Intent + Action - How to become a Culture Driven Organization

One of the things I’m most proud of at RIVA is our culture. We have an incredible team that feels empowered, engaged, and committed to helping our clients achieve their missions, and that passion has carried us to a very strong position in the market. But our corporate culture didn’t happen overnight. It grew and blossomed because we focused on the two most important aspects of building a corporate culture: Intent and Action.??

In this post I’ll spend a bit of time discussing both, but first I wanted to clear up some culture-building misconceptions that I see quite often. Let’s start with the elements that don’t contribute to your organization’s culture.??

Corporate culture isn’t branding, and it isn’t words on a screen?

You’ll often see our team members in their red RIVA shirts carrying stuffed versions of our alpaca mascot, Alpac Shakur. Or you’ll see us at a conference with branded materials and giveaways. This is all great for morale and brand awareness, but none of these things have anything to do with our culture.??

Visit our website and click on “Who We Are”. There you’ll find a listing of our people, the awards we’ve won, and a very good write-up and video that describes our services and how we deliver them. We’re getting warmer, but these elements don’t impact our culture either.??

Corporate culture isn’t metrics?

Most companies track employee satisfaction metrics like turnover, staff engagement surveys, Glassdoor ratings, etc. These numbers matter, but they are lagging indicators. They don’t determine what your team members will say to each other in the hallways, or how they’ll handle a difficult customer. They are static measurements that might point you in a direction, but can’t get you there on your own.??

Which brings us back to where it all started: Intent and Action.?

1. Intent: The Foundation for Strong Corporate Culture?

A key mindset I’ve kept throughout this journey is: culture isn’t static.?

Before I started RIVA, I spent 13 years working for a number of companies. Those experiences showed me the good, the bad, and the ugly of corporate culture, and I realized something powerful: an organization’s culture is constantly evolving, whether the organization wants it to or not.??

That’s because every individual you hire brings their own sensibilities to their role. And as they go about their work and interact with their colleagues, in the absence of any larger guidance they’re going to adopt whatever mindset is most comfortable or familiar for them. As an example, a manager who promotes a high- performer who doesn’t work well with others is rewarding that behavior, even if unintentionally, and is pushing their team in a particular cultural direction.?

So when I founded RIVA, I very intentionally focused on creating a strong culture from our inception. Before we even had a name, we developed our four core values: Results, Innovation, Values, and Accountability. I knew that if we had these values in place from day one, RIVA would develop the kind of corporate culture I wanted to build.??

Our next challenge was making that culture a reality (remember, culture isn’t words on a screen).??

2. Action: The Best Tool to Build Corporate Culture?

Many organizations pay lip service to their values. These are the types of organizations that struggle with low employee engagement and high turnover, creating a poor experience for their customers. Employees can tell the difference between words and action. Building a culture requires you to act in accordance with your stated values.??

When you talk to our team members, you’ll hear them discuss the work they’re doing to improve delivery for our clients, the committees they’ve joined to help impact their communities, and what it means to be a “change agent”. These are all intentional programs we’ve put in place to help our team members enact our values.??

Let’s look at a few examples of how RIVA’s actions back up our values:?

Results

One of the things we’ve done at RIVA is form employee committees that set internal milestones and are responsible for accomplishing them. This type of approach ensures ownership of problems and advancement, as well as enforces accountability because we are all only as strong as our teams.??

We also offer a number of programs that cover the cost of staff training, offer incentives and bonuses, subsidize association and trade group memberships, and more. These programs help our team members grow and thrive while delivering better and better results for our customers.??

• RIVANext: our exclusive professional development program for rising leaders, RIVANext provides our emerging talent with the ability to build leadership skills through custom learning opportunities, networking events, and interactive committees. It’s also an excellent opportunity to build a pipeline of female leaders, who are all too rare in our industry.?

Innovation – an empatheTECH approach?

I believe that innovation comes from empathy – connecting with the feelings and experiences of end users allows an organization to meet their needs better than anyone else. In order to create that innovation, we have developed a concept known as empatheTECH. What this means in practice is that we design and develop accessible solutions to improve quality of life, increase access, and protect underserved and vulnerable communities. It also means that our team focuses on giving back.??

We also founded the RIVA Innovation Solutions Center , not only to focus on modernizing and accelerating IT innovation within the federal space, but to foster thought leadership and peer learning among our staff. As a technologist joining RIVA, the ISC allows the opportunity to bring your perspective and skills to an agile, dedicated team, helping to align best practices across our Centers of Excellence areas with our focused capabilities. The value of creating a space like this is layered, in that not only are business focuses like growth and delivery supported across the company, but, simultaneously, employees reap the benefits of professional development, career growth, and exclusive opportunities to participate in tech challenges, R&D projects, and cross-functional collaborations.?

Values - RIVA Karma?

One of the actions I’m most proud of is our RIVA Karma initiative. If you visit our site, you’ll see a note at the top of the page that reads “those intentional and responsible decisions we make everyday have a profound and lasting impact on society.” Those words couldn’t be more true.?

You’ll also see the wonderful charities that we support through financial, in-kind, and volunteer means. We’re very proud to actively work to make a difference in our community, and have expanded this program to include an employee community service day and internal committees that help our employees improve their communities.??

Accountability – Our Alpaca Ambassadors?

What do alpacas have to do with accountability? I’m glad you asked! Alpacas became our corporate mascot because they are social, unique, and are continuous learners. They represent hard work, adaptability, and personal growth at RIVA. And in 2021, we began our inaugural Alpaca Ambassador program to help push our culture even further.??

Alpaca Ambassadors are energetic individuals on our team who act as the bridge between corporate staff and employees working throughout the country. Our ambassadors engage with our dispersed team in order to keep everyone connected to company developments, and ensure that everyone has the tools to perform in accordance with our values. They hold other team members accountable for hitting their personal and professional goals, and help rally teams to accomplish larger objectives.??

So when you see one of our team in a red sweatshirt with a stuffed alpaca, now you’ll know why.??

It’s tempting to think that bells, whistles and tchotchkes will drive employee engagement and improve performance. But those are just stand-ins. And when it comes to the metrics we discussed earlier, I look at those numbers, but I also look at our employees’ journey from sourcing, to onboarding, to their first 90 days. I look at how many of our rising stars emerge and are promoted, and how friendships develop throughout the company. These are the signs that our culture is working, and they are what puts a smile on my face.??

Just remember, if your organization isn’t building your corporate culture with intentional actions on a daily basis, the odds are that someone else is doing it for you.??

Thanks for reading. I hope you’ve found this helpful. If you’re interested in discussing more about RIVA’s culture, feel free to leave a comment or shoot me a DM.???