Good Culture is the Biggest Productivity Hack, Not AI

AI definitely helps with productivity, but only when you have the right culture in place first!

Intro

This is something that has been on my mind for quite a while now. It seems like everything these days revolves around “AI”, “AI tools”, “AI productivity”.

• “You need to use this AI tool”
• “You need to be using this AI workflow”
• “Your engineers should be 2x, 5x, or even 10x more productive with AI”

And I get it. AI is changing how we build software, and I use AI tools myself every day as well.

But we’re focusing too much on AI tools alone and not enough on the environment in which the tools are being used. Because there’s something a LOT more important than AI tools, and that’s a great culture.

Throughout my 13+ year career in the engineering industry, I’ve seen both the negative effects of bad culture and the positive effects of a good one. I even felt it myself as an engineer and an engineering manager, when departments spent whole days blaming each other for problems.

So, I am a big believer that everything starts with a good culture, and I’ll tell you all about it in this article.

"This is very easy to build now that we have AI, and we don't need as many people"

This is a sentence that breaks a good culture and makes people believe that their job is not important. Especially if it comes from an executive, e.g., a CEO, CPO, or even worse, a CTO.

The problem with it is that it totally decreases psychological safety, and everyone starts wondering whether they'll still be needed or not.

But here is an important thing that many people forget:

There is no better productivity hack than a great culture. No AI tools will provide bigger productivity gains.

I’ve unfortunately seen and heard this sentence quite a few times, either directly or from an engineer or engineering leader who has reported that to me.

Without good culture, everything else won’t work well

Many executives believe that AI will just magically increase the productivity of everyone. But the reason that often doesn’t work is Conway’s law. It states:

Organizations which design systems (in the broad sense used here) are constrained to produce designs which are copies of the communication structures of these organizations.

I mention this law quite a lot in different articles, because it’s just so important. And the reason why it’s particularly relevant in this case is that the overall productivity and the “end product” mimic the overall culture of the organization.

If the culture is bad, the end product will be bad as well, because people just don’t work together well and they don’t communicate properly. But if the culture is good, then often the end product will be good as well.

So, you should always think about good culture as a prerequisite for everything else. And I like to make an analogy to what health is to us, humans. Without health, we can’t do anything else well.

“Other companies are 10x more productive by using this AI tool”

Now, here comes the problem that many people fall into, especially CEOs and other executives. They see either a competitor or some other company reporting 10x higher productivity using a certain AI tool.

They start to panic, they start feeling FOMO (fear of missing out), and they start blaming people around them: “Why don’t we have that same amount of productivity as well?”

A lot of the CEOs are unaware of what kind of problems this may bring. Especially to the culture of the organization. When you start actively “blaming”, it shows to everyone that they are not doing their job well, and that you don’t trust them to make good decisions.

What many CEOs don’t realize is that a lot of the “reporting” of AI increasing productivity by 10x is more or less selling a certain AI product, or a certain partnership where they are promoting the other product.

My recommendation: Always take a look at what the incentives are behind people saying something, that says a lot about whether it’s true or not.

AI makes good culture even more valuable

Here is another really important point, and many people seem to forget it. As we mentioned, good culture is a prerequisite for everything else. But when it comes to AI, it amplifies everything you already have.

So, both AI and good culture go hand in hand really well together. AI makes bad communication even worse, it also makes bad architecture even worse as well.

But if you have a good culture and good architecture, people will be more productive because they will help each other, and AI will also have a better blueprint of what good looks like because of good architecture.

This is my recommendation for building a good culture

If you’re wondering whether you have a great culture inside your team or organization, here are some useful questions to answer:

• Do people know what they are responsible for?
• Can they make decisions without unnecessary approvals?
• Do they feel safe challenging leadership?
• Do teams trust each other?
• Are priorities clear?
• Can people disagree constructively?
• Do we reward outcomes?
• Do people understand why they are building something?
• Do we learn from failures, or do we look for someone to blame?

How to correctly message AI adoption

The best messaging I saw (and has worked well) is the following:

What great engineers and engineering leaders do is learn and utilize all different tools that help them do the work better. This hasn’t really changed. AI is like any other tool that has come out over the years. Use it in your favor to help your team, organization, and the business. That’s what great engineers and engineering leaders do. And it hasn’t changed with AI.

Don’t ever mention something even close to “replacing” or something along the lines of “You are not important anymore, because we have AI”. Those are just going to completely diminish morale and break the entire culture.

When it comes to AI adoption, it only works bottom-up, it never works top-down. Trying to “force” people will only result in bad outcomes.

Replacing engineers with AI is not the way to go

I fully believe that the best companies hire more engineers, not fewer, and the reason is that with more people, you exponentially increase your productivity as well. Of course, the prerequisite is that the company culture is on point. Without it, it won’t work.

Time to market (TTM) is a very important metric in the age of AI, and I strongly believe that the best companies in a specific industry are going to be the ones that are going to move the fastest, make adjustments based on market needs, and provide the best experience for the users.

Last words

I DON’T think the biggest question for leaders should be: “How do we get everyone to use AI?” The biggest question is:

“How do we build an organization where great people can do their best work, and then use AI to multiply them?”

This is the real question that organizations should be asking and focusing on. Great culture is the biggest productivity hack.