 I'm going to be up here actually to continue the whole theme. I repeat a single word, so please call it out. Absolutely don't do that. Definitely do not do that. It will totally throw me off. All right, cool. Well, I am very, very honored to be here. I have wanted to come to this conference in the past. I was exceptionally honored by the fact that I got asked to be here in front of you today and talk about a topic that I'm super passionate and excited about. And I hope to a large extent this will resonate and help in the team dynamic that many of you may have. Hold on real quick. There's a tradition, which is Nadia gives me a high five before a talk that I give. So that was essential. Thank you. Okay, again, my name is Adam Cuppey. I am a co-founder of a consultancy that is based out of Oregon. And so a lot of this is very self-reflective. I've made a lot of mistakes in my life, especially amongst team members that I have got, even with all the best of intentions. There's a lot of learning that goes into failure. And so that is something that, again, is very self-reflective and brought about this whole talk in the first place. So originally the talk title was culture, only three letters away from cult. But I decided to truncate it a little bit and make it a little bit more simple and a little bit more polite. But the idea here is that this talk is fundamentally about the topic of culture and what does it mean inside of an organization and how can you maybe foster a better culture, at least acknowledge what your culture may be inside your organization. And most importantly is how do you, as the individual, at whatever level that may exist for you in your organization, how can you maybe affect change in a really positive way? Now these are just some thoughts. If you, raise your hand if you're familiar with Kent Beck and Extreme Programming. Okay, so if you've ever read any of his books, oftentimes it talks about a lot of the what that you can do, right? Pair programming, test-driven development, things of that kind. But the part that is really important is the chapter before all of that that talks about why you do it in the first place. So I'm gonna present a few suggestions. By no means is this a definitive list of all of the opportunities and it may not entirely apply to your organization. However, the most important thing I want you to take away from this is why it matters in the first place. And really the reason is because we wanna connect and love and appreciate one another and provide ultimately an incredible experience and a great product at the end of the day, whatever that might look like. But starting this off, let's start here, which is the human needs. Now, Tony Robbins, raise your hand if you're familiar with America's Guru, Tony Robbins, right? He's often accredited as being an individual that is, again, America's Guru or a motivational speaker. The reality is that what he ultimately talks about is human psychology and secondarily to that is what is referred to as neurolinguistic programming or short NLP. And he identified that of all the things that we as human beings do in our life, it's meant to pursue one of six, one or more of six primary human needs and it looks something like this. First, you have certainty. And certainty is what it might sound like. It's the idea that I have so a degree of predictability in my life that the things that are today will be tomorrow or at the very least the change that is coming in my near future is something that I understand something about and could predict to a certain level. The next is uncertainty or the exact opposite of that. Passion, excitement, the new, the fresh, variety, things like that are there. Now, I just add a curiosity. I want you to raise your hand if you love change. You're a liar. You love change that you know is happening, right? But the reality is is that uncertainty is a big deal, right? And we pursue this to a large extent. The third on that last list is significance. The thing that drives us to believe that we're important, we're relevant to someone or something else, right? That we have value and meaning in life to the people around us. The problem is that significance for the most part can be a double-edged sword. We can do a lot of things that make us feel significant for good and for bad reasons. And significance unfortunately drives a lot of the problems that we may experience in the hierarchy structure in our organizations. The thing that is important is that by debunking or diffusing some of that hierarchy in terms of illuminating authority potentially or dispersing that a little bit more so, it doesn't necessarily mean that what we're giving up on is that feeling of significance that we can get from the people that we work with and around. Now, the fourth on this list is love and connection. Raise your hand if you appreciate being loved. Now look around. Okay, very good. I think we can all share the fact that love and connection and the emotions that they bring about are one of the truest and most pure things in our life. I am very excited by the coincidental event that is happening right here this weekend. I am extremely proud of the fact that this country has embraced something so great. And so because of that, I think that it's important to acknowledge that love and connection is something that we all work to pursue and have in our life. Now these four right here are what Tony Robbins refers to as egocentric needs, meaning this, that more often than not, the actions that we take in our lives to pursue one of these four are self-serving, right? We do things that are in the interest of ourself to fulfill these needs. Now there's two more on this list for a total of six. And the first is growth. In other words, I wanna know that I'm growing in my own life, that I'm evolving as a human being, that I'm learning, and that has meaning to me. I wanna feel if I'm not growing that I'm not dying, right? And the last on this list is contribution, that we're giving back to something greater than ourselves. Similarly, in the Ruby community specifically, there's been some incredible organizations, Kinsey in fact founded one of the many, that have worked very hard and diligently to help contribute back to the world around us and helping address the diversity issue that is inherent to the tech industry right now. Well, contributing back is something that can be highly fulfilling. Same thing with growth. Now the last two items on this list, list, growth, and contribution are referred to as ethocentric, meaning that the actions that we take to fulfill these two needs, the way in which we feel them is by serving others. Now, if you were to take a moment and look at these six for a second and say, in my truest of true, my hardest of hearts, the time in which I feel my most pure and real, if I was to say, pick two that you feel you pursue more than any others, get real about it. Now, when 100 or so people were surveyed with these six or variations of these six, here's what happened. We found that of the 100, a majority, well over 90% said that in reality, whether they liked it or not, they were pursuing certainty, number one on the list, and significance more than any others. However, when the same 100 people were asked if you could pursue two of any choosing, regardless of whether or not you're doing it today, what would that be? And the answer was, well, number five and number six, growth and contribution. The beauty was this, when people, when you, and I would invite you to do the same, when you change your perspective as to how you'll fulfill the egocentric needs, the top four, certainty, uncertainty, significance and love and connection, that if you were to switch that and focus, in fact, on the bottom two, that the other four will fulfill themselves. Think about that for a moment. If we contributed back and just dedicated ourselves to growing and learning, realistically, we'll fulfill the top four as well as the bottom two. Now, here's the important thing is that of these six human needs, it was also found that if you were to compare it against things that we do to fulfill these needs, if any one thing was fulfilling four or more of the six, it was often considered an addiction. My wife gives me certainty, she gives me uncertainty, I definitely feel significant love and connection, she helps me grow and I'm contributed. I'm definitely addicted to her. Or similarly, I smoke, right? I might do drugs or not, no opinion about the matter, but the reality is, is it may be an addiction in your life. And that is an important thing to recognize about this. Now, I bring up all of this for very fundamental reason, and that is that oftentimes this stands in our way, right? Because if I'm not fulfilling these, then I might be afraid that I'll never fulfill any of these. And fear is an incredible driving force. In fact, it's arguably the greatest motivator that we have. Now, if we were to ask ourselves whether or not we wished we were being driven by fear or not, the answer is probably no. In fact, please raise your hand if you would rather be driven by fear than pleasure. I knew you were all very smart. Thank you, right? That is very much the reality, that if, that although this drives a lot of us, it may not be the thing that is true, right? And fear drives a lot of those decisions. Now, the unfortunate reality is a lot of things become, begin to pollute our understanding of the world around us, and they start to drive our actions in directions that we wish they didn't. And this is part of the problem with versus culture mentality and thinking inside of an organization is inadvertently, and I do believe that more often than not, it's an unconscious action, is we create an environment in an organization that is built by fear, even if we wish it wasn't. It's just kind of what happens. Now, the reality is this as well, and this is an important distinction, is raise your hand first and foremost, if you've ever had a manager or a boss, somebody that was hierarchically higher than you that you hate or thought was a shitty manager. Please look around again. And if one of those people was your employee, and take note, right? I mean, this is very much the reality, is that this is true, but here's the thing is don't forget this. And this is where empathy kicks in, against sympathy, which is we are all human beings, meaning that probably the same types of fear that drive me as an employee to a manager may be a very similar fear that is creating this disempowerment from a managerial perspective down to the members of that team. Don't forget that, because I think that's where the unconscious side of this comes from. There was a quote out there that I thought was really fascinating. A lonely individual soon loses any sense of purpose, any notion of meaning, any feeling of belonging in such a state a cult is seen as a cure. Now, in reality, cult and culture, although they share common root or one is the root of the other, they actually really aren't totally comparable to one another's words. And culture specifically often has multiple meanings and cult itself is often referred to in religious context. But regardless of which, I found it was pretty fascinating, like, oh my gosh, this is kind of an interesting idea that what if we inadvertently are creating cult-like organizations, but first and foremost, I have to know what that is and means. So I literally did a Google search. And I found up this really nice list actually, right? It was kind of nice. I was like, well, this is easy. I don't think much about this. So here's the list, number one, create your own reality. That's not too hard. I mean, I can create my own reality. The second one is set up the leaders as the only link to paradise. Third on the list is make increasing demands to keep people less and less focused on what in fact is in front of them. Fourth on the list is keep turning out stories of greatness and excitement, right? It's hard to question when all things are good. The fourth, the fifth on the list is use your converts to bring in more converts, right? Makes kind of a lot of sense, kind of this ambassadorial mentality. Sixth on the list is keep everybody busy. Whatever you do, don't let people have enough time to think about what's actually going on. And last but not least is keep your flock fixated on the carrot. Now, interestingly enough, when I looked at this, I was kind of like, oh, well, that's fascinating. I guess if all I did was that, I never worked for companies like that, companies plural before. Raise your hand if you've ever worked for a company that fulfilled all seven of those before. Yeah, doesn't it suck because I don't think anybody would want to know that that's true, but it just happens. Now, the problem is in all of this is that at the end of the day, what ends up happening is that same fear that drives things, right? So let's look at the very beginning, right? We say to ourselves that as an organization, you know we're bootstrapping this. Raise your hand if you've ever worked in a startup or founded your own. Right, absolutely. So you know that startup feeling, right? And you're like, yeah, it's just me and Susan and Jim and we're like doing it and we're like, yeah. You know, and we don't have any money. You know, we don't have a pot to piss in or a window to throw it out of, but fuck it, like we're in, right? And you're like bootstrapping it and like, yeah, Jim didn't do it, but dude, he's having a good time and we're having a good time. And then boom, it happens, right? And all of a sudden, like there's users and maybe there's revenue or there's investors and geez, now we've got to produce it. So we hire a few more people, now we're up to five instead of three and before we know we're 10 and sure, you know, sure as shit, we're up to 20. And now what happens is that little, that idea, that little company, right, that we once had that thing becomes no longer and ultimately we become very afraid, right? We become very, very afraid. So what's the very first thing we do? Well, we have to create structure for this, right? That's a totally honest answer and I'm not saying it's a bad idea, but more often than not, what ends up happening as a byproduct of that is the hierarchy that you institute becomes and is driven by mechanisms of control, right? Because the fear is that we will lose control, we will lose a sense of ability over this thing and so our natural inclination is to constrict. This is where the problem arises. And we can see time and time again where organizations go through this very natural cycle. So it's not that I'm vilifying any one person or any type of organization because this is very natural for human beings to do something like this. And ultimately we turn into valuing one important thing and that is compliance. Oh, I'm sorry, loyalty, right? Have you ever said, oh, that team member isn't loyal anymore or any of that crap, right? And it comes into this one thing because ultimately what it comes down to is they're not complying. It's kind of shitty to be on both sides of that table. And what ends up happening is even though we have a quite large organization that's really well suited to succeed, we end up with a structure very similar to this where we have somebody that's at the head of the pack that's guiding all of the actions, not just the vision and everyone else is meant to follow. And that becomes kind of an issue. Like, again, think of that startup mentality. I mean, think of how many things that you can produce and create with three people, one person for that matter. And then you're established. And at that point we got lots of jobs, lots of things to do, and now we need 100 people. And we're delivering more slowly. Is that more slowly accurate? No, more quickly. Yes, more slowly, they are perfect. Good, I'm gonna check in my English on that one. And we end up in a disempowered state. So ultimately every organization will create a culture whether you like it or not. It's just a matter of what type of culture you'll create. Let's talk about this first, empowerment. Well ultimately one of the greatest mechanisms to create a culture of positivity that where it's incrementing and iterating in a positive direction is to start here. I mean, think of the same example, like, well, if we start at that arrow with the little red pawn character at the very front and everyone else behind, if all those other people were empowered to succeed and help the organization win, wouldn't it be a lot easier? Of course it would. I think we can all probably agree with that. And if we can't, look at the last slides for a moment. And what ends up happening is we end up with an organization that's very similar to something like this. And this is what I call a what-down approach. We always got top dog and then we have top dog and then pack leaders and we got right hand man in there and then there's pawn and peon and grunt at the very bottom of this list. And oftentimes what happens is we go, well, these are junior developers and these are senior developers and that's a director or we say, well, these are directors and VPs and Mr. and Mrs. CEO. This is what's very, very common and ultimately we get into this type of structure and why it's called a what-down structure is that often what happens is we tell the people below us in the hierarchy tree what to do. Yeah, yeah, we wrap it in a lot of why and fru fru talk but the reality is ultimately what we're saying is do this or don't do it here. That's kind of what ends up happening. Now this is not ultimately that problematic but it becomes incredibly problematic because often what ends up happening is that this cycle does not work in reverse. So although feedback can come down the line, it generally doesn't easily come back up it. So while I was flying out here, I was sitting next to a gentleman that worked for a tech company in San Francisco and I was telling him, I was actually giving him the presentation because I was curious, I was like, what's your thoughts on it? And he was telling me that he's like, as a company, we were required to take a mandatory survey on the performance of the leadership. And if they didn't take the survey, they were effectively punished for it. Morale improve, it absolutely will. But this is part of the problem right here. So here's the deal is that ultimately what happens is that failure becomes a mechanism of evaluation, right? That is part of the problem because it's really hard to control otherwise, right? And ultimately we end up in a situation where backflow is incredibly unclear, it's vague as hell and it's entirely disempowering. We get back to this again. This is entirely what it creates. It's driven by this one thing. But if we were to look at this what-down approach again and we turned it upside down, that's all we did? Psychologically we move ourselves into a totally different space pretty fast because there's an audience on here that is not diagrammed in the hierarchy very often and it's that group, right? Where does the customer live in this? Well, we're all in it for the customer, remember? I mean, Mr. CEO, I mean, we think about the customer all the time. Totally, yeah, of course you do, right? And this is part of the problem but if we were to say, well, the customer is incredibly important. I mean, maybe they live somewhere in here but we're to put it here. Well then what does it mean that Mr. Top Dog and Mrs. Pack Leader and Mr. Right Hand Man have to do at this point? Well, it changes the type of dynamic that exists, right? So if what is the objective of leadership, what it was, what it is now is now the objective becomes to empower people, to mentor them and better than that is to hone in on what the purpose of it is, right? And it radically shifts the dynamic. Job titles never changed, everybody's the same but the function that we play in this entire situation changes as well. Now in this situation right here, we realize that none of these titles mean anything anymore. So in reality, we're all working for one another just in a different capacity, right? We're helping facilitate and empower one another just at different levels. So in reality, well we're all our ambassadors of something and realistically an ambassador of a cause, whatever that might be. At this point, what happens is that failure now becomes a mechanism for growth because now my incentive hands down is to help you win because I need you to help everyone else win, right? It's a totally empowering chain of events that happens and this now becomes the empowering why, as we'll call it. Again, failure now becomes a mechanism for growth. Now moving down this, this is not just the end I'll be all of this story because we have to topic about this incredibly important topic because this right here without this one thing, it is very, very likely that you'll fall prey to the other sides of it, the topic of inclusion. But we'll start with the story. When I was a kid, I believed I could do just about anything. I believe my potential was absolutely limitless and there was nothing that could not exist in my realm. I could be a fighter pilot, I could be a frog, I could be anything that I wanted to be whatsoever. But forget all that. In reality, I'm a white heterosexual male, redhead and American, right? Those are my labels. The other stuff doesn't really matter, of course. And so what ends up happening is we end up trying to bucketize people. It's just inevitable whether we like it or not. This is what happens. And oh, lo and behold, you know, I'm the A bucket. But let me tell you a little bit about Adam Cuppey. When I was 14 years old, I was diagnosed with lung cancer. Who knows why, it was probably genetic, but it doesn't really matter. I spent two weeks in the hospital and at the end of the entire experiences, I left with one less lung that I came in with. Little do you know, underneath all this shirt, I have an 18-inch scar because I am breathing on only one lung. Now to answer your questions, yes, you can live with only one lung. Two, I didn't need a transplant. And three, as you can tell, both sides of my chest go up. You would be floored by how often I got asked all three of those questions. The reality is, is that we are a culmination of a multitude of things. And the least of which are my skin tone, my ethnicity and my age. The least of which. The most of which are the experiences and the uniqueness of me. As we all know, there are no two people in this room that are exactly alike. I absolutely guarantee it. In fact, I challenge you to do this and it'll take you probably less than 10 seconds. I want you to close your eyes for one second, close your eyes. And I want you to think of one thing, just one thing, that you guarantee without a shadow of a doubt is entirely unique to you in not just this room, but on this planet. Anybody take longer than 10 seconds? Here's what's real, is that it's that easy. We are all that different, right? So the real exercise is to just accept that, that we are in fact unique and different and that's a great and powerful thing. Now, you might not realize this, but if we kind of take a look at that and we were to plot this out and say, well, my uniqueness is represented by this, you know, abstract splattering of things about me, right? I'm one lunged, I have an acting background. In fact, my degree is in that, it's not in other things. Like if I was the spider around you, realize that, well, I'm not like anyone else and you're not like anyone else. And that uniqueness is what is in fact the most common to all of us. It is in fact the thing we share is that we are all entirely unique. Now, with each new color of diversity, so does it grow exponentially? And with that, so does all of our possibility. We know that, that is true. We realize that to be the case, right? And so if you start by, so if we talk about inclusion, this is a big thing that I realize is that inclusion starts when you stop using phrases like think like a woman and start asking what does Karen need, right? Because at that point, it doesn't matter, right? None of that matters. Inclusion is individualized. It's not anything that can be bucketized whatsoever. And so again, this was something that I thought was fascinating if you're not seeing this, is when hiring, look for cultural ad, not a culture fit. There is a very big functional difference. Now, you can't go without saying that leadership matters, right? And the culture of an organization is shaped by the worst behavior the leaders are willing to tolerate and I hated this quote in the beginning. Absolutely hated it for one reason, which is great. So now we're talking about authority again, but it hit me really, really hard and that is leaders do not mean bosses. Doesn't have to at least, right? Leadership can in fact come from anyone, anywhere, at any time. The important part is to understand the distinction between a leader of an organization and a member of that organization, right? If you were to think instead that leaders are in fact something different like the test suite of an organization, then you can actually say to yourself that what a leader's responsibility is, regardless of who it is in the hierarchy chain, is in fact just to ask a consistent and focused question and the members, whoever they might be, are meant to help fulfill that, right? Implementation against the test. And then simply at that point, a leader is meant to simply check in and say, well, are we or are we not fulfilling it? It's not necessarily to have an opinion about it, whether or not it's done my way or not. It's simply to say, well, we're either doing it or we're not doing it based on objective opinion. So how do we take this into a culture? How does this become something that we can do? Well, let's take a real quick snapshot of what it means to grow a culture. First thing you need is a stable environment. Second thing is you need to have compositional understanding, meaning you need to know what the components of the thing are to have a sense for, well, when combined, what will that mean? I.e., if I'm a leader or a manager of people, my responsibility is to understand the uniqueness of each member and pair that up in a fair way so the net effect of that is a positive outcome. Now, the third is, and this is a critical, is time. You have to have plenty of time for this thing to settle and vet. There must be an objective means of analysis. It can't be a subjective thing. It has to be a control group and otherwise, and therefore that experiment can come out true on the other end. And the very last and most important bit is nothing will happen without some form of food or nourishment. Culture won't go anywhere, right? It literally will not grow. So if we take this and break this up into cult versus culture, it will probably end up looking something like this. That a cult organization probably has shared judgments, whereas a culture has shared values. Cult is gonna be highly resistant to change where a culture is going to expect change. Cult strives for conformity. Culture is gonna embrace individuality because if it didn't have that, well, the culture would never form. Diversity is a threat against an asset. The members of an organization in a cult more often than not are gonna have a drive to belong to it against a drive to grow. And last but not least is dogmatism against pragmatism. When an organization is dogmatically following a process just simply to do it without really asking the very fundamental question of why, then it's very likely that we'll fall prey into the assumptions and judgments that come along with it. Or viewed another way, might look a touch like this. Ultimately, we end up in a position where it's all about shared values. Individuality, personal experiences, and they become a huge asset to an organization. And it will continue to evolve. This is fundamentally important, right? If we embrace the idea that amongst us we're sharing values and shared views on our own lives and the purpose through which we drive our actions, that's one thing. But if we're just dogmatically conforming to something that's been said in front of us, well, that's an entirely different thing. Now, as you can imagine and see from this wonderful diagram, which of course is not mine, I have to give credit to Dave Gray for this, is that, again, it doesn't mean that you have totally disparate views on things. It doesn't mean that, oh, it's just a splattering of chaos. No, not at all. Things intertwine, things should be working together. It doesn't mean that you hire everybody just because even if it doesn't feel right or whatever, like, that's not what I'm saying at all. But it does mean to keep an open mind. I'm gonna boil this down to five bits. Write them down or not. This is the part of the TDD pair programming part that I said take it or leave it, but here's some suggestions. Number one, ask yourself this very fundamental question, either as a leader or a member of an organization, are both the leaders and the members empowered to effect change, empowered to do so? Not, well, yeah, they can spend up to $100 sometimes on pizza, right? Not that, empowered, fully empowered to change. Are the leaders and members held equally accountable or accountable equally? Now, oftentimes the best situation is that they're accountable to one another. However, that might not also be the most effective and impactful thing because if it's bound to an expectation, that is not a winner, right? So instead, it really needs to embrace openness. Third on the list is are the members punished for asking why this was held across all cults, especially those that fit the religious form, was that there was legit punishment for even asking the question, why do we have to do that thing? Again, dogmatism against pragmatism. There should never be punishment for this. Fourth on the list is are you fulfilling your own needs? I didn't really talk about this a lot, but it's very much a trend in, especially tech right now, to do everything it takes to give you every ounce of fulfillment you need. We'll do your dry cleaning. We'll give you two in a grand a year. We'll give you stock options. You'll can work one day a week, and you know, like anything it takes. We'll take care of your children. In fact, you don't even know their names. We'll tell you their names. Like we'll tell you everything you need to know. But arguably I've come to realize that's the worst idea because it eliminates personal balance, right? And ultimately we'll create a sense of fear because now all of my needs are fulfilled and now I don't know what to do without it, right? It ends up in an inverted step, right? So if the organization is fulfilling all of your needs, that's not good. Many? Sure, all? No. But are you fulfilling any of them? That's a good question to ask. And last but not least are, do your core values align with the organization? Are you doing it for the paycheck? If so, sure. But I think this is a matter for long-term health. The number one resource you have the most limit of is time. I believe that you should spend it in areas that you feel you're bringing value and contributing to. I'll leave you with this. Your company's culture is your operating system. It's gonna happen. You got a kernel, it's gonna run, hopefully. But it's gonna have it whether you like it or not. A culture is a guarantee, it's just a matter of what it looks like. Said another way is the team is the software that makes the experience, right? Whether it's good or bad. But the bottom line is that whether you are a member at the lowest rung from your perspective or from the highest, it doesn't really matter because you have all the tools in front of you to empower yourself and the other members of your team to win. Thank you so much. Hope you had a great Goruko. You can find all of this on SpeakerDeck, okay?