The power of defining your culture

Failing to define your culture

Something I hear regularly from leaders, especially inexperienced ones, is the fateful phrase, “we have a great culture.” This is usually followed by a long explanation of why they don’t need to do anything to capture, communicate and preserve it. 

In reality, the opposite is true. If you’re lucky enough to have a team that’s working well and a culture you’re proud of, you must act before you lose it. Without deliberate care, attention and effort, it’ll slip through your fingers, so catch it while you can. At some point, things will change in your business, whether that’s through a new product milestone, an IPO or just through growth - literally writing down the things that make your environment unique and special will allow you to preserve the essence of your company.

There are three steps to this process: harness the brief moment you’ve created, thoughtfully codify it, then embed the resulting principles in the way things are done, from hiring to reward, recognition and decision making.

Harness the moment

There seems to be a belief among leaders that when their culture is strong, it’ll evaporate if they look at it too closely. They’re hesitant to put it into words, worried that if they try, it’ll become clear that it’s not actually as special as they thought it was.

But culture never stands still. Every new hire, every performance review, every decision that you make will either strengthen or undermine it. With that in mind, these actions must be taken deliberately and consciously, contributing to an overall vision of the company you’re trying to build.

It’s like tending a garden. You spend hours pruning, mowing and carefully arranging the elements so that for a brief moment, they’re perfect. Immediately, though, nature fights back, trying to reclaim the land you’ve cultivated. So you maintain what you’ve created and add or remove elements in accordance with the picture in your head. The more effort you put in, the more the garden conforms to your wishes.

In that brief moment, when perfection reigns, reach out and grab hold of it, firmly and immediately. Examine what makes your company so special, put words to it and develop a shared understanding. If it shatters as you inspect it, you were on unstable ground anyway.

Thoughtfully codify it

A crucial element of harnessing the moment is writing down the things you discover. Creating phrases, artefacts and stories that guide members of your team on their journey to cultural utopia allows you to develop a shared understanding of what you’re trying to build. This in turn helps them to align with it, which will enroll them in making it a reality.

The classic way of doing this is through creating Values which, when done right, are powerful tools for driving not only company culture, but company performance over time. Because they’re often poorly used, some people don’t like the term “Values”. Different terminology is fine - principles, manifestos, charters - but the point remains. Capturing your culture in words is the only way to communicate it.

Artefacts and stories are just as important. In his excellent book The Culture Code, Daniel Coyle talks about how Pixar and the Navy Seals litter their environments with memorabilia, pictures and items that represent important elements of who they are. Steve Wynn built outstanding cultures in his hotels by celebrating stories of employees who demonstrated behaviours that aligned with the group’s collective ideals.

Values, artefacts and stories take the abstract and infuse it with reality, which is the only way many people can understand it.

Embed it

We’ve all seen (or at least heard of) organisations in which Values exist, but aren’t lived. It’s a sad situation - the work’s been done, but not completed. A couple more steps and a thriving culture could have been created, but instead, trust and faith are eroded.

There are many ways in which culture can be embedded, but there are five cornerstones that, when missed, bring the whole structure tumbling down.

When hiring new members of the team, Values alignment (not culture fit) should be your highest priority. It doesn’t matter how technically sound someone is if they don’t share your principles.

When your people act in accordance with the culture you’re building and display behaviours that enhance it, rewarding them sends a strong signal. So does not rewarding them. Awards, recognition programmes or a simple public thank you will reinforce your message.

If performance is separated from cultural alignment, both will suffer in the long run. Great results can be achieved at an unsustainable, invisible cost. Performance reviews and promotion decisions must have cultural elements running through them.

Decisions large and small compound. A series of seemingly innocuous tradeoffs can lead you down a path that crushes your company. Values-based decision making is the lifeblood of a health culture.

Finally, your leaders must role model the behaviours, Values and beliefs that underpin your culture. If they don’t, it’s just words on the wall. Everyone has a bad day, but misalignment at the top must be rooted out and addressed swiftly.

The only way to truly build a High Performance Culture that delivers over the long run is by deliberately cultivating it. Don’t let fear hold you back.

(If you haven’t taken the High Performance Culture Scorecard yet, it’s the best place to begin. In less than three minutes you’ll receive a personalised Culture Score, broken down into eight categories, that will tell you exactly where your company stands today. Come and get yours, completely free, at https://scorecard.versapia.ai)