7 Levers For Shaping Organizational Culture (With Examples)

The post-pandemic dust has hardly settled. The tech industry, once a glorious spectacle of rapid growth and innovation, is still reeling from the lag effects of the economic slowdown, and we are only now realizing that sustainability is the name of the corporate game. The need of the hour in the current corporate landscape is for companies, large and small, to look inwards and connect with their most valuable resource - their people.

Do you need to strengthen your Organizational Culture?

A well-defined organizational culture is more critical today, as employees crave an honest connection with their company amid external volatility. A 2022 study reported a significantly negative relationship between a company’s organizational culture and its employees’ intentions to quit and feelings of job insecurity - simply put, the better the culture, the less the chances of employees quitting or fearing job loss.

A 2023 survey on executives across various companies found that corporate culture is cited as the major reason for business success and, when poorly structured, for business failure. It also found that 65% of employees within individual firms cited organizational culture as “Very important”.

Although organizational culture is touted as a “sustainable competitive advantage” for companies, there exists a dearth of robust models that can help companies actually channel said advantage.

Our model - The 7 Levers for Shaping Culture - is a good place to start if you are confused about your organization’s corporate identity and culture. The model works well for two reasons: 1) it helps you understand your culture as it is, and 2) it charts a course for where your culture should be. Drawn up based on extensive research on existing models and tested in the corporate arena, the framework contains 7 diagnostic elements to realize your corporate identity and strengthen it based on your values and needs.

What are the 7 Levers for Shaping Culture?

At Caliber Consulting, we provide a comprehensive framework to help companies understand the different elements that make up their organization's culture. The model acts as a practical toolkit to identify and analyze your company’s core culture, and to make changes when necessary.

The 7 elements in our framework include:

1. Leadership Role Modeling

2. Storytelling

3. Rituals and Work Habits

4. Symbols and Artifacts

5. Influencers 6. Grassroots Engagement

7. Structures, Systems & Processes

Lever 1: Leadership Role Modeling

Top organizational experts believe that sustainable change starts at the very top and cascades down to the unitary teams across the company - and we agree. Knowing the direction of your company requires understanding, and modeling, the way leadership embodies the values of the company in its behavior. We call this Leadership Role Modeling. For example, a company that champions innovation and demands its employees “put their thinking caps on” would require its executive leadership to let their own creative juices flow and pave avenues to enable employees to join in this culture. In fact, inspiring others has been voted as the top skill leaders must demonstrate at all levels of management (see figure 3).

What Leadership Skills Do You Need Most?

Case-in-point:

Apple There may not be a better example of leadership Role Modeling than that of Steve Jobs, founder and long-time CEO of Apple. Steve Jobs was not exactly a tech genius - in fact - he was a marketing expert. But that didn’t stop him from changing the way we look at technology today and it's only because he lived and breathed a culture of innovation, creativity, and relentless perfectionism that, even today, Apple still manages to spearhead the technology industry.

Lever 2: Storytelling

One of the key elements of The 7 Levers for Shaping Culture model is Storytelling. These are the narratives told within an organization that reflect the values and beliefs of the company. Think of the significant historical events of your company, the ones told repeatedly during breaks and over by the water cooler. We believe the story doesn’t even have to be real; it could be a myth as long as it can inspire and connect employees across hierarchies and age groups. For example, a company that prides itself on its innovation may have a story to recapitulate about a time when it took a big risk and it paid off. These stories can be used to shape the culture of an organization and to communicate its values and beliefs to employees.

Case-in-point:

Coca-Cola The company seems to always have outrageous, therefore memorable, stories surrounding its name. Coca-Cola’s “closely-guarded recipe”, the mystery surrounding its initial ingredients, its brand war with Pepsi, and even its marketing failures (think New Coke), are kept alive because they are a part of the company’s identity. Everyone associated with Coca-Cola is connected through these very stories - reality or myth aside.

Lever 3: Rituals and Work Habits

Rituals and Work Habits are another integral part of the cultural web model. These are the repetitive actions and practices that are performed in an organization. A study published by the Harvard Business School showed that performing team-building activities led to a 16% increase in how meaningful employees judged their work to be. Activities can include things like meetings, events, and traditions like unique ways of celebrating personal and professional milestones. For companies that now operate in a hybrid or virtual model, or companies where teams and departments work in isolation, these activities become vital in instilling a strong sense of community within the workplace. For example, a company that values teamwork may have a ritual of holding a weekly team-building activity or even an annual teambuilding retreat.

Case-in-point:

Walmart In 1975, the founder of Walmart, Sam Walton, visited a Korean tennis ball factory where the employees would begin their day with a resounding cheer. Sam was so impressed by this, he decided to try it back home at Walmart. Today, employees across the world do the Walmart cheer in their own languages, carrying a decades-old tradition.

Lever 4: Symbols and Artifacts

The third element of the cultural web model are symbols and artifacts. These are the physical objects, images, and words that represent the culture of your organization. They can include things like logos, mascots, and mission statements. For example, a company that values sustainability may have a symbol of a tree or a recycling symbol. These symbols can be used to communicate the culture of an organization to employees and to the public.

Case-in-point:

When Hubspot sought to fill its culture gap, it introduced the HEART symbol to encapsulate the true essence of the company - Empathy. Claimed to be the metaphorical “heart” of Hubspot, the symbol represents the 5 core values of its employees:

Humble

Empathetic

Adaptable

Remarkable and

Transparent.

Lever 5: Influencers

Power can be formally, or informally, attributed to employees, giving them control over how the affairs of the company are conducted. Employees that manage to accumulate power through informal channels, i.e., without the power that comes with job titles, are labeled as Influencers. These are people who typically exert charisma within the confines of the organization to maintain a level of influence over the culture of the organization, and hence, its employees. They may be very social and increase their familiarity among all employees or just be very well connected to the “right people” to get their way. Treating these employees as change agents and bringing them on board can help the company implement new ideas and practices much faster.

Case-in-point:

Thomson Reuters The leading mass media company sought to “uncover invisible connections” from within its ranks and harness real influence to catalyze change. The company took the help of an L&D consulting firm and surveyed 8,000 technology employees to determine who they thought wielded influence within the company. The company was able to identify individuals who displayed influence and played important roles within their teams and subsequently leveraged those connections to its advantage.

Lever 6: Grassroots Engagement

The sixth, and often overlooked, lever is Grassroots Engagement. Just as important as leading from the front, maintaining communication and feedback channels with teams working at the lower levels of the organization is equally critical. This involves measuring culture and addressing specific issues and behaviors at the team level. For example, if we measure the cultural score of a team only to find that its innovation level is not up there with the larger organization despite corporate-level initiatives, there may be a need to tackle specific pain points that are impacting this team. A diagnosis may reveal the team’s low innovation culture score is because they work too independently. Subsequent steps can include a workshop or action planning to address specific cultural shortcomings to help drive change at the grassroots level.

Case-in-point:

Adobe boasts a massive 26,000-strong workforce which can either bring synergies or isolation within the ranks across the multinational giant. The company believes that real-time, open communication across the hierarchy is critical to the success of its culture - a digital-first transformation to lead the world through digital experiences. Adobe currently practices the art of frequent “Check-Ins” between senior management and individual teams, as opposed to annual reviews on Key Performance Indicators (KPIs). The company claims that this helps managers understand performance issues rapidly and helps teams stay the course of the company’s new “digital-first” cultural model.

Lever 7: Structures, Systems & Processes

The final piece of the Cultural web framework are the Structures, Systems and Processes (SSP). This includes a company’s reward and accountability measures and is, simply put, the way any organization controls its employees. The SSP can include reward schemes like employee awards or monetary bonuses, or accountability systems like quality assurance, appraisals, and key performance indicators (KPIs). For example, a company can implement robust control systems to improve productivity through employee-of-the-month programs or KPI-based bonuses. This can help the company not just track employee performance but also put corrective measures when needed.

Case-in-point:

Southwest Airlines named as one of America’s Best Employers by Forbes in 2021, the budget airline features an excellent employee recognition program, Southwest Airlines Gratitude (SWAG). By accumulating SWAG points based on achieving work goals, employees can redeem items from the SWAG gift shop, which includes airline tickets, concert tickets, and thousands of merchandise.

The Cultural Web for your Organization

These seven elements are interrelated and mutually reinforcing, creating a web of meaning that shapes the way people understand and act within an organization. Using our 7 Levers to Shape Culture to revamp your organization’s culture may require some expert help to guarantee success and sustainability, and who better to guide you than our own L&D training professionals who can customize the web to meet your organization’s needs. By analyzing the culture of your organization through the lens of the cultural web, it is possible to identify areas of change and align your organization's culture with your goals and objectives.