A Case Study For Developing Organizational Culture

Culture is an often-overlooked portion of any business. Few people open a school, start a business, manage a non-profit, or take on any other leadership role in an organization with culture as an active goal. Passively, sure, leaders will say, “Let’s build a collaborative culture,” or “We want a culture which values diversity,” or even, “We have a culture of innovation.” But what must a leader do on a day-to-day basis to establish and maintain the culture of their organization? Culture is driven by expectations and communication. A leader of an organization must realize that every piece of communication coming from leadership in the organization contributes to the culture of that organization. 

This culture building process begins with the expectations set in the onboarding process and continues through the daily activities of the organization and includes the organization’s systems of praise, feedback, punishment, crisis management, meetings, resource allocation, and even celebration. Every single interaction with the organization shapes the culture of the organization. 

Let’s narrow this down a bit. I’m going to talk about the school where I work as a model organization for culture building. A core value in our school is student leadership. We believe that students are ultimately responsible for the quality of their own education. We believe students must take pride in their campus. We believe students must help each other find motivation to succeed. These are elements of the culture we wish to create in our organization.

The onboarding process of a school is not typically thought of as a culture building activity; however, I have had the privilege of managing the orientation process for students new to my high school for the past twelve years and I can attest that it is absolutely critical to our school’s culture. Student leadership is at the foundation of our onboarding programs. Student leaders plan and implement onboarding events for our school at every turn. They are responsible for the welcome to campus by meeting incoming students at their bus drop off, parent drop off, and schedule pick up. They are tour guides for our campus and host seminars for new students to discuss all of our school’s special programs, athletics, and extracurricular activities. Student leaders maintain group integrity and assist with event security. Student leaders are responsible for behavior management during onboarding events. They are responsible for prospective student and parent events in the spring and orientation events in the fall; eventually, they even claimed the right to onboarding occasions throughout the school year for transfer students. While our school’s adult leadership does have the opportunity to speak at these onboarding events, that only happens after student leaders have poured the foundation for new students. Our school has a dynamic mentoring program through which new ninth grade students are paired to work with existing student leadership in two elective programs at our school. Onboarding is a year long process for our school and it is just step one for our school’s culture building initiatives around student leadership.

Extracurricular organizations and elective classes take responsibility for the maintenance of our campus grounds through campus clean up days and campus improvement projects. Student organizations allocate their funds to buy resources for our campus like café tables and umbrellas for lunch, display cases in hallways, and gallery hangers for our auditorium. When student organizations host events, that organization is responsible for setting up and cleaning up the facility they use for their event. Our school is large but is located in a very small community. When our city government hosts a county-wide event, the city must host that event at our school—we are the only facility large enough for the event in our city. Our students take lead in preparing for that event and it is a strange sight the first time you see high school students directing city officials for the setup of an event. Students are stewards for the efficient and responsible use of our school’s facilities.

While adult leadership at our school does support students at the school, students must grapple with the real-world social problems they face: failing school grades, struggling students, low performing feeder patterns, coping with school shootings, integrating transgender students, mitigating bullying on campus and on social media, donating blood, fighting cancer, registering to vote, and respecting diversity are just a few of the social issues our students have debated and developed initiatives to create real change in their community and school. Student leaders take issues they wanted to address to their adult leadership and propose solutions, create plans, raise money, and allocate time and resources to issues about which students are passionate.

Adult leadership at each step in the school year asks, “How do we involve the students in this?” The biggest cornerstone of this particular school’s culture is that the students of this school must be prepared for the world in which they are about to enter. Our school believes the best way to prepare our students is through student leadership. True engagement. True empowerment. So, these ideals must be cornerstones in our decision-making process. These ideals must be completely integrated into the daily fabric of our school’s communication. Social and academic praise is based on leadership attributes. Feedback in parent conferences and grades involve conversations about student leadership in the classroom. Athletic coaching decisions are made based on student leadership on the field. Corrective actions are taken to help students failing in positions of leadership. Punishments are measured out to students making poor personal choices. Celebrations like pep rallies, graduations, senior nights, and award ceremonies tout the accolades of student leaders. Students are expected to find a way to demonstrate positive leadership on our campus and are held to task for developing and expanding their leadership. Student leadership is our culture.

Your culture might be one of innovation or collaboration or diversity or financial success or championing human rights. Whatever you believe is the cornerstone of your organization’s culture, great, it must be an active part of your organization no matter what your organization is. Quality culture isn’t a slogan on a breakroom poster, it doesn’t happen accidentally, and it will crumble if you look away for even a second. Culture requires an active decision to be made, implemented, and enforced by the leadership of the organization. It requires consistent mindful conversation and monitoring.

Amanda McCallister is the Co-Founder and National Advisor of Sigma Alpha Sigma, Inc a non-profit organization dedicated to building educational excellence and opportunities for student leaders.