Another microculture in the news

Regardless of your opinions or interest in NASCAR, you would've done well to watch the end of this weekend's race. It was quite a lesson for any of us operating in a microculture. Since I doubt you have read about this, let me briefly tell the story before talking about why it intrigues me.

Towards the end of the race, Dale Earnhardt Jr in the #8 car slowed down to avoid a spinning car in front of him. The #5 car behind Junior - driven by Kyle Busch - did not slow down quickly enough. Both cars were damaged. The #8 crew thought that it could stay out and finish, but after the engine blew it was done for the day.

The #5 car appeared to be in worse shape after the wreck. It went directly to the garage where the driver got out, refused interviews and did not talk to his crew chief before disappearing. The #5 crew, however, was able to get that car back together and ready to go out on the track. If they could finish the race, they would pick up one position and 3 points. (Considering the way that the races are scored, even one point can be crucial.) To finish the race, though, they needed a driver.

So, according to the story here one of the guys on the #5 crew knew Junior and asked him to drive. He talked to his crew chief to get the OK. And, despite the fact that there was no advantage to him in doing it, Dale finished the race in the car that wrecked his car. He then proceeded to compliment the crew of the #5 car on how nice the car drove -considering the wreck. He climbed out of the car and did his post-race interviews. And that was that.

I could post pages about this little incident, but not necessarily for the reasons you think. I'm very interested in the way we learn to adapt to microcultures - how we learn to read the signs and actually understand all that is expected of us as well as whether we choose to behave as expected or not. At this stage in my life, it is an academic interest, but there was a time - when I was about as good at it as Kyle is now - that it was a survival skill.

We like to say that business is about the bottom line, but it is just as true to say that it is all about relationships. Most often this is taken to mean that it isn't what you know but who you know - but that isn't really what I'm talking about here. Despite the fact that nobody ever teaches this, conforming to the social norms of any business culture is now a part of the what that we bring to work with us. If I am reading the NASCAR culture correctly, Kyle Busch exemplified that theory this weekend.

Kyle Busch, the younger of the 2 Busch brothers racing this weekend, should have come into Sunday with both technical and social advantages. He was one of 43 people that qualified - on technical merit - to be racing at Texas Motor Speedway. He has an impressive racing resume that dates back to wins before he was old enough to drive a street licensed car. Because he was racing from the age of 12, and watching his older brother race his way into the Nextel Cup, he was also grew up in racing culture. (Although, to be fair, I suspect that racing in Las Vegas meant he was a rather big fish in a small pond. Despite the recent spate of western racers, the major leagues are still much farther east and south.) On paper, he should be very comfortable both behind the wheel and in the standard racing relationships, but he seemed to lose sight of what that meant this weekend.

Kyle and his crew had to have been disappointed in his technical performance. Despite the mitigating factors, I know that many feel that he could have handled the driving situation better. Just for full disclosure, I am not a fan of the younger Busch (I think his brother has it right when he calls him Shrub and don't even get HTH started talking about the young man) and I'm not a racing expert. I do not know enough about the specs and conditions to weigh in on his technical performance. But the video shows that he was clearly not pleased with it.

What I do know – and have been studying for a dozen years now – is leadership behavior and social dynamics. Kyle walked away from the race track while his crew busted their butts to get his car back together. I don't know how they will be able to forget that. His sponsors - including Kellogg's - now have great pictures of their brand names being slammed out of a car and stalked out of sight never to return to the race. I can’t imagine how his car owner will be able to explain that. In other words, no matter how intensely he felt about the technical performance - and for all we know he was told that the cost for the next car he wrecked was coming out of his personal paycheck - I suspect that the trouble that he is in today is much more about the relationship and social side. He let his emotion become the story instead of the great teamwork that managed to get his car back on the track.

I would love to say that, having learned from my own youthful mistakes, I now behave like Junior. That I am the one making choices that put me in the right place at the right time to turn a bad day around. That I now have the right technical and social skills all wrapped up in a style so personal that my tone of voice, like his, can be heard in print. But I am not at all sure about that.

Despite the fact that I have learned dozens of ways to analyze and understand the corporate cultures where I spend 8 or more hours a day, I struggle with that grace point. I have had a few good teachers along the way. And I have been given the opportunity to make mistakes for a limited audience and, if necessary, walk away to start again more intelligently somewhere else. I have learned approaches that work for me and tools that can help others. But this weekend, a young NASCAR driver, with all of the mentoring and coaching that he has been reported to be receiving, showed that it is possible to have trouble meeting the expectations that come from the social aspects of his dream job. That says something to me about how difficult that is for everyone. It says that maybe we need to start working on this differently. It says that there is an opportunity here - and we are losing talent by not addressing it.