The Culture Code (16 page)

Similarly, helping employees understand their career paths is on Code. If someone can see that a clerical position leads to a position with greater responsibility, which leads to a management position, a middle management position, and ultimately an executive position, she can see that she is going somewhere, and that heightens her sense of who she is.

Employees always expect monetary rewards to accompany promotions, but an on-Code employer takes rewards further. Promotions should come with new responsibilities and especially with new tools to help the employee do a more effective job (a better computer, access to an expense account, operation of machinery that is more powerful). In addition to giving him a way to do his job better, such changes give him a visceral sense that his identity is expanding.

One of the common mistakes that employers make is looking at a team of employees (for instance a sales force or a marketing staff) as a homogenous group that rises and falls together. Offering incentives (a group bonus or a vacation trip) to a team as a whole is off Code because it fails to acknowledge who an individual is. While teamwork is important within a corporation, the team should be regarded as a support group that allows individuals to become champions. Think of a jazz band. The band lays down a basic musical structure that allows each soloist to shine. When a saxophonist plays a stirring solo, he receives individual recognition (applause after the solo) above the other members of the band (who will get the chance for recognition during their own solos later in the song). Sending an entire team to the Bahamas for a job well done actually blunts an employee’s efforts to do his best work. He only needs to perform well enough to help achieve the team objective. If, on the other hand, the employee knew that individual rewards were possible, he would be more likely to strive to outperform expectations.

“
SHOW
ME
THE
MONEY”

Ask most people why they work and they’re likely to answer “To make money.” The Culture Code shows us that this isn’t actually true, but there
is
a very strong connection between work and money in this culture.

The Code for money offers a very powerful tool for understanding America. People around the world perceive us as being concerned only with money. This huge misconception is one of the reasons so many of them fail to see what really does motivate us. At the same time, though, Americans themselves perceive this preoccupation with money and think it suggests that we are greedy at heart or that we prize material goods over enhancement of the spirit. This, too, is a misconception, one that gives us much less credit than we deserve.

There is very little “old money” in America. The overwhelming preponderance of the wealth in this country belongs to the person who originally earned it. Our culture is filled with “self-made” people, and in some very real way, we all have the same starting point with regard to wealth—we all began poor. We came here with no money and established the goal of making life better for our children. Some succeeded in extraordinary ways immediately, while others simply improved the situation slightly for the next generation. Regardless, the notion that we “come from nothing” pervades America. In a sense, we have the poorest rich people in the world, because even those who accumulate huge sums of money think like poor people. They continue to work hard, they continue to focus on cash flow and expenses, and they continue to struggle to earn more.

A discovery undertaken for J. P. Morgan and Citibank revealed why. Listen to the third-hour stories:

I still have the first dollar I received when I opened the doors at my dry-cleaning business. It’s in a frame in my office in the back of the store. I look at it every morning to remind me that my business is a good one.

—a sixty-two-year-old man

My dad got injured one spring when I was a teenager, so he asked me to turn over the vegetable garden for him and put in new plants. This was much harder work than anything I ever did before and there were a couple of times when I thought about quitting. I kept going, though, because I knew my father needed me to do it. When I finished, he gave me twenty bucks, which was a decent amount of cash at the time. I wound up getting a radio I really wanted with it. I held on to that radio for a long time because I worked so hard to get it.

—a man in his fifties

My first, most powerful, and most recent memory of money is that I don’t have any. Whatever I make goes to pay the bills. I never expected it to be like this after all these years. I don’t know how I’ll ever get out of this hole.

—a forty-three-year-old man

We never had money when I was growing up and I had to take out a lot of loans to pay for college. That felt like a huge burden when I graduated. Fortunately, I got a good job right away and after some quick promotions, I was making good money. One of the first things I did was pay off my student loans. I loved that I could do that and still have plenty of money left over.

—a thirty-two-year-old woman

My most powerful memory is going in and asking my boss for a raise for the first time. I was doing okay and I didn’t need the money all that much, but I also knew I was making a lot of money for him and that I deserved it. He gave me a hard time at first, but then he gave in. It felt great to know that he appreciated me enough to pay me more.

—a thirty-five-year-old man

I was the fifth of five kids in my family, and all of my siblings were significantly older than me. Whenever we went out together, one of them always paid my way, which was necessary because I didn’t have much money, but always made me feel a little bad. One night—this is my most powerful memory—we all went out to dinner at an Italian restaurant. The food was great and we all had a really good time. When the check came, I reached across the table and grabbed it. They tried to argue with me, but I told them I’d just gotten a little bonus at work and wanted to treat everyone. They were very proud of me and I felt like I had a different place in the family after that.

—a woman in her thirties

This whole session has been difficult for me. I try not to think too much about money. I’m up to my neck in bills and I don’t have a clue how I’m going to pay them off. Most of my friends have more money than I do and I try to fake it and keep up with them when we’re out. I know I can’t keep up, though, and it’s gonna kill me if I don’t stop.

—a twenty-four-year-old man

Clearly, money signifies more to Americans than the means to buy things. It shows us how we’re doing, tells us how far we’ve come from impoverished poor roots. Money reminds you that your “business is a good one,” that you’ve worked hard to get something, that you can carry your burdens, that you are appreciated, and that you are moving up to the next level. Not having money makes you feel as if you are “in a hole”; you may feel that “it’s gonna kill me.”

The American culture has no titles of nobility to show us who the big winners are. Without them, we need something that performs a similar function. Participants tell us through their third-hour stories that that thing is money.

The American Culture Code for money is
PROOF
.

In spite of what people from other cultures—and many from our own—say about our attitude toward money, the Code shows that money isn’t a goal in and of itself for most Americans. We rely on it to show us that we are good, that we have true value in the world. An American can’t be knighted for his deeds or become a baroness, as Margaret Thatcher has. American accolades are relative and ephemeral. We can prove what we’ve accomplished only by making as much money as possible.

Money is our barometer of success. Most Americans find it impossible to feel successful if they feel they are underpaid. Money is a scorecard. If someone is doing a job similar to yours and making more money, you unconsciously believe that he or she is doing a better job. Being paid for a job imbues it with instant credibility. I spoke with someone recently who told me about his early struggles to become a professional writer after leaving a corporate career. For two years, even though he was doing high-quality work, he failed to make any money at it. “I felt unemployed,” he told me, “even though I was working ten hours a day.” A publishing contract changed his attitude about his accomplishments instantly. Suddenly the previous two years gained validity. The money the publisher paid him was proof.

Because we believe money is proof, we see a very strong connection between money and work. Money earned via hard work is admirable, proof that you are a good person. We have little respect, however, for those who inherit money rather than making it on their own. We might be fascinated by the exploits of someone like Paris Hilton, but we don’t feel that she’s proven anything, because she was born rich and her celebrity stems exclusively from her wealth. We attribute Patty Hearst’s early difficulties to her growing up an heiress, and we consider the ongoing problems of the Getty children to be the product of old money. We love it that Bill Gates has more money than the Queen of England, because he earned every penny of it himself.

While we don’t have much respect for trust fund babies who live off the family fortune, we have completely different feelings about those who build on their inherited legacy and establish substantial careers of their own. Robert Wood Johnson worked hard to take Johnson & Johnson to new levels of growth and profitability. William Clay Ford Jr. did the same with the Ford Motor Company. These people, while starting from a very different place from most Americans, prove themselves by making their own money and increasing the family fortune. Wealthy American businesspeople will say that they want their children to establish themselves. They will of course provide access and connections (and they might underestimate the extent to which this makes a difference), but they won’t give their children a “free ride.” Making every generation prove itself anew is definitely on Code.

Even if we work very hard, we can find this good money/bad money dichotomy in our own lives. One of the things revealed by the study I did for Morgan and Citibank is that Americans see interest income and capital gains as “bad money” because they didn’t earn it themselves. Investors who took a very active role in managing their stock portfolios felt they “made” this money, while those who simply followed the advice of their brokers did not. Banks and investment firms that tell their customers “Give us your money, and we’ll make it work for you” are totally off Code. On-Code firms portray themselves as facilitators who provide their clients with tools for generating more money.

Many European cultures have a different view of money and its function. At a certain point, if one earns a great deal of money in these cultures, one simply settles back on the estate, leaving the world of commerce behind. Here, of course, we believe we’re only as good as our last deal, and even when we’ve made billions we want to make billions more to prove how good we are. In America, we can dream about having no limits, about striking it rich regardless of how little we had at birth. In Europe, you might start out with a bit of money, but it is considerably more difficult to grow out of your station (a French book published a few years ago whose title can be translated as “The Heirs” showed that there was very little economic movement in that country: the children of doctors became doctors, the children of bankers became bankers, and it was very difficult to move into these classes or beyond them). Hence, money in France isn’t a form of proof, but an unpleasant fact.

In France, a common topic at elegant dinner parties is sex. The French consider it entirely acceptable to discuss sexual positions, multiple partners, and different kinds of lingerie while entertaining guests. They consider the topic of money, however, to be vulgar; it is exceedingly impolite to ask how much money someone makes or how much he or she paid for something. Here, of course, we would be appalled by an explicit sexual discussion at dinner, but we can talk about money all night long. Different Culture Codes lead to different behaviors.

It has been said that Americans consider money their religion. While this is often meant critically, it has an element of truth that doesn’t have a negative dimension. The “proof” that we derive from money is the proof of our goodness—not only of the quality of our work at our chosen professions, but also of our quality as people. We truly believe there is a link between goodness and monetary success and that those who cheat and lie their way to the top ultimately meet their comeuppance on both the spiritual and financial planes. Consistent with this mind-set is the American attitude toward charitable donations. There is no luggage rack on a hearse, and since you cannot take your possessions and money into the afterlife with you, Americans (not just dying ones) choose to give a significant amount of it away to those in need. Studies show that Americans are the most charitable people in the world. Even people who barely scrape by tend to be generous with the money they share with others. The rich even appear to compete over who makes the largest donations. While the generosity seems to be heartfelt, there is a strong sense of obligation that comes with being wealthy in this culture. Americans expect their most fortunate to share what they’ve earned, and we have an entire system of laws in place for giving one’s money away.

The new glasses of the Culture Code offer us strong, even counterintuitive, insights into dealing with money in America. It is off Code, for example, to preach profitability to one’s employees. Money is the proof of goodness, not in itself the goal. Instead, a company’s management must inspire employees to be the best they can possibly be and to make the company as strong as it can possibly be. This is on Code for both work and money and, if done effectively, leads to profitability.

The two Codes together lead to another surprising conclusion: money alone is the worst reward for an American employee. It doesn’t last and it is never sufficient. Yes, money is proof, and as such, it is a critical component of any reward system. But the most on-Code approach is to use money as a global positioning system that shows the employee where he is on his career path. At every promotion, the employee should be shown a visual representation of the income curve that he or she is on. The angle at which one’s salary is climbing is a powerful symbol of growth. It is visual proof. A tangible award of some sort presented at the same time as the promotion gives the employee a tactile experience of his enhanced sense of who he is. Maybe it is a plaque of some sort. Maybe it is a new office, or a new accessory for the office. These tangible symbols last much longer than money, though they admittedly mean very little without it.