I have a bit of confusion about your situation so pardon me asking:
If you work in a team of four and your manager hands you a toy ninja and says "let's take pictures with it!", that is cool IFF there is no higher management?
Or, is it cool only if a peer thinks of it?
Or, the issue is that the idea came from more people at a distance more than X?
Or the issue is that they told you that you must take pics with it, rather than saying "you know what would be cool" ?
Or is it just a general "this doesn't feel right".
Because it would seem to me that your company _invented_ a tradition like that, it's just that you didn't like that it wasn't invented from the guy sitting next to you.
I understand and have experienced the feeling of looking at BigCo and thinking "boy, they are trying too hard to seem fun", but I am wondering how much of the judgement is the _existing_ notion that they are a boring corporate.
At my current job, if my manager hands me the toy ninja, I would happily try to take pictures with it. Because my manager is very much knee-deep in the trenches with the rest of the devs, designers, and QA folk day in day out. He has, without fail, and repeatedly, shown that he understands the situation "on the ground" and has always treated our concerns with the respect and gravity demanded.
At Amazon there was not a chance - my manager was the guy barking orders from up high, funneling the whims of even higher management down with little to no filtering or defense for our ability to get it done. He was a straight pass-through, and it sucked. Him handing me the ninja would have been a damned insult (and it was).
The question is not job titles, it's entirely about the working relationship, and this is also why "inventing culture" fails. When you have an incredibly segmented workforce, where management is entirely separated from the grunts, and neither side have any respect for the other, any such "culture" is naturally a decree enforced from the top, rather than a genuine expression of what employees already feel.
People do stupid stuff like taking pictures of plastic toys >because< they are having fun, which is a decent sign that the culture is good. Doing goofy shit isn't inherently fun just because its goofy. It certainly won't improve your corporate culture - it's the result not the cause.
> Because it would seem to me that your company _invented_ a tradition like that, it's just that you didn't like that it wasn't invented from the guy sitting
> next to you.
No, the company didn't "invent" a tradition. Here's two scenarios:
1) Your boss goes around and hands everyone a plastic action figure and says "okay let's all take pictures of him doing funny things!" Nobody's going to do it. It's going to feel forced, and it's going to have the opposite effect.
2) You come in one morning and find your boss taking a picture of an action figure bent over and peering into the guts of a server. Then you see a few coworkers doing it the next day. Pretty soon you're trying to top them.
Management can demand that people have fun, but the only way it works is if you observe it in action.
Its cool if the manager means it when he says - take this ninja and take pictures and do fun things and MEANS it
Its NOT cool if the manager gives you this stuffed toy because someone else told him it would be a good idea and its the new corporate direction
In short, the gesture is meaningless irrespective of who it comes from unless the person means it and its in keeping with his/ her character. i.e. not FAKED or FORCED
The line between cool and douche is driven largely by intentions (being in character v/s being manipulative)
The other replies address the nuance of your relationship with the person you handed you the ninja, but I think there's something more fundamental.
If you're happy at work and then you're generally having a good time and more inclined to do goofy stuff like this. If work sucks and you're stressed out then there's nothing more irritating than someone trying to paper over real problems with a hollow gesture like this.
Because it would seem to me that your company _invented_ a tradition like that, it's just that you didn't like that it wasn't invented from the guy sitting next to you.
Yes, but even if the reason for bucking the new "tradition" is spite or envy (and I don't think it is in this case) that's reason enough. The whole point is that culture emerges; it is not prescribed. It doesn't matter why it didn't emerge. If it didn't, it can't be forced.
>Because it would seem to me that your company _invented_ a tradition like that, it's just that you didn't like that it wasn't invented from the guy sitting next to you.
You don't seem to get it.
The whole thing about culture is that it must not be _invented_, it must be _organic_ (grassroots).
That "it wasn't invented from the guy sitting next to you" is the WHOLE bloody point which makes it not a culture but some lame pointy haired idea in the vein of "this culture thing sounds nice, build us one by Wednesday".
But the point the poster was making is that what is "grassroots" depends on who the idea comes from. If it's someone that you interact with daily and actually get a significant chunk of time with, then it seems natural; if it's coming from someone too high up the chain to remember your name, it seems contrived.
Whereas the genesis of the idea may have been the result of the exact same thought processes either way.
>But the point the poster was making is that what is "grassroots" depends on who the idea comes from. If it's someone that you interact with daily and actually get a significant chunk of time with, then it seems natural; if it's coming from someone too high up the chain to remember your name, it seems contrived.
Well, that's the very definition of grassroots, isn't it? If it's coming from "up the chain", it's not grassroots anymore.
>Whereas the genesis of the idea may have been the result of the exact same thought processes either way.
Not really. When it comes from the bottom, i.e the people actually doing it, it is not an "idea", it's something you do _spontaneously_, for fun, etc.
One is something that just happens --which can then be codified, repeated, passed on to new team members, built into a culture--, the other is something that is designed.
If you work in a team of four and your manager hands you a toy ninja and says "let's take pictures with it!", that is cool IFF there is no higher management?
Or, is it cool only if a peer thinks of it?
Or, the issue is that the idea came from more people at a distance more than X?
Or the issue is that they told you that you must take pics with it, rather than saying "you know what would be cool" ?
Or is it just a general "this doesn't feel right".
Because it would seem to me that your company _invented_ a tradition like that, it's just that you didn't like that it wasn't invented from the guy sitting next to you.
I understand and have experienced the feeling of looking at BigCo and thinking "boy, they are trying too hard to seem fun", but I am wondering how much of the judgement is the _existing_ notion that they are a boring corporate.