Today hundreds of Google employees around the world are walking out to protest the company’s handling of sexual harassment claims.
I’ve never worked at Google and don’t know enough to know whether I’d choose to walk out or not. But I am familiar with culture at tech companies and am familiar with grassroots political movements, and there are two things I do know:
First, it’s incredibly powerful to use your voice and stand up for what you believe is right, especially after being thoughtful about it, and it’s possible to have faith in your leaders while also holding them to higher standards for everybody.
Second, now more than ever, culture in organizations is everything. It’s more important than strategy or business models or products. And it’s everyone’s responsibility to formulate, maintain and evolve.
Walkouts like today at Google (which, to be clear could happen at just about any company in any organization) are culture moments. It IS culture. For anyone who cares about the cultures they are a part of, how this plays out is really important whether you’re a CEO or a new employee who just started, whether you’re a manager or not, whether you’re a woman or a man.