I began my career as a nuclear reactor operator on submarines for the US Navy. (A lot of my stories and analogies come from that experience.)
When HBO released the “Chernobyl” miniseries, I refrained from watching it because I knew it would touch me in an emotional way. However, over the Christmas/New Years break, at the prompting of friends, I watched the series. And I was moved in multiple ways. If you haven’t seen it, I highly recommend watching it!
There are many things that we could discuss about this series. What I want to concentrate on here is culture. This series does an excellent job of demonstrating the incredible power that culture can have.
Culture eats strategy for breakfast.
Peter Drucker
But what is “culture”?
The word culture is a good example of words we hear and use all the time. We all know what culture is. Until we go to define it. Then we typically struggle. And when we get a group of people together, there are multiple versions of the definition, each slightly (or sometimes widely) varied in meaning. Most people that I talk to immediate think of world cultures like Japanese versus Icelandic, etc. For the purposes of this article, I offer the following definition that I came across at Microsoft.
Culture is a result of the various behaviors, values, structures, and processes that are supported or discouraged within an organization.
Microsoft – (source unidentified beyond that)
This definition has some subtle, but powerful distinctions. It defines culture as a result. Not as a theory, or as a academic construct, but as something tangible. Those results are caused by many things: behaviors, values, etc.. Each contributing to the whole. And lastly, it is not just the things that are openly endorsed, but also the things that are discouraged. I think the only thing missing from this definition is that some of these things are explicitly done, while others are implicitly done.
In Chernobyl, you see the culture clearly driving decisions and actions. You see the operators at the plant unwilling to adequately challenge the plant manager. The plant manager has nothing but contempt for the operators – who are they to tell him what’s wrong with the testing procedures? Of course they don’t know what they are talking about when they say the core is uncovered! All of this fostered by a culture that said position meant absolute authority. And that authority extended to the belief that people in power can just say something, and it is true. But the real world doesn’t work that way. You can say that core didn’t blow – but the core doesn’t care what you say.
It truly scares me how closely this parallels so many things in the US political arena today. If a politician says something, it does not make in true. It must be true to be true! There are things that you can get away with and live via fantasy. But there are many things, important things, that demand reality.
The destruction of the lie
In the US Nuclear Navy, an individual’s integrity was required to be absolute (I say in the past tense, because I do not know the current culture in place there – but I pray it is still the same). Our definition of integrity was a simple one that still use today:
Integrity is doing the right thing because it is the right thing to do.
US Nuclear Power Program
I hear people say things like “it’s just a little white lie”. Here’s the problem with that; the smaller the importance of the lie is, the worse the lie. Doesn’t make sense?
Most people are judging the lie based on the impact that it has. Therefore, a little white lie has virtually no impact. Therefore, it doesn’t matter. BUT, when you evaluate the lie as an erosion of the person’s integrity, the more profound the impact. In other words, if I am willing to lie over something small, trivial, and non-impactful, what do you think I will do when it is important? When real harm can come from it? When harm, in all its forms, will come to me?
Most people are judging the lie based on the impact that it has. A little white lie has virtually no impact. Therefore, it doesn’t matter. BUT, when you evaluate the lie as an erosion of the person’s integrity, the more profound the impact. In other words, if I am willing to lie over something small, trivial, and non-impactful, what do you think I will do when it is important? When real harm can come from it? When harm, in all its forms, will come to me?
Now let’s apply this to your business. Do you want to build your business on a foundation of lies? Do you want a team that knows to only deliver “good news” regardless of what reality holds? Or do you want to build with confidence knowing what is what? When your people deliver messages, good and bad, do you want to be able to trust and rely on those? As a leader, we all determine that every day with every interaction that we have.
Chernobyl is the result of a failed culture
The initial tragedy of Chernobyl did not have to happen. Nuclear power is not some mystery, not understood branch of science that acts willy-nilly. That nuclear “accident” was the result of deliberate actions being take by people who knew and understood what the consequences would be. It was a PEOPLE issue. No one, in a long chain of problems linked one on top of the other, had the courage to stand up and say “This is wrong!”
After the accident, no one had the courage to accept what had happened. They lacked the mental capacity to deal with what had actually occurred. They lacked the moral fortitude to bring transparency to the outside world for fear of looking weak!
This is the dreadful outcome from that Soviet mindset. To follow blindly. To keep down dissenting voices. To prefer propaganda over reality. Don’t let the smallest elements of this mindset into your organization. Think it can’t happen? Look at the ethics of ENRON. Look at the lending institutes leading up to the real estate market crash back in the early 2000s. Look at the current disconnect between politicians and medical/scientific community on COVID-19.
Do the right thing because it is the right thing to do. And drive the same from others.
