“A big thank you to James for jumping on a call during his vacation. We couldn’t have done this without him!”.

“Thank you for jumping in and solving this, Dan. We can always rely on you”.

“Thank you to Helen for going above and beyond to make this happen, in half the allocated time! We are lucky to have someone as capable as you on the team”.

While at first look James, Dan and Helen seem to be recognized for being excellent employees, the kudos they received are for more than that. The kudos they received are for fighting those fires and saving the day.

The above are examples of what you might hear in a “hero culture”: A culture where a few talented individuals work around the clock, taking extreme measures to get things done (working until late at night, during weekends or on vacation) and receive all the recognition, while the rest of the team feel undervalued.

What does a “hero” culture look like?

In our culture work we use 6 archetypes to measure culture (for more information visit the link beneath the chart). The chart below displays a representative picture of which archetypes might be more present in a hero culture. As you can see, a “hero” culture overemphasizes results, to the detriment of anything else.

[The chart displays modified data, based on actual culture work

The archetype names are adapted from ZRG Consulting Solution’s framework]

This type of culture might be effective, and even essential, in the early stages of a new business, where momentum is crucial to accelerating growth. However, once the business has surpassed these early stages, this narrow focus on results might prove to be unsustainable.

Let’s look at what “hero” cultures really look like.

Results: People work around the clock to get things done, without a clear direction or focus. Decision making is reactive. Tasks seem to be dished out without planning, clear responsibility or milestones, and the direction and priorities keep changing. People are always on to the next thing, but the goal post keeps moving. Delivery lacks standards and structure, so people leave as quickly as they have jumped in, leading to mass activity but low productivity.

Summary of key behaviors:

• Doing everything, instead of planning and prioritizing the work.
• Focusing on short-term results, ignoring forward thinking.
• Prioritizing only what directly impacts financial performance
• Always moving to the next goal (no real target).
• Rewarding quantity and speed over quality.
• Valuing certain departments (e.g., Sales) more than others (e.g., Operations).

Collaboration: Collaboration is in the service of results. People and teams focus on their own priorities. They are likely to be less responsive to other teams’ needs. The organization has not proactively established the right channels for effective collaboration and communication. There is duplication of work. Teams that are more directly linked to financial results (e.g., Sales) might be favorably treated, while the contribution of others is ignored (e.g., Operations). The culture does not encourage people to work collaboratively across the organization, which creates inefficiencies and blocks productivity and shared learning.

Summary of key behaviors:

• Setting siloed priorities and KPIs, ignoring common organizational goals.
• Rewarding individual/team performance.
• Teams/individuals are prioritizing their own priorities and solving their own issues and ignore support requests from others.
• Collaborating in the face of challenges or to overcome organizational barriers (e.g., the lack of efficient systems and clear procedures).

Customer centricity: Customers are likely to be treated as a means to an end: to gain profit. During certain phases of the customer journey (e.g., Sales phase) they might be receiving higher quality service, while the quality of service might drop during other phases (e.g., delivery or after delivery). Customers with the biggest budgets might receive better treatment, leading to inconsistent customer experience. People respond quickly to resolve customer complaints, but do not proactively try to improve customer experience throughout the customer journey. The metrics that matter the most are numbers-related (e.g., GMV targets).

Summary of key behaviors:

• Resolving customer concerns takes priority over strategic work or problem prevention.
• Providing better service to those customers that bring the greatest financial value.
• Being more responsive to customers during contracting but neglecting them later.

People focus: Similar to customers, people are also treated like a means to an end. They are expected to perform above and beyond, often sacrificing their work life balance, and without necessarily being rewarded appropriately. Simultaneously, authority is concentrated at the top and challenge upwards is discouraged. Rude treatment from leaders might be tolerated. This leads to disempowerment and lowers the willingness to show accountability. People do not speak up, their engagement drops and the organization loses the potential to benefit from innovative ideas and improvements.

Summary of key behaviors:

• Leaders are making all the decisions.
• Not helping people balance their workloads.
• Not including people in decisions but directing decisions top down.
• Rewarding those who work the longest hours, leave the office last or come to the office first.
• Expecting people to work beyond their contracted hours.
• Not rewarding people appropriately for their contributions.
• Not offering opportunities for growth.

Innovation: People figure things out on the go, as the organization does not have the right systems, tools and procedures to create organizational structure. Firefighting is an overused strategy, replacing forward thinking and prevention. Patching over issues leads to them recurring multiple times and lowers team effectiveness and customer satisfaction. Often the mindset is to “not rock the boat”, only positive news or a positive spin are welcomed, and challenge (especially towards leaders above) is discouraged. The focus is on “getting it done”, not on “doing it well”.

Summary of key behaviors:

• Rewarding quick problem solving but not preventing problems.
• Patching over issues, postponing or completely ignoring necessary improvements.
• Only seeking good news and not welcoming challenge or feedback.

Purpose: Purpose is often either missing in hero cultures or the drive to reach results has become the purpose. Organizational culture, in this case, is not sustained by common values and standards of behavior. There is no focus on the wider community or the impact the organization has on the community or the environment. People might feel disconnected from the organization and less committed and dedicated. People might say that the reason they stay is for the salary or the benefits they receive. The lack of purpose may also render the organization irrelevant to the wider community and lack support that could have helped its sustain its success.

Summary of key behaviors:

• Decision making is solely focused on profit generation.
• Tolerating behaviors that are misaligned with organizational values (when they exist).

What drives a hero culture?

Recent culture assessment work revealed that selfishness drives hero cultures: “I/We need to be #1.” There is a need to chase exceptional results with no end. This type of culture rewards quick, short-term results and visible, individual performance. Not surprisingly, people might show an excessive willingness to please the boss, to gain favor. As a result, other cultural elements like collaboration, customer centricity, people, innovation or purpose are less encouraged or exist in service of results.

For example, people might collaborate as needed to ensure a successful outcome for themselves or their team, which results in some form of personal recognition. However, people might be less likely to consistently support organizational priorities they are not directly involved in. Similarly, customers will be treated with responsiveness, insofar as this will lead to increased financial success. However, in this organizational culture, team members may not focus on continuous improvement of the customer experience.

Besides serving a need to be first, heroism can emerge in organizations in another way. It can often emerge as a behavioral response to a lack of organizational sophistication. Instability and an inability to predict the longer-term can be experienced as perceived threats and can naturally lead people to three different behavioral responses: freeze (learned helplessness), fight (heroism) or flight (burnout and turnover).

In our culture work, we have seen all three will likely exist at the same time, with individuals reacting based on their own reactive tendencies. Those who select heroism will be the ones that will use the back channels to get the job done. In this environment, organizational heroes are needed. So, the culture will reward fast reaction and the ability to firefight, further enabling the rise of organizational heroes.

Conclusion

While organizational heroes are important at the early stages of an organization’s development (e.g., start-ups) as the organization becomes more complex this culture becomes unscalable and unsustainable. Long-term success requires formal structures that allow organizations to operate and optimize for sustainable growth. And while every business might need to firefight from time to time, consistently relying on this practice can lead to burnout and a high retention rate. Finally, without the necessary reliability, businesses risk losing the trust of their customers, which can incur a significant financial impact.