Culture - How to create energy

I remember my first year at university, being an only child, my superpower is not sharing…in fact I struggle with it to this day. However, the joys of a shared kitchen soon went from spotless on the first day to something the CDC would seriously consider giving a wide birth in what seemed like a nanosecond. 

Needless to say the out of date yoghurt that took up residence in the fridge, (I say “took up” because none of the six souls who shared the kitchen could remember putting it in the fridge in the first place) and very quickly began to generate its own personality and if I recall correctly (it was a while ago) could have easily enrolled in foundation biology on the basis that it contained a number of spores not identified by modern science at that stage and probably wasn’t that far off developing the power of speech. Then one day it disappeared, no one admitted to throwing it out and it certainly wasn’t the cleaners who I think had gone on industrial action – possibly because of the state of our kitchen.

For all I know the yoghurt could very well be living a pleasant life in the Scottish borders with a small freeholding and numerous offspring. This, sadly, was not my last encounter with toxic cultures and the ones encountered thereafter were unfortunately in the work place and the parallel with the biological definition of a culture is not that inaccurate as I believe Culture is a living entity.

As with previous topics we are going to dip into science. Basically, things want to be at their lowest energy level; for instance, take a pen or pencil and balance it such that it can free stand on its end, let go and it will fall, make a noise and sit on the table, quite happily until another energy event moves it. The pen has moved from a high energy potential state to a lower one, and while we all know energy is not destroyed, just moved into other forms, quantum physics says that in theory the energy could randomly all join up sufficiently to lift the pen back up as it takes just as much energy to do this as it did to fall. 

So why does this not happen? Quantum physics and thermodynamics tells us that things would rather be random rather than organised and that things will only go to a lower energy state if the energy can be easily transferred (for instance the energy in the atoms in the ruler don’t all run off in different directions because it’s too hard). Essentially things want to be the same as everything around it, things want to be in equilibrium. 

Culture in an organisation can, in my humble and stretched analogy opinion, be viewed like this too. Not only do they share physical attributes, but Entropy is bloody hard to explain and so is Culture. Defining and writing about Culture is similar to a riddle; you can sense it, you know it’s there and, if properly tuned in, whether it is good or well past sell by date yoghurt! 

Creating a Culture

However, if it is bloody hard to define it is magnitudes harder to change, and sometimes as improbable as seeing the pen stand up on its own. However, if the invested energy is correctly and continually applied a good culture can have the most amazing effects on an organisation. 

I have often held the definition of culture to be “the minimum you can get away with” and I don’t mean this as a flippant remark. If you are in a high performing culture this means you can’t get away with doing half a job and various social and psychological forces elevate employees. On the flip side of this however is the low performing where it is easy to get away with things, those of you familiar with both of these environments will hopefully acknowledge that the former, high performing culture, needs more energy to sustain it whereas the low performing culture is at or near its lowest energy level.  

This however presents us with a few conundrums. In order to have a high performing culture (and thus good results and performance) it means burning people out? Surely this is not healthy or, in the long run, productive? Hopefully not but it goes back to our understanding of the difference between velocity and speed we covered in another post, we need to create a focused effort; a purpose.

A tree?

I firmly believe you can create a culture within an organisation with some very simple steps (but needless to say lots of effort) and we’ll use a tree as an analogy as Culture is a living, breathing entity and needs to be grown and sustained rather than built.   

A tree serves as a good analogy for many reasons.

• Roots (executive/corporate level) supply the nutrients and water, hold the tree firmly when the environment disturbs the tree and control the rate of growth.
• The trunk (teams/divisions) supports the tree and supports its growth, the bigger the trunk and higher the trunk the more weight and light can be supported. 
• The crown (employees/Individuals) is the part people focus on and they play a major part in creating energy within the system 

As with all things in complex adaptive systems there is lots of interconnectedness, the need for experimentation and adaptability in order to achieve good outcomes (e.g. our culture) and we need to start at the top. This model can be applied across all sizes of organisation and so we use the three main headings which are interchangeable with the size of an organisation.

Executive/Corporate level:

The role of the Executive is many fold and has got confused over the years. The purpose of my posts is around strategic implementation, ultimately getting companies to achieve things as easily and consistently as possible.

In order to achieve our aims and objectives we need three things to be set at the highest level. Be enduring throughout the organisation, be understandable throughout the organisation and need to be modeled and lived throughout the organisation.

These are

1. Purpose: This is covered in a previous post. But in essence is about where you want the company to be and why it exists.

2. Ethics: This is about how we are going to behave – our boundaries.

I have to thank Rob Campbell for his enlightened comment on this during a discussion we had a few months back. Values are important however Values Statements need to be burned, they are overused, unimaginative and now stale. However they are no less important.. A simple ethics statement should do the trick. Here’s why.

Ethics are defined as “a set of rules that govern the behaviour of a person, established by a group or organisation”. Values on the other hand “refer to beliefs for which a person has an enduring preference”. With these definitions it is hard to see how it can actually be any other way!

We still need employees to have valuesand as many as possible to align with our corporate ethics. Values can still be an important part of an organisation, especially recruitment and retention but we need to separate things out. We need to create balance, adaptability and personal interpretation because if we have scores of values and tight definitions we are not permitting employees to make choices and decisions and therefore we remove purpose.   

Okay these are short things to set out (albeit hard to get right) and the effort is in constantly reinforcing and living out the contents.

3. Resources: These are the fixed assets, the intangible elements, the human capital, the financial capital, the systems and procedures needed to efficiently and effectively achieve its purpose. 

It is the role and responsibility of the executive to ensure the resources are identified, in place and readily available for the purpose of the organisation to be achieved.

In conclusion to the executive section I further stress that these are the bedrock of the organisation’s culture. If these elements are not set, communicated, understood, supported and lived out then don’t bother.

Team/Division

In traditional/conventional corporations service work or production would be assigned to a division to undertake. This is just as relevant in modern companies where work is done in project teams, often remotely.

The elements here are as relevant in a two-person team as they are in a 2,000-employee division, as it is in a multi-hierarchy organisation.

For a team or division to work effectively towards building our supportive culture we need these elements in play alongside our corporate ones.

1. Trust: This means accountability within and across teams and the organisation all acting towards the purpose within the bounds created by the ethics statement. 

This is where personal values come into play but also where targets (see previous post) can be removed as there is a stronger basis in trust and professional judgement than a need to constantly interfere and micromanage through top down imposed targets.

2. Autonomy: There needs to be the freedom and flexibility to make decisions, based on ethics and direction, to use the resources made available to best achieve these outcomes and also implicit permission to make decisions within a predefined framework.

3. Safety: Is required as mistakes will be made, a company, in creating a strong culture needs to create a learning environment with psychological safety.  People need to be able to speak up and deliver feedback and suggestions.

Individual

Don’t get me wrong. I like money, especially spending it and as a child whose teenage years were in the monetarist cradle of the Thatcher era my brain has certainly been hard wired in the free market economy. However numerous economic and psychology experiments have informed us, quite simply, that money doesn’t motivate people.

 If you want to create and maintain motivation (think about energy here) creating intrinsic motivation is the most important means (momentary reward being extrinsic) and this means creating a supportive culture with purpose and autonomy; basically, I know why I do my job (the big picture and where I fit into it) and I am allowed to make decisions (I get to be a human).

The three elements companies need to instigate within Individuals to create a positive culture are the 3 A’s

1. Apparency: Is it apparent that employees know what they are meant to be doing and, more importantly, why they are doing it. (Purpose)

2. Aptitude: Are they able to use the resources made available to them to achieve these things. What gaps exist? 

3. Attitude: Do they want to do it? Are they inspired to do it? intrinsically motivated to do it? Do they feel part of something?

In conclusion

The energy has to be sustained with this group. No one person can drive and sustain a culture. It has to be a collective effort and while there will be periods of it rising and falling there’s an obvious interdependence between employees and an organisation. 

Culture is the energy within the organisation, together with a Purpose to create direction and Ethics to create boundaries and with the right application of energy we can turn that pen and keep it standing on its end. It’s not easy but the rewards can be quite considerable.