Does the ideal culture exist?

The ideal culture; we all want it for our workplaces yet in reality so few workplaces seem to be able to achieve it. For employees, culture, or the lack there of is frequently a motivating factor in seeking other job opportunities. From employers, I am often asked ‘what are other businesses doing in terms of culture’ or ‘what do employees want now’ to help them keep up with the latest culture trends.

The challenge with creating the ideal culture is that we are all different, and we want and value different things. What one employee loves in terms of culture, another might despise.

We are all wired differently and like different things and align with different priorities. We have different motivations and we each have a different definition of what the ideal culture is. There are definitely similarities and traits that do make for the ideal culture but there is no one recipe for each of us to roll out in our workplaces to achieve the ideal culture. What I do know for certain, have experienced as an employee and have learnt as a leader is, culture starts at the top.

You can read all the blogs that exist on culture and how to build the ideal culture, you can implement all the recommendations, you can mirror what another workplace with a great culture is doing and you can still not achieve that ideal culture.

Building a business with a great culture was always (and still is) really important to me when starting out in business. After all, this is the work we do so if we can’t get it right and role model what good looks like, how could we help other workplaces. The beauty of starting a business is that you have the ability to build that culture from scratch. You don’t inherit culture challenges and team members who aren’t on the bus. You’re not trying to break down cultural nuances and navigate the change process. I was starting with a clean slate building our culture.

The other challenge with creating that ideal culture is that while you might achieve that ideal culture, it doesn’t mean that you have it forever. Culture is fluid, it’s something you have to work on every day to keep it once you have got it. And, just when you think you have got it, something happens that can change the culture.

You hire a new employee that turns out not to be a great culture fit and in a small team or a small business, one team member can totally put your culture into a tail spin. Some of our team members, for the good or bad, naturally influence our culture more than others. Although, if your culture is strong enough, these poor culture fit employees are often not embraced by the rest of the team and in many cases self-select out. You’ll be able to see and feel the vibe of the employees that influence your culture the most for the good or bad; does the energy in the room lift or drop when they walk in to the office? How does the vibe or the dynamic change? Do you notice when they are at work versus when they are on leave, and not just because of the change in workload?

If you have read a blog or two on culture you’ve probably read that you should always hire for culture fit over skill; you can train for the skills. This I agree with. If someone isn’t a good culture fit, I have never had any success in changing that. I have also learnt that hiring can’t all be just about culture and our learning agility is critical. Otherwise, you can end up with team members who love working for you because it’s a great place to work but those team members can’t deliver on what actually needs to be done because no matter how much you train, coach, mentor and develop, they have hit their ceiling in terms of their learning agility.

How then do you work towards creating that ideal culture? Here is what I have learnt (sometimes the hard way):

• Don’t get overly obsessed with trying to implement what you are reading on culture in all the blogs and business books. Take the ideas and concepts on board but you have to find what works for you, your leadership, the culture you want and your team. Building culture needs to be genuine and authentic, not a copy and paste formula from a business book.
• Be open and honest about your culture and the culture you are working towards when hiring. Talk about it and then talk about it again and then again, throughout the recruitment process. This helps you assess culture fit but it also helps your potential new employee determine if it’s going to be the right fit for them.
• If you do hire the wrong culture fit team member (and we all have at some stage); act swiftly. The longer you leave it the more time, effort and energy you will need to put in to fixing the damage done.
• Live your values. Our values underpin our culture and set the tone. They spell out what you will and won’t accept and if you need to have a conversation about culture or behaviours that don’t align with your culture, having your values in place to reference back to makes those conversations easier.
• Work on it every day. Once you’ve got it or are heading in the right direction, don’t take your eye off the ball because as quickly as you have taken one step forward, you can take two steps back.
• Lean on those in your business or team who are your culture champions to help build the culture you want; those team members that set the tone for the positive, who role model what you want your ideal culture to be. But be wary, rely on them too much or put up with the poor culture team members for too long and you’ll lose your positive culture champions.
• Pulse check what your people want. Workplaces evolve, people’s priorities change, initiatives get stale. What worked last year might not be effective this year. Continually gather feedback from your team on what that ideal culture looks like for them and how you are tracking; even though the feedback you get might be hard to hear.
• Culture starts at the top. What culture are you role modelling? Do you have clarity on the culture you want? And if so, how are you communicating that to your team; through your words, your performance/actions and your behaviours?

I could talk culture all day, it’s something that I’m passionate about so leave me your thoughts and feedback or reach out to chat more about building that ideal culture.