Yeah I was considering adding a section on culture and I chose not to. (Thanks also for your email!) Here’s why I chose not to: not a single time in my organizational life have I seen a conflict get prevented because of a culture playbook or a value or culture document somewhere. I also don’t know of a single collaboration that didn’t happen because one partner didn’t have an anti-hate speech policy somewhere written down. (Obviously, collaborations might not happen if there’s hate speed; but that’s another topic.) So while I agree that shared culture supports collaboration, I don’t see how a playbook makes a difference. I’m happy to be convinced otherwise but I’d have to see places where it’s worked.

On the other hand, I am highly suspicious of “shared culture” as a statement in the first place because I’m not sure it’s true or desirable that we can only collaborate if we share culture. Don’t we want to collaborate with people who are different? The whole shared culture thing can be a very slippery slope that can easily border on all kinds of -isms.

There’s of course a question of balance there. If we’re too different, it’s going to be harder to have shared reality.

Here’s an example: I once collaborated with a very deeply Christian person. I appreciated him a lot and loved him as a person. I also knew that his particular flavor of faith included things I’d label as sexist and extremely transphobe and homophobe. Now, while of course, I wished he thought differently, does it prevent us from doing a shared project together? It really didn’t. He knew I am trans, atheist and living with a guy, and I knew what his beliefs were, and we still had a wonderful, respectful, and meaningful working relationship. Did we have shared values? Somewhere, yes. In other places no.

A conflict resolution playbook is different because it’s a practice. I care much more about practices than value documents.

Curious what your reaction is to that.