that played out and created cultural differences in hunter gatherers and farmers, and reverse it to intentionally shape the cultures of the teams and organisations that we work with today. This process unites people.
We can summarise it using 3 layers:
- Sign Posts
- Beliefs
- Values
When people are united by these 3 layers, we can cooperate. And this is actually what has enabled our species to cooperate on a truly colossal scale.
Money follows this process. There are signs of money everywhere, such as the sheets of paper in our wallet, the digits on our bank account and the things people give us in exchange for it. These signs cause us to believe in the value of money. As we believe in the value of money, this causes us to value trade. As we value trade, this drives our behaviour, and we study, work and offer our products and services for money, so that we can trade that money for more of the things we want.
But actually, money is not real. It only exists in our collective imaginations and not in the real world. And it only exists in our collective imaginations because we believe in it. Once we stop believing in it, it stops existing.
For example, right now, I have about 1200 Chinese Yuan in my wallet. I could go to the shopping mall across the road and purchase 1200 Chinese Yuan’s worth of goods with that money, because all of the people in that shopping mall also believe that those paper notes in my wallet are worth 1200 Chinese Yuan.
But imagine if a zombie apocalypse were suddenly to break out, and society crumbled. Cities came to a standstill, and people fled to the countryside to escape the horde of hungry zombies. If I were to take my 1200 Chinese Yuan to one of their campsites, and offer it to them in exchange for the rabbit meat they were cooking over the fire, they would laugh at me. Money would have lost it’s value because people would no longer be able to benefit from it (they could not cash it in at banks, invest in stocks, or use it to buy Lattes from coffee shops) and therefore would stop believing in it. It would return to what it really is; pretty sheets of paper, best used for fuelling camp fires.
So money is not real. It is imaginary.
And as silly as that sounds, that’s actually a very good thing. It enables us to trust complete strangers, in remote parts of the world, and collaborate on a truly colossal scale.
For example, if I go to a bank here in China with my 1200 Chinese Yuan in cash, I could exchange it for roughly 2.5 million Indonesian Rupiah. I trust the bank, because every time I have gone to this bank before they have always allowed me to take out my money. And I trust money, because every time I have used money in the past I’ve been able to exchange it for things that other people say are the equivalent of value. So if they give me 2.5 million Indonesian Rupiah, then I’ll believe it.
I could then fly to Bali, probably Indonesia’s most famous island, where I know nobody at all. I could then walk into a restaurant, with my 2.5 million Indonesian Rupiah notes, and offer some of them in exchange for food. As the waiter in the restaurant believes these Indonesian Rupiah are real, and therefore can be used to buy things that would benefit them (like clothes or more food), they accept and give me food in exchange.
Let’s change this scenario though. It’s now 1000 years ago, and by some bizarre turn of events, I, a British man, have washed up on the shores of Bali. Also, by some bizarre turn of events, I have my wallet with those 2.5 million Indonesian Rupiah notes with me. It’s also been some time since I last ate. So, starving, I stumble around the jungle for hours looking for food until I find a small village. As I sneak into the village, I see a small group of people roasting a pig over a fire, and so I approach them.
As I approach them, I wave my wallet and 2.5 million Indonesian Rupiah notes at them. But they chase me away with spears!
How could these people trust me? They’ve probably never seen a white man like me before. How can they trust something they don’t know? I might be an evil spirit. I might have other evil spirits hiding in the jungle, and with one call I could bring them all to this village to steal their precious resources and take their families as slaves. And what would the possible benefit of trusting me be? What can I give them? How can I help them? We don’t even speak the same language!
By believing in common myths such as money, countries, or even brands, we can more easily trust each other, and start to cooperate.
I can go to any bank in any major city in the world, and give them sheets of paper in exchange for them increasing digits on a computer screen. I can then go to any shop in any major city and use these digits to buy things. Like I did just now with the Latte I’m drinking at the coffee shop I am sitting in. That Latte required a person to make it, and my digits contributed to their salary. This imaginary world that we both live in helped us both help each other.
But this coffee shop also needed coffee beans shipped from other parts of the world. They also needed milk from dairy farms in other parts of the country. They also had machines to make the coffee machines that were designed by some people in one country, manufactured by other people in another country, and then put on a truck in China and driven by a person to the coffee shop that I’m now sitting in. Everyone works together to make this incredible global economy that we live in. Our collective imaginations enable cooperation on a colossal scale, and that is what separates us from all other species.
It is important though, that these common myths in our collective imaginations have a link to the real world that can be used to confirm the beliefs.
I believe I am in China, because everywhere I go within this land, I am greeted with the Chinese flag, the Chinese characters “中国” (meaning “China”), and would be told by any individual that I asked that I am in China.
I believe in the law because it is written in contracts, protected by lawyers and courts, and enforced by the police. Even though the law is also part of our imaginations, it has real world consequences.
How to Build a Culture
At the time of writing this, Tony Hsieh, the previous CEO of Zappos an online shoe retailer in the US, unfortunately recently passed away. His passing came too early. But he left a legacy, especially with Zappos.
Zappos is famous for being a company culture success story. They intentionally set out to create a certain culture, and succeeded in doing so. And we can easily map their actions to the 3 layers of Sign Posts, Beliefs and Values.
An important action they take is to hire for cultural fit. If you intend to have people share the same set of values, then the sign posts that surround them in the real world must cause them to have the beliefs that will create those values. A simple way of doing that is filling the company’s offices with people who share the same values.
Number one on their list of values is “Deliver WOW Through Service”. These are not just words on a poster hanging on the wall (like so many corporate values are), their people have turned these words into actions. As a result of this, a simple Google search will reveal story after story after story of how Zappos have literally delivered WOW through service. Stories such as sending their customers post cards to wish them well for their vacation, or sending flowers for customers whose loved ones have recently passed away, or even spending 10 hours and 29 minutes on one call with a customer who just needed to talk!
The key to culture is not the values nor the beliefs, it’s the sign posts. It’s taking great care to ensure there are plenty of sign posts in the real world to cause people to believe and value the things the culture needs.
Some of the best companies I have worked with have done that. Not just big companies either.
One small company I worked with didn’t need to tell me their values. It was clear that Family and Relationships were of great importance to them.
Walking into their office building, I was greeted with a smile and a hug. There were no formalities, just warm, personable communication. There were stories, not just from them, but on social media from people who had worked with them as well, of the deep and long-lasting relationships they had with their customers and suppliers. The staff I met also shared stories of the greater sense of connection and affinity they feel at this company than they had at previous companies.
Culture is something that will happen either intentionally or unintentionally when people are gathered together around a common purpose. If you want it to happen intentionally, then get clear on the purpose these people not only must share, but WILL share. Then get clear on the values needed to help people achieve that purpose.
But most importantly, ensure there are sign posts in the real world, that cause people to have the beliefs that will lead to this set of values.
In summary, take great care to create these 3 layers, starting with the first one:
- Sign Posts
- Beliefs
- Values
References
Lent, Jeremy. The Patterning Instinct. Prometheus Books. Kindle Edition.
Harari, Yuval Noah. Sapiens. Random House. Kindle Edition.
https://www.zappos.com/about/what-we-live-by
