Culture Is King

There’s no shortage of management literature out there celebrating the importance of culture to organizations. And most people who run a business know just how important culture is to executing your strategy.

Recognizing the importance of culture is one thing – what’s much harder is actually doing something about it. How do you create and nurture a corporate culture where each and every day, people want to show up and do their best work – and in the process, transform a company?  

The culture at Viacom is deeply personal for me. I’ve been at this company for more than 20 years. In many ways, I grew up here as a professional, with leadership roles in our international division, in operations and in ad sales. When I joined the company in 1997, Viacom’s creative culture was the envy of the industry. It was a place where people wanted to be.

Somewhere between then and the rise of the iPhone, Viacom lost that cultural edge. As the tech companies disrupting so many elements of our business were building workplaces around collaboration and engagement, we were reinforcing silos. At the same time, a focus on short-term results at the expense of a longer-term strategy conspired to box out this new digital and social world. In many ways, it stopped being fun to work here. It’s no surprise that Viacom’s financial results suffered in parallel with the decline of its culture.

So, when I became CEO two years ago, I put reinvigorating our culture at the top of our to-do list. One of my first personnel decisions was to name a head of culture as part of my senior leadership team. 

Our culture work is guided by a few overarching principles. First, employees need to understand where the company is heading – and, believe in that vision. They need to see progress against that vision. And, they need to really participate in the evolution of the company – to feel it, to make it their own.

We started by launching a cross-company task force to find out what was working and where we had gaps. I started hosting quarterly virtual global town halls, where we could talk about what was working, and acknowledge what wasn’t in front of our 10,000 employees. We rolled out our first-ever company mission, vision and values built around honesty, bravery and empathy to ensure we were all heading in the same direction.

I do believe we’ve made progress. I feel it in the halls, I hear it from employees and I see it in our stronger business results, including our first quarter earnings we announced last week.

And yet for all of our progress, we have more to do. While the leadership team and I can set a vision, it will really be our employees who drive Viacom’s ability to better compete in an era of massive disruption and change. That’s why today we are launching Spark, Viacom’s first-ever global summit to equip, engage and inspire our employees to help them thrive in an era of constant change.

Spark is our multi-market, next-generation town hall, which is anchored in global themes and takeaways, but executed on the ground in more than 40 markets. From Amsterdam to Buenos Aires, from Tokyo to Manila, across the United States, from our New York headquarters to our Hollywood studios, employees will hear directly from and engage with leaders and thinkers from both inside and outside our company. From now until the end of March, we will host hundreds of screenings and exhibits, sessions on virtual reality and next-generation platforms, creative workshops and brainstorms, explorations of the machinery behind our business and industry, and forums to explore and celebrate the diversity that energizes so much of what we do.

As you can tell, this is an enormous undertaking – so why do it?

Spark will equip our employees with an understanding of our vision and strategy, and with the mentality and skills they need to help us execute that vision. They will sit in a room with Nickelodeon’s new leadership team or the executive squad leading Paramount Pictures’ turnaround. Workshops such as, “Working Together in the Digital Age” or “Behind the ‘Gram: Creating a Successful Digital Brand” will help them adopt the change mentality we all need to thrive.

Spark will engage our employees, putting them in the same room with the executives who will lead this evolution, and their colleagues who they may otherwise never meet and collaborate with. They will sit in “epic brainstorm” sessions with colleagues, developing ideas about how to celebrate the SpongeBob SquarePants upcoming anniversary or advance the plot of season two of Paramount Network’s Yellowstone. Via livestreams of our global sessions, they’ll get access to the amazing work being done all around the globe.

And Spark will inspire our employees to do their best work. How would you feel if Spike Lee or Martha Stewart showed up at your office one day? What if you could get a deep look at the cool new products your colleagues were making in virtual reality or storytelling? And events such as, “How to Be an Artist,” with New York magazine art critic Jerry Saltz or “The Social Frontier: Connecting with Audiences Across Next-Gen Platforms” with our head of Viacom Digital Studios, Kelly Day, will help employees think outside of their assigned seats.

This is not just an exercise to improve the bottom line, of course. My hope is that everyone in this company will come away not just better at their jobs, but better and happier as a person. As University of Pennsylvania management and psychology professor Adam Grant once explained, “When it comes to landing a good job, many people focus on the role. Although finding the right title, position and salary is important, there’s another consideration that matters just as much: culture. The culture of a workplace — an organization’s values, norms and practices — has a huge impact on our happiness and success.”

I couldn’t agree more.