Uber finds itself in the news for lots of reasons, not all of them good. The most recent story concerns the firing of 20 employees for a variety of bad behaviors to show that they were being held accountable for their actions. I am not so concerned with whether this was a good move as much as if it will lead to change.
Certainly, the publicness of the firings meant that they were done as a message to Uber employees and the investment community. It says, “Yes, we hear you about our culture and we are doing something about it.” What it doesn’t say is, “You have been rewarding our CEO who does the same things, but we are not so sure what to do about that.”
Firing a bunch of people does not improve a company’s culture, even if it was the right decision. Rather, it instills fear. And while it may convey a message of what will not be tolerated, the action does not reinforce any positive behaviors that senior management would like to see. It is almost like sentencing people to hang by the neck until they cheer up.
Uber has grown their business by the asking for forgiveness rather than permission. That type of a model, by definition, rewards people for bending the rules to the extreme. Their challenge is how to continue with a culture based on disrupting the status quo but respects the people who support it. That will require threading a pretty small needle.
Changing a culture requires time and consistency. Management needs to look at every aspect of its people processes (recruiting, hiring, onboarding, training, compensation, performance management, and succession planning) and ask, “Have we put in the right incentives and are we modeling the correct behaviors for a sustainable culture?” Cultures do not happen overnight and they do not change after a few heads roll.