What is "culture" at a company anyway?

Jordan Schultz, my Executive VP, and I were talking about the turmoil in the industry and what it meant to the Advisor who has stuck it out. If you are a 10 year veteran at one of the firms that was taken over or merged with a bigger institution, what did it mean to you to stay in your seat? What has really changed?

The obvious changes are the money “out” (you lost money in your company’s stock) and the money “in” (you recouped money with retention bonuses). But what about the elusive “cultures”? Firms brag about their cultures. Senior management at merged firms claim that the cultures are “a fit”. We know that this is salesmanship to some degree, but what are the real changes that the 10+ year Advisor sees on a day to day basis and are those changes “cultural”?

To me, the ties of tenure or “culture” that this Headhunter has to overcome when I am talking to a veteran Advisor about other opportunities are both emotional and functional. The emotional ties are best described as an Advisor’s “Work Family”. We all spend more time Monday through Friday with people at work than we do with our families. The extent that this gives an Advisor comfort vs. stress is also the extent in which this is an emotional handcuff, or a push out the door. If the people that give an Advisor comfort and a feeling of camaraderie disappear, then the cultural emotional tie is diminished.

The functional ties reflect the connections that an Advisor has within his own company that enable him or her to get things done within a giant bureaucracy. Many long-tenured Advisors have been working with the support staff of his or her company for decades. If the traders, specialists, and back-office personnel are no longer there to take a call and solve a problem (because of merger induced layoffs) then the Advisor might as well be at a new firm.

Bottom line: Can a culture be retained when so many of the “keepers of the flame” are no longer there?