Can cake build culture?
‘Culture eats strategy for breakfast”. So said Reed Hastings, who announced his retirement as Netflix chief executive last week. The much quoted idea has been used repeatedly by management gurus to encourage organizations to spend as much time thinking about how things get done as what things to get done.
I wonder what Reed would have made of another announcement coming out of the UK last week. Professor Susan Jebb, head of the Food Standards Agency, said “ being around cake in the office is equivalent to passive smoking” as she bemoaned workers' growing waistlines.
The two ideas are, of course, related. Cake at the office is often seen as proof of a happy working culture - proof that managers preside over a caring, contended workforce who think about people’s birthdays, anniversaries and other important personal events.
Colin the Caterpillar cake sales must have skyrocketed in the early nineties when I was responsible for sorting out our communal moments where I was working.
So can food and drink build culture? Yes, but you must think carefully about how you do it, and what kind of culture you are trying to build.
I saw some of the sharpest differences in how companies approach food and socializing when I happened to go from a Twitter board meeting in San Francisco to a Chanel one in London within 24 hours.
We always broke our Twitter meetings for lunch and during the allotted thirty minutes would grab a bowl of salad from the huge staff canteen. We would then eat in the meeting room - there would be some chit chat but mainly about the business.
Fast forward to the next day when I returned to London and went straight to the formal sit down lunch that precedes every Chanel board meeting. As we launched into the delicious Gallic meal, I made the cardinal error of asking about the state of sales, only to be greeted with a polite deflection onto the much more important topic of what I was reading and what new history books I would recommend.
These two lunches illustrate how meals can be used to build very different cultures. From the boardroom to the shopfloor, many Anglo-Saxon companies, particularly start-ups, use catering to enable more work, keep people in the office and help employees save money. French companies use mealtimes to stop work and create more personal relationships through conversation. I am not sure which is more effective, but it is very appealing to talk about books in the middle of the day.
Watch out though, as it is all too easy to get management-by-socializing horribly wrong. It is jarring to me now that when I was building organizations in the past I thought bonding was best done by getting drunk together. Drinking is far less of an inclusive activity than it can appear. Women tend to drink less than men. Pregnant women are automatically excluded. Certain religious groups as well. One company I worked with had an away day of which a major strand was a long afternoon session on “building a more diverse culture”. All well and good. However the day was soon over and many issues were left hanging so the management team retreated to the pub to continue the discussion. Ironically, three of the senior leaders left. One was pregnant, one had childcare issues and one did not drink.
An ability to remember employees' birthdays does not automatically mean you have done enough to show employees you care. Someone recently admitted to me that they don’t go into work on their birthday, so deep is their dread about being the center of attention at the cake moment.
More seriously, I wonder how many companies have a group lunch once a week or free bar every now and then while at the same time failing to benchmark staff pay properly, failing to admonish bad behavior in the office or failing to be compassionate when it comes to personal issues.
In the brave new world of remote work, it’s vital to hardwire lighter, social moments into company life. For young people entering careers, work is where you make new friends and where one in five of us find our partners. Something very profound is lost if downtime and fun disappear into the ether. Research from 2018 showed that nearly 70% of people said work events helped their mental health and well-being.
I like the sound of the law firm, Keystone. Its employees work mainly digitally and yet it spends more per head on in-person events than any other law firm in the country. Ithas seen the investment pay off in both attracting and retaining talent.
And finally, in case I sound like a total killjoy, I think I should come clean about my own vested interest in this subject. I started a chain of private room karaoke bars partly to help ease workplace tensions with a good sing. We have a number around the country and they are filled with corporate customers.
I realize that for many people karaoke is the stuff of nightmares and that a cake every now and then is a significantly less traumatic company interaction. So, let them eat cake I say, and why not take Reed’s advice and have it for breakfast too?