13 Ways You Show You're Not on the Culture Bus

Those of you who have read my LinkedIn articles know that I eschew lists and begin my articles with a story. Not here. The following are excerpts from my soon-to-be-published books: Company Culture Isn't Cute (If You Mean Serious Business), and The Just Disease. So let's just get down to business. Here are 13 ways most companies (and people in companies) show they're not on the culture bus:

1. You Act Like It’s Cute

If you talk about company culture like it’s a fad (passing or otherwise), a dying movement, or worst of all like it’s “cute,” no one’s going to take you seriously. It’s certainly not cute. Paintings of dogs shooting pool and playing poker? That's cute. Company culture is serious business. The same goes if you present it as pie-in-the-sky, or practically childish and naive thinking. People will think you think it’s cute if you present it as a nice to have, rather than a have-to-have or a must-have. Or you’re constantly discussing it in the future tense: “when we” and worst of all “if we.”

If this is not the case, or not what your leadership truly believes, then you have an issue with tone and clarity. Your message is not clear, and you should immediately do your best to fix it. If you don’t, don’t expect anyone to take you seriously when you discuss it, because the only thing that’s clear to them (true or not) is that you’re not on the bus. As expressed in many of these paragraphs, culture is in the now, not in the “we’ll get to that later,” or “eventually.” 

2. You’re Ignorant/Uneducated

If you’re a leader that has any on-the-ground, back room or top floor influence on your company culture, you can’t afford to appear ignorant to the true meaning and importance of company culture. Ignorant, as in you don’t know what you don’t know, and not educated, as in you haven’t done your “homework.” This may mean you’re not well-read. Or you’re not informed. You’ve never read a book on the subject, taken a class, etc. You may have experience. We all do. By engaging in business from within a company (any company) you’re experiencing and engaging in company culture, but that’s not enough. Not nearly.

You should, at least, be a student in that you are comparing the doing with what you’re reading, what you’re hearing, what you’re seeing. What you're experiencing. With something as important as company culture you should be equal parts book smart and street smart. Read up. Talk to other leaders. Listen! Go to a conference that specifically addresses culture. Take the necessary steps to analyze your current culture: where it was, where it is, and where it is vs. where you expected it to be (if you ever had any expectations to begin with). Start to formulate a plan. Look to a company benchmark to say, “we will do better than that." Find some relevant anecdotes within. Start to think not only what you want your culture to be, but what you don’t want it to be. Often it’s easier to be clear on what turns us off than what turns us on.

3. You’re Cliché

Whether you haven’t or even if you have read, studied, examined, and learned about company culture and its role in helping you to become a great company, you will still do a disservice to it if you treat it like a trend by consistently verbalizing it and “discussing” it in a trendy manner. This will happen if you use buzzwords, overused vernacular and idioms, and platitudes. Even if you’re using them correctly, or in the right context, it will quickly seem to many that your knowledge of and interest in culture is superficial and perfunctory at best (again, true or not). It looks as though you have heard the words, but to most if you never really contextualize it in a conversation, you’ll seem like a puppet or a player. We all can be a sponge and a talking head, but you don’t want to look as though someone put an arm up your ass and is working your mouth.

Worst of all, if you use new buzzwords, terms, phrases, and idioms incorrectly, you’ll have unwittingly turned culture into a joke. That’s most unfortunate if you know what you’re talking about, and a wake-up call to change if you don’t know what you're talking about and have been “caught." Like the above, if you’re not informed and were to enter into any real, thoughtful discussion on the matter you’d fall flat on your face, or fully reveal your cards, which might be that you don’t have any. It’s a bluff. You look the part and (kind of?) act the part, but you’ve never embodied it or become one with it. Don’t be a mask. Be the person behind it. Be real. Don't engage in it just to be a "player."

4. You’re a Toe Dipper

Maybe you have the best intentions, but in the past, you’ve done things in fits and starts. You’ve dipped your toe into a culture change initiative, but if you never followed through, others may perceive you to be inconsistent, indecisive, and maybe failure and risk-averse. Just jump in. Start in the shallow end. Maybe hire a consultant to have some preliminary discussions, send out an informal poll, bring in a motivational speaker to whet people’s appetites, get their juices flowing, and bring awareness to a need and desire for change. That’s the little end. People will see you as a starter, and now you’ll need them to see you as a finisher.

You need to go deep. Any pause at this point may seem small to you, but to your staff it may seem neck-jerking. If your company has done this multiple times in the past, you risk having “generations” of employees who know (or think they know) the deal: you’ll never commit. When you start any change initiative, you might hear the whispers in your hallowed halls… here we go again. And even your greenhorns (a person who is new to or inexperienced at a particular activity) will soon realize that this is a pattern and/or a cycle. Break that cycle. Don’t start the show unless you have at least a vague script and an “ending,” or your staff will expect a card trick that nearly everyone has seen (see #8). If not, you’ve shown them you haven’t committed and didn’t have a plan because you were never on the bus. Again, true or not.

5. You Don’t/Won’t Take a Stand

Company culture often is the sum of behaviors that leadership allows and promotes, directly or indirectly. It requires a firm leader that takes a stand on what it is and what it is not. What will be tolerated and what will not. Who will create it, build it, monitor, maintain it, adjust it, enforce it, answer for it, etc. and who will not. If and when you take a stand on what it is now, and it’s different from what it was then, there will be problems once you’ve taken a stand. Same goes if you suddenly decide to consistently reinforce what it always was and you at one time let your culture vary from person to person, department to department, etc.

Either way, there inevitably are going to be people who feel as though you suddenly turned on them. Why? Because you never took a stand on being consistent. Now, some behaviors that were acceptable yesterday are suddenly unacceptable today. It doesn’t matter if you give them months to adjust, it’ll be mind-smacking, neck-jerkingly quick and abrupt to them. It’s one of the hardest transitions you can make in a company. It’s change. Real change, and often abrupt change and some people will never make that change with you. Or for you, for that matter. They might be the kind of employees that won’t do it for anyone. Don’t take it personally. They will leave you, or you will most likely have to “leave” them. Otherwise, they will loudly disparage you and/or the initiative, or quietly sabotage your every move. They are not on the bus. They'll grab onto a rope they tied to the back of the bus and shoot blowdarts at your tires. Cut the rope.

6. You Let Your Cowboys Do Your Branding

The word maverick means “independent-thinker” or “one who bears no man’s brand.” It's traced back to Samuel Maverick, a Texas rancher who prided himself on doing things differently. Maverick refused to brand his cattle, which was uncommon. Allegedly, this choice allowed him to claim most unbranded cows. Cowboys have now become synonymous with Mavericks, rough-around-the-edge guys who get the job done… their way. The old way. The way they’ve always done it. The way they did it somewhere else. Working for another cattle baron. They sometimes are even synonymous with bandits. They steal, or often take control from you, the control you have over your culture and your brand. It’s simply dangerous to let your cowboys do your branding, and without you taking a stand on what it is, it will always veer toward what it is not.

If your culture, which certainly is part of your brand (I argue vice-versa) are not consistent, you’re going to have an identity and discipline problem. Say this with me: “It’s always harder to rope people in once they’ve ‘left the range.’” You always want independent thinkers, but you don’t want men or women who won’t bear your brand, or won’t buy into your culture. Even if they “get things done,” then getting things done is at the expense of having an inconsistent brand and culture. I always say this: nature abhors a vacuum. All nature, so it’s human nature. Just like branding, without firm guidelines on company culture, people will think your culture is up for grabs, a hole they can fill, and they’ll gladly take it under their control because you’ve never put your “brand” on it. Do it for them before they do it for you. Or to you.

7. You’re Two-Faced (or Three)

The Japanese say we have three faces: "The first face, you show to the world. The second face, you show to your close friends and your family. The third face, you never show anyone. The third face is the truest reflection of who you are.” In your business, there’s the culture you present to the world and the culture you present to your company. There’s the outer face of the company and the inside face. As best as possible, they should match. If they don’t, others will quickly learn this, and the cat soon will be out of the bag, your big Reputation Management bag. Many of your people, especially the ones that leave, will communicate this inconsistency wherever they go, and you can’t control live social situations as though they are interactions in Social Media. There is no delete!

No amount of work in promoting the outside culture can make up for the fact that internally, that culture does not exist or is a very different “face.” It’s a nightmare for recruiting. You’re putting on a great show, promoting your fantastic culture to the outside world, but know that everyone you hire will eventually know or find out that backstage your "show" is a mess, or has a completely different theme from the story you’re supposedly selling. If it’s not officially a “mess,” it’s simply not as represented and to many that’s just as bad. That’s over-promising and under-delivering at best, and to many, will feel like an underhanded, or dirty trick (for which many employees in the hiring process are obviously complicit) at worst. Your company should have one face. You can keep your second and third face to yourself if you want. However, if the culture you want, more closely resembles your second face (especially if you’re a “celebrity” leader), then you need to come out of the closet. Take off the mask and be your true self, so people can see it, and emulate it.

8. You Have No Goals, No Covenant

Most people show they’re serious about something when they create real goals and realistic expected outcomes (with a BHAG for your moonshot). No one’s going to bother creating objectives when you haven’t locked into the goal. You may talk a lot about company culture, but if you have no goal, there’s nothing to shoot for and no one will take it seriously. Stop being a Toe-Dipper. Take this truism: Written things more often get done. Write down the goal and present it not just as a mission but as a covenant.

A mission is a guide, and basically saying, “we’ll try,” but a covenant is a promise “to do.” It’s a contract with those you employ and wish to employ. It’s a covenant agreement you intend to keep. Why? It shows you’re not fickle or slippery and hard to pin down. It gives others the chance to point to the written word and say, “Hey! That’s not how it’s being done.” Or, “Wow! You said it and showed, every day, that you meant it.” Or, to look at a past benchmark and say, “Hey, we failed. Let’s try again. Harder.” Same mission, more gusto. And like the promise and/or contractual agreement that it implies, never make it if you don’t intend to keep it. Goals can be missed, missions can fail, but promises should never be broken.

• Goal: Develop a world-class company culture.
• Objective 1: Decide who in our company will define and is qualified to define “world-class company culture.”
• Mission: Always strive to be the best company we can be by 1. consistently refining our company culture… (so on and so forth)
• Covenant: Management promises, from this and every day, moving forward, we will work on building a world-class company culture, which will include yearly feedback from every employee in the company.

9. You’re Not the Lead Pin

There usually are two sides to every metaphor. In bowling, you pretty much have to knock down the lead pin to knock down all of the others. The lead pin is meant to take the “hit” for the win. If nothing else, it’s physics. If you fall and stumble the others in your company will as well. If you don’t apply the right kind of force or energy in the right direction, you’ll have a few people standing alone because they weren’t aligned with the force, or the force wasn’t evenly distributed. Your cowboys love to stay standing. They’ll resist that force. They actually pride themselves on it.

Every employee must feel the force of your company culture, or you will not have a “strike.” When the right force comes from the right direction (every direction, but led from the front is best) and from the lead pin, all pins fall in line. If the company culture doesn’t come from the CEO, you’re not going to have a strike. If so, and the other leaders are lined up behind her/him and you apply the right force over and over, you will win. You’ll consistently have strikes and win the culture game.

In a “front line” culture, you flip the pins around: the lead pin is in the back and “hides,” and all of the “back pins” take the hit. You can hide behind your front line in some respects (not taking low-level calls from easy customers), but you can’t hide from flaws or inconsistencies in your culture. If you don’t take the hit for your company culture, or you blame others for the culture you’re supposed to be leading, less and fewer people are going to be willing to take the hit for you or lead from the back. I’m not saying you have to take every customer service phone call, but when it comes to culture, you have to be the lead pin. If you’re not, you’re not on the bus, and you’re in the wrong game.

10. You’re Waiting for the Perfect Time

There is no perfect time. The closest you’ll get is in the now. Today. Company culture is now. It’s the present. It’s the always. It never stops, and it waits for no one. It abhors a vacuum because people abhor a vacuum. If you have a void in your company culture, others will be more than willing to fill it, with their ideas of how it should be. It’s like branding. If you don’t label yourself, others will be more than happy to brand you for you. Your cowboys are sitting there with a hot iron waiting to stamp it into your company flesh. Say this with me: “It is always the perfect time.” It’s the only time. Start now.

Culture is the very DNA, lifeblood, and heartbeat of your company. It drives your collective body. Whether you started the company or you “inherited” it, that body is yours. Deal with it. Same goes if you’re a manager that replaced another and “inherited” a team. That’s your team now. Own it. You can look to the past and improve upon it, or burn it down and start all over. Any ecologist knows a forest can come back healthier after a “controlled burn.” Either way, you must decide how you’re going to make up for past sins, very much in the present with an eye on the future. And don’t play the blame game. What matters is what you’re going to do now, with what you have now. With typical company turnover, less and fewer people are going to give a crap about “the old days,” or the old team. Your Cowboys will want to stay in the Old West, but it’s time for you to herd them. Show them the future, the New West, get them on the bus and drive them there. Turn the key in the now and drive them toward your vision. Yours. Not theirs.

11. You Allow Infections (And It Might Be You)

One leader or manager can destroy the culture built by any other leader/manager that came before them, or any manager that came up through the ranks with them. There’s a name for a bad leader or one that refuses to get on your culture bus: an infection. It doesn’t matter whether it’s a “Maverick,” a narcissist, a sociopath, or just a stubborn ass—. Tolerating one person who diverts too far from your culture, or worse yet, creates a subversive, stubborn, or manipulative sub-culture, will derail all of your work. Hard work. If you think one person is so extremely talented or has created a subversive following that you’ll let them burn down the others, you’ve allowed a Hostage or Blackmail Culture. That’s not a controlled burn. That’s arson! Seriously. What could any person have on you for you to be so scared that you won’t get them in line or let them go?

This is an infection. Go zombie movie: kill the infection or lop off the infected body part before it reaches the heart and kills the body. If it’s you, you need to be the lead pin and take the hit and either 1. change or 2. leave. You must change and apply different forces (the right ones, not just different ones) and make sure everyone falls in line. Otherwise, you should leave and find a culture more closely aligned with the one for which you prefer and/or will excel.

Learn from your mistakes. Anyone can make the mistake of bringing (see hiring) infection to your company and letting them thrive and take over the petri dish. Once. If you do this multiple times, you’ve knowingly or not, built a Sisyphus Culture. You roll the ball up the hill and just as you see the top (and you drive the infection out), you hire another infection, and you fall to the bottom and have to start over. Exhausting. Hire white blood cells that rid you of the infection and inoculate your company from this disease (see #12 below). Hire people that fit your culture, not ones that will take over the petri dish, who are not even cowboys. They’re bandits. Be the Sheriff and rid your town of this menace.

12. You Don’t See Yourself as “The Cure”

Ask any landlord, and they’ll tell you there’s a clear distinction between an owner and a renter. If you’ve ever rented a place to live and later owned your own, you’ll know that as well. For the most part, owners invest. They take pride. They put down roots. They’re long-term. They’re deeply connected and feel the pain when things go poorly. They buy and typically expect a return in the long-term. Owners may call contractors when things go poorly because they can’t fix the problems themselves, but they certainly can’t call the landlord. And they have to pay for it. Company culture is every employee’s job, but is explicitly inherent, if not written, in a leader’s contract. If you own your job, and your company culture is so upside down that as a leader who has tried to influence it, build it, etc. you get pushback from the top, then you’re being treated like a renter. You have the choice to suck it up, continue to try and push back against the “culture is cute” attitude of the top brass (only to realize you are Sisyphus), or leave and find a culture where the culture’s not cute, but serious business.

Renters? Well, they’re pretty much the opposite. They embody the not-my-job, not-my-problem attitude that no company can have nor afford. If you don’t, can’t or won’t see yourself as the cure, whether you’re the janitor or the CEO, you’re a renter, not an owner. I don’t care what your contract says. You are a temp., not a full-time employee. If you don’t believe in your personal power to change your company from any position, much less leadership, you have the “Just Disease,” as in “I just…” and “I’m just.” You may be too weak to empower yourself and take initiative: you just follow the rules, you just keep your head down, you just do your job. You just want to make it through to the weekend. You’re just a tenant. Or, you shirk from or relinquish your power to be a change agent: “I’m just a receptionist, a customer service rep., a salesperson, a middle manager,” etc. That’s a renter, and you should never renew their lease.

Anyone who is just using the company for a quick return (title bump, raise in salary, a jolt of experience, quick use of a particular benefit such as paid education, etc.) or as a stepping stone, is “investing” in the short-term. They’re just making some tweaks, holding down the fort, maybe painting over a few problems, making things look pretty until the next person comes in and “buys” a product that is quietly falling apart. If that’s you, you’re a flipper. You see problems and band-aid solutions. Just to get you to the point where you can leave with a decent recommendation. You see dollar signs.

Consultants are often flippers. They come in with a short-term investment, to make things better and leave it in the hands of new and/or improved management. Sometimes, they're hired to stealthily help the CEO flip the company, just making it look pretty enough for a new owner to buy. Anyone involved in this process without it being out in the open is pretty much flipping off everyone around them that is investing and owning, without the intention of working for a company that is going to be flipped. If you’re complicit in this, you’re in danger of being known as the person that sold them out.

13. You Believe in Luck

There’s no such thing as luck. So there’s no such thing as bad luck. Bad company culture happens through every decision that is made or not made. With or without purpose. Same effect. Every success and failure. Those who consistently study it, apply pressure in all of the right areas and work at it, consistently, and still fail will not have the right to call it bad luck. But if you’re successful, you will have every right not to let anyone attribute your success to good luck. You should only attribute it to hard work, persistence, strategic planning, tough decisions, fortitude, and a willingness to consistently change for the better, backed by a mission, covenant, goals, and objectives. Nothing else. You owned it. You deserve it.

You Are What You Believe

No company with great culture is lucky. They’re just great. On purpose. To anyone who believes in luck, I say, “Good luck with that.” Maybe your astrologer will have better advice for you because you’re probably more willing to take advice from them. Why? Because it puts the control, blame, etc. on outside forces you can’t control. That’s the Just Disease. Like the No Doubt song, “I’m just a girl in the world. That’s all that you’ll let me be.” No one’s going to let you be great. It’s your choice to be great and make it happen. And remember, no one gives you initiative. You take it. You take it, and you own it. If you don’t take it, you must own that, too. You can hold your company accountable and blame it on your faulty leadership that treated culture like it was cute, which you can control, or just let everyone know that Mercury is in retrograde. If that’s the case,  you’re not on the Culture Bus, and you could be an unwilling company driver, one that’s putting the pedal to the metal, and possibly going to drive your company right over a cliff.

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Patrick Longo is CEO of Upaya Partners, a firm specializing in transforming companies and people through company culture, storytelling, and storyselling. 

He’s a recognized motivational speaker available for keynotes, training and content delivery for company culture, change management, organizational development, customer experience, sales, customer service, talent acquisition, and social media marketing.

 As a lifelong creative, he also enjoys his “free" time as a filmmaker, composer, musician, and author of professional and personal development books.

 Feel free to engage with Patrick by Following or connecting with him on LinkedIn, or liking his posts. Find out more at upayapartners.com.