Building Culture & Collaboration, Manhattans Project | 10th Magnitude

In this episode of the Manhattans Project, Jacob Saunders, CTO at 10th Magnitude, joins me to talk about the ever nebulous concepts of “culture” and “collaboration” in companies. What does company culture mean to us? How do we drive collaboration and positive culture internally as well as externally with our clients? Let’s find out! Here are some highlights from our chat:

Michael: Personally, I know that culture is priority number one for me at any company. One of the reasons my time here at 10th Magnitude has been so successful is that I’ve been encouraged to join the company culture but also to bring myself to it as well. What’s your take on that, and how do you nurture it?

Jacob: I read an interesting book a couple years ago, called “Genome” by Matt Ridley, and in that book he argues that culture isn’t something that defines human behavior or drives certain behaviors. In other words it isn’t the culture that you are a part of that compels you to behave the way you do, but is the outcome of many individual decisions made by many individuals.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1waAA5wM0tQ]

Jacob: If you want to create a culture of collaboration and a culture of cooperation, you need to take away organizational barriers to that collaboration that exist in most organizations. We sit down with CIOs all the time, and tell them “you need to erase the boundaries between the silos you have within your own shop. You need to remove the walls between infrastructure and development.” That creates a much more collaborative and cooperative technology department.
So if you want to be a credible conversation partner in that dialogue, you need to organize yourself in that way, so I wanted to talk about how what makes US different and how we’re organized to foster that collaboration rather than kill it.

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Pull up a chair, pour yourself a drink and enjoy. Cheers!