#4 Do you have the right mix?🍸
Knowing your strengths and weaknesses and recognizing in what type of work and culture you thrive in is fundamental.
Andrew Chen, an investor at Andreessen Horowitz, shares an approach used by teams at Uber. It's called The Head/Heart/Hands Framework, a simple tool to identify your work personality and breakdown of company culture.
The main idea is that there are 3 types of work personalities and every company culture can be expressed in a pie chart that breaks down how these personalities make up the company.
The most dominant personality mirrors the general culture of the company.
1) Head 🧠
Strengths: Information gathering, strategy, planning, and analysis capabilities. They value making the right calculated decisions.
Weakness: Not being able to move quickly or inspiring others to follow them.
2) Heart ❤️
Strengths: Bringing people together and focusing on the happiness of others. They have a clear mission and purpose.
Weakness: Not being able to articulate the dream into a functional and sustainable business in the day-to-day.
3) Hands 🙌🏻
Strengths: Making things happen and experimenting. They are quick and agile.
Weakness: Because they break things along the way, there must be a clear strategy to avoid wasting energy and resources.
Here are some examples of company cultures broken down by personality types.
The more your personality matches the "culture type" of the company, the more you will “flow” and feel in your element.
Also, the breakdown of your team/company culture must be congruent with the objectives you want to reach and the company you want to be in the coming years.
For example, P&G was known to have a perfectionist personality that favored detailed planning and risk aversion, a "Head Type Culture". For many decades getting a new product to market would take years.
Knowing that the company needed a significant culture shift to keep up with changing customer needs, former CEO A. G. Lafley made cultural changes to foment experimentation and trying new things through lean prototyping methodologies. Things no longer had to be "perfect" before facing consumers.
By rewarding experimental behavior, he created a culture where "Hands type personalities" could thrive and help the company move faster.
When he became CEO in 2000, P&G was introducing new brands and products with a commercial success rate of 15 to 20 percent. In 2008 their success rate grew to 50-60 percent.
The Takeaway:
All 3 personality types are necessary. Not one is better than the other.
What matters is having the correct mix of personalities to get the company/team where it needs to go.
Think of your personality type.
Does it resonate with the company culture? If not perhaps you need to rethink your role or look for a place where you can better exploit your strengths.
What does the break down of your company look like?
Let me know what you think. Just hit reply.
If you enjoyed this Takeaway share it with a friend.
You can find previous Takeaways here.
All the best!
María Albert
Sources and additional inputs:
Andrew Chen Tweet Thread
https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1083097617893113856.html
P&G's Innovation Culture
A.G. Lafley - https://www.strategy-business.com/article/08304?gko=a6111
The Head, Heart, and Hands Of Transformation
https://www.bcg.com/publications/2018/head-heart-hands-transformation.aspx