4 Steps to Establishing the Right Culture at Your Company

The following is adapted from F*ck Me Running (a Business)!

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Whether or not you realize it, your company has a culture. You may not have consciously created it, but it’s there. People brought part of it with them. You helped define it too, and you reinforce it with your actions, decisions, and responses to other people’s actions and decisions. 

Unless you intentionally figure out what kind of culture you want and make an effort to communicate it and commit to it, you will end up with one that doesn’t reflect what you want the company to be. 

That’s why it’s so important to take the time to define your values and make sure they apply to any problems you foresee, and any decisions that must be made. Your values should be such that anyone in your company can apply them to their work. They should be clear, easy to explain, and applicable this year, next year, and ten years from now.

It’s not enough to define your values, though. In fact—as I learned from trial and error—there are four key steps you should take to help the culture you’re committed to building stick. Since these strategies aren’t always obvious, let’s walk through each of them together. Then, you’ll be ready to roll up your sleeves and start doing the work necessary to build an exceptional company culture.

#1: Consider Hiring a Coach

If your company culture is pretty good to start with, you can start the work on your culture alone and then bring in your executive team to help. But if you have a culture problem—particularly if you or other leadership are part of that problem—you may need a coach. Having a third party to guide the process can help eliminate conflict. 

A business coach who understands culture problems and solutions can step you through the process and help you communicate it properly to your staff. They can show you things you won’t notice on your own, either due to inexperience, or because you’ve been looking at them so long, you stopped noticing.

A coach is also not emotionally attached to the business, so they are more objective. I’m speaking from personal experience here: by the time I hired a coach to fix my company’s culture, I was feeling anger, grief, despair, and frustration with myself, my partner, and my staff. I needed to find a way to get past those feelings and get the company back on track. 

To do that, I had to set my emotions aside. Our coach, Roger, showed me how to do that, correcting me when I was wrong, and encouraging me when I was getting it right. Like any good coach, Roger had my best interests and those of the company at heart, so there was no worry about his motivations.

#2: Communicate Cultural Expectations on Day 1

When an employee joins a company, they bring the baggage of every place they’ve worked before. Whatever culture they experienced is coming with them to your business. If that culture was great, so much the better. But if it were truly great, would they have left that company to begin with? More often, it’s all the bad stuff that made them want to leave.

People don’t do this intentionally. Culture becomes ingrained in us, especially when we’re working in the thick of it, five days a week for eight, nine, ten hours a day. Without even realizing it, we can get sucked into the gossip, avoiding telling all the truth all the time, or not always doing what’s best for the customer. 

This is why you have to have the culture conversation with people during the hiring process and repeat it during onboarding. Refer to it in meetings and during important decisions. Remind people regularly how you, they, and the business operate. 

It’s not enough to throw your values up on a slide or a whiteboard. You have to show people how those values can be applied by them in their specific roles. For example, at my company, Intrinium, almost every newcomer struggles with the value “Respectful Candor.” They’re so used to keeping their heads down and holding comments to themselves, that they’re uncomfortable speaking out, especially to someone in a higher role. 

New people need a tutorial on this concept, so they understand that to align with our values, they are not only allowed to speak up, but we expect it. They need to understand they’re not going to be chastised for correcting their colleagues or leadership, including me. We literally have to give them examples, or they just agree to the values and never practice them.

#3: Maintain Culture Vigilance

Establishing a culture isn’t a one-and-done undertaking. You get busy, your staff gets busy, and the culture suffers. This was the case at Intrinium: I let my guard down about conveying cultural expectations, thinking it wasn’t as high a priority as getting the work done. I’ll get to it later, when we’re caught up, I told myself; the culture is strong.

Within nine months, that mistake earned me two groups of staff: those who bought into the culture, and the new hires who had retained their “us versus them, management is out to get us” mentality. That counterculture of fear and passive-aggressiveness bled through the ranks, creating drama that left us struggling to hit what would normally be an easy target: billing 80 percent of our time. 

When you’re in a leadership role, assume that the first time you hear about something, it’s the hundredth time it’s happened. It’s true that what you allow, you support. I don’t care how great someone is at their job or how valuable they are to the business. If you let a superstar hold you hostage, you’ll end up with a bunch of high-performing jerks who can’t get along with anyone and are all about themselves, not about the business.

You have to make a public example of that kind of person. Fire them and let the staff know that it’s not enough to be a star performer; they also have to meet the company’s cultural requirements. That’s the only way to reinforce your team’s positive values.

#4: Reduce the Environmental Fallout

The absence or presence of values affects more than decisions. It affects the entire atmosphere and how people feel when they come to work in the morning. Before establishing our values, Intrinium’s employee surveys showed mediocre levels of job satisfaction. In particular, the executive management team was frustrated because they felt like they were herding cats. There was no structure in place that said, “This is how we do things around here.”

Our value pillars gave the business that ethical structure, and just as structural pillars raise a roof, our pillars also raised job satisfaction. For the first time in a long time, people enjoyed their work because they knew how decisions were being made. The pillars eliminated fear and uncertainty. 

Employees understood what we were trying to accomplish, versus being pressured to hit revenue goals. We were all on the same team, supporting one another toward the same goals, with mutual respect and trust.

The transformation didn’t happen overnight. It took time, and it took removing people who didn’t want to get on board. Of course, there was plenty of blowback every time someone was let go. People worried they were going to be next, so we had to explain that what we were doing was for the good of the company and for the good of everyone who remained. 

Stay Transparent

Leadership is about transparent communications between the leader and the team. By that, I don’t just mean showing them everything that’s going on. You have to over-communicate your goals and the reasons behind them. 

This isn’t just one conversation you have with each employee. It’s a continuous process because people change, and if you’re doing things right, their levels of trust and candor will grow. As you maintain and further deepen your communication, you’ll find that, with trust and understanding established, the team you’re leading will become more than “extra hands.”

They’ll be motivated to lead the real efforts required to achieve the vision you’ve carefully drawn and communicated. Because they understand it, they’ll be as excited as you are to achieve it. 

There’s no doubt in my mind that trust is essential for working towards aligning everyone’s goals. And, while it may seem daunting now, if you clearly define your values and then follow the strategies I’ve shared here, you’ll quickly find that you can create a culture of trust, which will lead to a culture of excellence.

For more advice on how to establish an amazing company culture, you can find F*ck Me Running (a Business)! on Amazon.

Nolan Garrett is the Founder and CEO of Intrinium, a firm dedicated to providing clients with comprehensive consulting and managed services in security solutions and information technology. Voted Best Place to Work Inland Northwest for three consecutive years, Intrinium has distinguished itself as a leader in IT solutions and workplace culture. Nolan is a member of the Forbes Technology Council and the Information Systems Security Association, among other organizations. With CIO and CISO experience and a background that includes multimillion-dollar cybersecurity transformations, Nolan provides specialized insight for businesses large and small in a variety of industries.