Culture Club: Tips for Companies with less culture than yoghurt!

Everyone talks about the importance of culture. Lou Gerstner former CEO of IBM said, “Culture is everything”. Management guru Peter Drucker famously said “Culture eats strategy for breakfast” meaning it doesn’t matter how great or innovative your strategy is, if your culture sucks you won’t deliver it! So how do you bring your company values to life? What should you do if your business has less culture than yoghurt?

Culture is effectively the sum total of a business’s collective behaviour. It is the manifestation of ‘how things are done around here’ based on known and hidden rules, ideas, beliefs and values. Culture starts with your company values. And it stands to reason that if you don’t know what your company values are and don’t take active and conscious control of what your business stands for then the culture will almost certainly suffer. At best it will be confusing and at worst it will be bland and uninspiring.

For us we recognised the importance of clarifying our five values early on in our business and we chose Mountainous Success, Fun & Focus, Our Team, Valued Relationships and Continuous Innovation. And we did this long before values statements became popular. But even then our values were not a one-dimensional statement to hang in the foyer. We became obsessed with putting those five values at the heart of our business and used the following seven strategies to build what became at the time one of the most enviable cultures in corporate Australia:

1. Make Values Visible. Every meeting room in the company displayed the company values and different areas in the office reflected different values. For example we had a climbing wall built in the atrium of the building to signify Mountainous Success. We had a larger than life costume made of ‘Motivational Mouse’ to remind everyone of our commitment to Fun and Focus and we constructed a Hall of Fame to acknowledge the members of Our Team that really stood out. Get creative and make your values visible.
2. Hire on Values. Our recruitment process included specific interview questions to flush out candidates that resonated with and could demonstrate our corporate values. We actively sourced people who had the right skills and already ‘fit’ into the culture because skills can be taught whereas values are much harder to influence. Focus on values not just skills when recruiting.
3. Manage by Values. Our quarterly performance appraisals had a section for every employee to illustrate how they had demonstrated behaviours aligned to our values. If an individual employee left or was managed out – it was invariably because of a lack of cultural fit to our five values. Use your values to manage people and the business.
4. Reward through Values. Each year some of our most hotly contested quarterly and annual awards were related to the five values. For example we took the best performing employees to Tanzania to climb Kilimanjaro as a way of rewarding around Mountainous Success. Being overt with how much our values mattered reinforced their importance and kept everyone focused on their delivery. Consider rewarding your people around your most important values.
5. Communicate using Values. Every week I wrote a directors message around one particular value. The message often related to our past history or recent achievements and I always made sure to highlight behaviours that others could replicate in the future. We also ran inexpensive weekend excursions that would involve our values in some way. So we might build something with limited resources to express our drive toward Continuous Innovation. Use your values in all your communication.
6. Recognise by Values. Every Friday afternoon at 4.30 we held a ‘Firedown’ where each person (or representative from each department when we grew too big) would stand up and recognise someone in their team or another division who had demonstrated one of our five values during that week. Take the time to recognise those who live your values in the business.
7. Walk the Talk. One of the hardest decisions we ever made was to sack our second biggest client. Although lucrative they treated our staff poorly which contravened our belief in ‘Valued Relationships’. Our staff challenged us that if we really believed in that value then we wouldn’t work with them. They were right so we terminated the agreement and gained a huge amount of respect from our staff and other clients as a result. Our actions meant our commitment to our values was never again questioned and that paid dividends in the long run. Remember actions speak louder than words so walk your talk.

We could never have built one of Australia’s fastest growing businesses if we hadn’t consciously managed our values through the strategies outlined above. Make your values a priority and create a vibrant and inspirational culture.