Dime Store Culture?

I was fortunate enough early in my career to attend a meeting with Peter Drucker and hear him say first hand, “Culture eats strategy for breakfast.” As a 23 year old, freshly minted Ernst & Young CPA I had virtually no visceral understanding of its meaning but I sensed it was vital. 

Flashing forward, having now served as a CEO in the healthcare service sector for nearly as many years as I had aged at the time I first heard the statement, and its wisdom is very clear to me. Culture is very much the air that a business breathes. There are many other contributors to success but, similar to air, a business’s life is unsustainable without it.

Culture is primary to:

·     The talent we attract

·     The talent we retain

·     Our people recommending us

·     Our ability to innovate

·     Our willingness to change

·     Our effectiveness implementing change

·     The ability to expand successfully

·     The way patients feel about us

·     If patients return

·     If patients recommend us

·     How our suppliers interact with us

So what is this amorphous “culture” and how do you get one? And…why does the title of this article imply good ones may be inexpensive to obtain or ubiquitous?

Culture Requires a Flag

Simon Sinek refers to this as the organization’s “why?” Why endure the struggle here? Your “why” statement needs to make the aspiration clear. It needs to make the struggle here more important than taking on the struggle there (and make no mistake, business is a struggle everywhere.)

Perhaps the three biggest challenges to a “why” that people can rally around are:

·     It needs to include all of your constituents

·     It needs to be simple

·     It needs to be understood

This means that it must resonate with the needs of all the people and organizations necessary for you to effectively achieve your Purpose. In our case this includes:

·     Patients

·     Providers

·     Employees

·     Suppliers

·     Investors

·     Community

In terms of “simple” that means it has to be on the tip of people’s tongues and the top of their minds as they move through their day and their interactions with these constituents. In our case, the entire statement also has a word count limit: 3.

So, in the case of Smile Brands, the three words are Smiles for Everyone!

“Everyone” is each of the six constituent groups listed above and the individuals or organizations represented therein. “Smiles” are the things that they, not us, determine will accomplish their goals in doing business with us. The job that my Team takes on is to understand those needs and determine that we are doing business in a way, and with people or organizations, where these goals can be lined up in a win-win fashion. If there needs to be a loser in order to accomplish a constituent’s goals then those goals must either be brought into balance or the transaction must be void.

This creates a requirement to check in with your Purpose while working out a relationship and each transaction (I personally suggest at the opening of every meeting) and to insist on a result that is 1) win-win, 2) adjusted to achieve win-win or 3) abandoned. Alternative “4” win-lose, even when breaking in your favor is unacceptable.

Culture Requires Reinforcement

If culture is an annual meeting or an occasional event, it will fail.

Think about what your culture really is in the way an archaeologist would see it in the “future.” People hear what you say but watch what you do. Hypothetically speaking, if your business and its culture were dug up in 1,000 years what would be found?

Would the archaeologist find evidence of a PowerPoint presentation and a wall plaque and little else? Would he or she alternatively find evidence of your values in action in all of your meeting minutes, supporting all of your decisions about what services to offer, how to price them, how to structure your agreements, in your employee review process, in determining promotions and terminations, what you celebrate, and how you interact internally and externally?

So what are these rituals that form a culture? They can be as vast and diverse as you choose, however my underlying premise is that they must be frequent:

·     Start every meeting with your Purpose statement

·     Symbolize your Purpose statement and wear it every day

·     Have meetings regularly throughout the year where the sole purpose is Purpose

·     Celebrate instances where Purpose shows itself

The photo accompanying this article implies that Culture is inexpensive (Five and Dime) and ubiquitous (Variety Store.) In this way of thinking it is, in fact, inexpensive. A bit like dropping a dime into a jar. No single dime holds particular value, but the habit of making deposits regularly will add up.

Notably however, it is dimes being deposited in this metaphor, so even frequent contributions by one or two people will not add up to much of substance. However, if everyone in an organization is making those contributions frequently (all 5,000 of us in our case) then it will eventually add up to an immovable object of great value!

#CelebrateEverydayMiracles