The Culture that Divides Us

The corporate culture of a firm is everything. It’s credited when companies succeed and blamed when scandal hits.

Businesses don’t have just one culture – they have many. Every department, every team will have nuances of the same culture, or even completely separate ways of interacting with each other. 

Recently I saw a business that had four different cultures operating within it:

1. The sales and delivery people in the field
2. The head office team
3. The finance department
4. The board of directors

Each of these groups had a slightly different set of values and, therefore, behaviours and at times, these differences were getting in the way of communication and business growth.

The best example of this showed up around expected behaviours – what was expected of one team was frowned upon by other teams. This created a huge communication divide.  They didn’t bond and feel as one business even though they all proudly worked for the same business. The teams were even hiring for different cultural fits.

By no means do we believe there is a ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ here from any group. What we do know is that as long as a business operates with different and distinct cultures, it will struggle to reach its potential.

So what do we do about it?

Someone once said to me, “If you want a great working culture all you have to do is try”. That statement is so pure in its simplicity – but difficult to implement.

We worked with this client to develop the architecture of their ‘Brand Promise’ – essentially, what their brand stood for. That created a list of three context words. We then took the extra step of working with the teams to ascribe meanings and then specific brand behaviours to those words – what people were expected to do, every day, on the ground.

For example, the company chose ‘fearless’ as one of their context words. The meaning they ascribed to ‘fearless’ was ‘brave, gutsy and tenacious’ and then the behaviours they expected to see every day were around ‘resilience in the face of a rejection’ and ‘doing what’s right for the client and not what’s easy’. 

For the sales team the behaviour of ‘resilience’ meant focusing on the outcome of the sale and not the experience. This was easily adapted by the finance team, who had to chase payments from clients. So, same brand word and behaviour, just applied in a different setting.

A single example, but instantly the teams had common ground and could relate more easily to one another.

Gaining Accountability

We also created a process that started holding each group to account against this brand promise. Carrots for those ‘living the brand’, and sticks for those stuck in old behaviour patterns.

• Whole team meetings for finance and head office functions rather than separate team meetings
• Shareholder Updates going to all stakeholders, not just shareholders. The future and strategy of the business is important to everyone – so get them involved.
• This should go without saying – make sure everyone is treated equally, from the receptionist to the CEO. A policy is a policy.
• Board meetings held at or near the office can be followed by a social get-together, at least a couple of times a year. This gives the Board a chance to open the dialogue, gain buy-in on strategic decisions and create some ‘champions for change’ by having face time with the teams.

And finally, when one of your team members sends you a heartfelt note of ‘here’s what I see that’s not working’, make your first response an equally heartfelt ‘thank you’. That’s not only polite – but great corporate culture in action!