Clan Culture: Definition, Characteristics, Pros and Cons

Clan culture, sometimes called a collaborative culture, is a type of organizational culture or organizational structure for a company in which the employees have a family-like work relationship and the business makes decisions by consensus.

A company with a clan culture work environment will often be collaborative and noncompetitive. Some companies will develop a clan work culture as an empowerment tool to promote teamwork, prevent burnout, and increase retention.

There are a few ways to characterize a clan type of workplace culture based on its core values. Your startup or tech company may be looking for alternatives to other types of corporate cultures within the competing values framework like adhocracy culture, market culture, or hierarchy culture, or you may simply be interested in making an organizational change at your company. Consider the following characteristics of a clan type of corporate culture:

• Equal decision-making power: This kind of company structure often sees every team member as equal. This creates a culture in which every person’s ideas and opinions have equal weight. The company will often wait to make decisions until everyone agrees or when there is a consensus.
• Togetherness and unity: A clan culture encourages accepting one another and believing in each other to find success as a team. A unified team that encourages each other will often be more open to ideas and will have a positive energy in the workplace.
• Top-down collaboration: In a clan type of company culture, the top-most leaders will collaborate with even the lowest level employees. This culture model allows for leaders and high-performing employees to act as mentors for new or less experienced team members. It also removes the chain of command and eliminates a hierarchical mentality to promote equal responsibility and cohesion.

A clan-type company culture can be a great way to bring your company together to solve problems and to have a results-oriented mindset. A clan culture can benefit your company because it:

• Allows the company to be adaptable and flexible: A company culture that welcomes feedback and open-mindedness will have higher adaptability when they face new problems or want to make changes. Employees will feel welcome to introduce new ideas, and group consensus means everyone will be on board with new directions.
• Encourages open communication between staff: All levels of employees feel like they can voice their opinions and be heard in a clan culture. While there may still be titles for higher and lower positions, the bottom line is that everyone matters when it comes to decision-making for initiatives like launching new products.
• Promotes high employee engagement and retention: Employees who feel valued and like their opinions matter will have more motivation to stay. A company with a clan culture will often focus on team building and employee well-being, both of which can help keep employees longer.

Before you decide that you want your workplace to have a clan culture, there are a few possible downsides that can come with this type of company organization:

• Difficult to scale as the company grows: A clan culture works best and is easiest to implement in a small work environment with a few team members who are tight-knit. The larger the company becomes, the harder it can be to create a family-like environment and maintain collaboration between higher and lower employees.
• May prevent risk-taking: A company culture that promotes togetherness and unity might also have problems with maintaining the status quo and not offending others. Employees might be afraid to voice their opinion for fear of shaking the boat or offending another team member.
• Too much collaboration can affect productivity: A highly collaborative workplace can get a lot accomplished, but sometimes it can also create bottlenecks that slow down the workflow. When everyone becomes involved in a project you might end up with too many cooks in the kitchen.

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