Culture: Who’s Job is it Anyway?

If you said CEO, or HR you’d be partially right. But of course the answer is, it’s everyone’s job. But often, when everyone owns something, nobody owns it.

CMOs… Do you really want to hurt me?

Coming from Appirio where culture was synonymous with our brand, I developed a fundamental belief that you can’t deliver a great customer experience without providing a great employee experience, so to me CMOs have to be the Boy George of the organization, out front leading the Culture Club. (wide brim hat optional).

After all, experience, brand, and growth are the CMO’s biggest responsibilities and the reality is in today’s Cloud/SaaS/App environment, many, many companies are able to rapidly build and sell software and solutions. And most do it well. However, culture is the magic that inspires teams to go beyond creating the flavor-of-the-month in the App Store, and truly creating industry breakthroughs. 

A great culture fosters a sense of community that binds people behind a single purpose, a mission that can create a once-in-a-career high for employees, partners and customers. When the culture is right for an industry breakthrough, the “team” putting in the extra effort includes all three groups with little distinction between who wants who to succeed more.

I read lots of articles, blogs, etc. where the authors talks about the benefits of creating a great culture, but fail to offer concrete, tangible things I can put into play to actually help me to develop and reinforce the culture I want to create. So, I want to offer examples of some of the specific things I’ve done or seen work well.

1. Transparency builds trust

It starts with a transparent vision and plan to get there. This means having a clear, timebound vision and detailed plan -  which unfortunately for many newer organizations is challenging. 

I’ve written extensively about the success I’ve had using the V2MOM approach because I’ve seen it work over and over again. If V2MOM isn’t your cup of tea, develop a strategic plan that you’ll actually use. I can’t stress this enough. Too often, we spend hours and hours at the executive level hashing out minute details and wordsmithing our plans until we run out of words, only to deliver a spectacular slide deck at the company meeting, and then never open the document again. 

Your strategic plan needs to be a living, breathing, transform-the-business charter that you visit on a regular basis. This is why I like the V2MOM. In the same way we used tactical plans to run the business, we use the V2MOM to transform the business.

It’s critical that your plan is openly communicated to all levels. Even better, encourage departments, divisions and even individuals to create their own V2MOMs that roll up to support the corporate strategic plan. 

Once you’ve got your plan in place you need to talk about it ALOT. It’s natural for people to resist what they might perceive as “extra” work outside of their day-to-day responsibilities, but unless you assign owners to initiatives and hold them accountable - including yourself - and regularly report on results, it’s easy to push off the transformational stuff when it's crunch time… and it’s always crunch time. 

One way to talk about it alot is to develop a dashboard that clearly shows how results are being measured that the team can access any time. Another option is to create a dedicated Slack, or other internal communication channel, where results are regularly shared and team members have an open forum to hear from, and ask questions to senior leadership.

But most importantly, you as CMO and your marketing team, must embrace and champion the transformation. You are the heart and soul of the brand, externally AND internally so if you don’t love it and evangelize for it, who will? This means you and your team not only have to proudly wear the colors, you need to rock the pitch, amplify the core values of the company, and set the tone for the rest of the organization. If you think the folks over in operations are going to lead the revolution while marketing is milquetoast on the idea, you might need to turn in your wide brim hat.

2. Prioritize communication and connection

The all-hands call is sacred. I advise companies that do a quarterly company meeting, that this just simply is not enough. And it’s not optional - no matter what is going on. I’ve seen it willy nilly cancelled or changed at the last minute for “reasons.” This is bulls#@t. 

You should be holding an all-hands call every other week, at a minimum. The call doesn’t need to be any longer than an hour (and if you’ve got a distributed workforce, video is a must!), and time should be reserved to talk about progress against the strategic plan. People need reinforcement that the company is on the right track, or if not what is being done to address it. Everyone knows what’s really going on, so address the good, the bad, and the ugly head on.

The truth of the matter is, if you really are disrupting a space or creating a new category or just breaking through in an existing industry, your people are betting their livelihood - and in some cases their career - on the success of the company. You owe them keeping your commitment to the all-hands.

The all-hands is not only a great way to recognize contributions and give key updates on the strategic plan, you should also build in regular agenda items to showcase your brand and culture, such as shoutouts/public feedback. We do an awesome job of ensuring everyone is constantly giving virtual high fives. It happens in real time Slack with an integration to our HR solution. The cool thing is we can track shoutout givers and receivers and on every all-hands call we highlight our top givers and receivers, which inspired others to join in.

3. Be relentless about collaboration and enabling technology

My CEO thinks I'm a bit nutty because I have a real bee in my bonnet over the technology we use to collaborate and get work done. I want the absolute best for the team. I can tell you from using all kinds of different software and tools, that removing the friction from collaboration and giving the team tools that help them get work done is a cultural game-changer. There is nothing your people want more than to produce great work, and lots of it. Any time you give them a tool that requires a “work around” or you find yourself defending or making excuses for it, get rid of it.

One tool I have grown to love is Slack. It’s amazing for collaboration and real-time communication, replacing email as the preferred internal communication channel. From fun videos to silly gifs to pictures of our salespeople out on the road to highly-informative channels where subject matter experts can be tapped in real time, Slack has become way to showcase our brand, flex our personality and work together in real time.

Fun is good - have more fun

We spend a lot of time at work - and for many of us, even when we’re not working, we’re working. At this point, I’m trying to figure out how to get paid for my work dreams! So, if we’re going to spend this much time together it’s got to be fun. Fun can mean different things to different people, but I’m not talking about bar crawls and foosball tables - although those can be great too. I’m talking about truly enjoying what you’re doing, feeling valued, having a friend at work, laughing together on a video call, kicking ass and taking names, and winning.

At Appirio, and now 6sense, fun is a core value that we measure with something we call “The Fun Factor.”  This is a live pulse check we do every all-hands call to understand employee sentiment with a quick survey that simply asks one question: Out of the last 10 work days, how many days were you having fun?

We take the survey and show the results to the entire team in real time. Totally transparent. We strive for a 7 out of 10 at 6sense. If we see the average drop below that, we know we have a problem. And if we see 2s and 3s showing up on the board, we encourage individuals to have an open dialog with their manager or anyone in leadership to address and remedy the issue. 

As a leader you have to show its OK to have fun and bring the fun. Karaoke, workouts, dancing, trivia night, laughing, volunteering, video meet-ups, it really doesn’t matter, just be authentic and since fun is a bit subjective, allow people to participate in a way that’s comfortable and fun for them.

Leadership

I heard culture described as who you hire, who you fire, and who you promote. Who you fire is probably the most difficult of the three, but critical to building a great culture. I’ve never been prouder of a peer who took action early to let someone go, rather than let things fester among the team. Nothing ruins culture faster than lack of action when you allow someone to stay on who isn’t contributing or is acting in a way that sabotages the team’s efforts.  

Leadership sets the tone, and if senior management is not on the same page, it creates discord and finger pointing throughout the entire organization. Chris Barbin, my old CEO, told me to think of the leadership team (your peers) as your first team. This really helped me reframe and prioritize lifting all departmental leaders not just “Marketing.”

If you set a 1:1, keep a 1:1. These checkpoints are easy to blow off, especially with direct reports who are seemingly humming along. I learned my lesson the hard way when one of my key people quit without warning. All he wanted was more frequent 1:1s. I thought he was doing great and that he didn’t need me, so we regularly skipped our 1:1. But that’s not what 1:1s are about. 

These meetings are critical in order to address each individual, their goals, career path, and honestly whatever they want/need to share. If you’re waiting for the annual review to address these kinds of issues, it’s likely too late and ineffective to meet the needs of the ambitious, hard charging employees you say you want. Use your 1:1 - bi-weekly is fine - to connect, bolster and manage performance, talk about goals, offer help, and ask what’s on THEIR mind - work-related or personal, rather than just running through your list of things not yet done.

Finally, allow yourself to be a little vulnerable here, as well. Share your own failures or embarrassing story, and make it clear you value your team’s time over your own.

Perks create good feelings, culture creates a movement

Notice I didn’t mention things like free food on Fridays, or beer on tap in the break room, or discounts on tires, nor any of the dozens and dozens of programs often put in place to “drive” culture. Those things are great and we do some of them. Creating an awesome space for employees is something we do because we think our people deserve it, not so we can lure them into spending more hours on the job.  The game rooms, stocked fridges and logo gear are things that may or may not be a reflection of your culture - but none of those things are going to create it.

No, those things might be just enough to keep your people from looking for a better opportunity for a bit, but if you truly want to create a movement you need an organic culture that is built on trust, open communication, dedicated leadership, and fun.