Introducing Culture

Culture is a hot topic, especially in smaller firms and startups. Social responsibility? Mutual respect? Fanatical this or that? Check. Every company wants to ride these culture trends, and often presents evidence of team building activities, rites and rituals, and even C level positions to drive it.

My preferred cliché is to say I lead by example – and I do, but it’s a cheap way to describe the culture I like to think my teams project. Culture is what it is - it’s not something you create or define. You lead a certain way, you hire a certain way, but at the end of the day, it’s the sum of all (diverse) parts. If the “Chief Culture Officer” is saying one thing, but half the company is doing another, this is a good sign that top-down design doesn’t cut it, no matter how good “we’re driven to change the world” might sound. This is especially true if you’re trying to effect organizational change – telling people they are suddenly part of something big without really selling them the value of it, empowering them to do their part, and holding them accountable for it won’t move the needle at all.

The Ideal Corporate Culture

My ideal corporate culture looks something like this: team members believe in the company products and services, own their respective functions, and work together to solve problems for customers. Naturally, for effective cross-functional efforts you need mutual respect. Clearly, to do whatever it takes to make customers successful, you must be a fanatic about the products and services you’re building and selling. And obviously, high performing teams hold themselves and others accountable for delivering on their promises and owning their respective functions. To reduce this even further: everyone is responsible for something, and that something is fundamental to solving customer problems. By customer problems I mean everything from attracting and acquiring customers (sales and marketing), to building products that customers actually pay money for (product and development), to making sure customers are successful using said products and services (customer service). Are there other important roles? Of course – companies can’t function without some competent form of finance, accounting, and general administration. But for the most part, what really matters to execute on is building products and selling those products (and/or services). Almost all employees should have some functional ownership along these lines.

Culture “KPI”

Since “you can’t manage what you don’t measure”, I started thinking about simple metrics to indicate this ideal culture is in place. There are probably dozens, but the one that resonates the most to me is how team members introduce themselves to people outside the organization. The reason I think this is important is because it’s how the company projects its culture in the most intimate settings – not carefully crafted copy on the website, or social media feeds, or other forms of choreographed messaging. Instead, it’s how the company projects to the most important part of the business – its immediate customers (and prospects). Whether they are paying directly (customers) or indirectly (business partners), this is obviously how revenue comes in. And without revenue, companies don’t last long. These introductions are effectively “first impressions” and can literally make or break a deal (or make it much more difficult than it needs to be).

Most employees introduce themselves in one of two ways, and they both miss the mark when it comes to projecting the ideal company culture I described above. They either oversell or undersell.

The Oversell and “Hallway Drama”

Most commonly, employees with important sounding titles will oversell by just introducing themselves with their title or some non-contextual circumstance (like “partner” or “founder”). This leads off with what to a customer or business partner is largely irrelevant information. Your title may be “Founder and Emperor of the Known Universe”, but to the customer, it means absolutely nothing because it doesn’t really explain what you actually do, and most importantly, what you are going to do for him or her.

Job titles are organization-specific and mean little without context. In fact, even C level titles (other than CEO, which is universal) vary wildly in scope. In some organizations, C level exclusively means the “C suite”, but in others, C level within much larger departments. For instance, a “CTO” title within the IT department of a large firm likely implies a product evaluator, analyst, or advisory role - with decision-making taking place much higher up the chain. It’s not that these roles aren’t important, but they are not really C-level. At best, a C level title (other than CEO) implies senior management, but it can also mean individual contributor. Savvy customers know this, so again it’s not the best way to project what employees actually do, or are responsible for. Job titles are most appropriate on business cards, on presentation title slides, or as part of 3rd party introductions – for example, “The Science of Coffee, by Joe Bean, Chief Scientist”, or “Mr. Customer, I’d like you to meet our VP of Professional Services”, or “our next guest is the CTO of Emerging Technologies for Skynet.” But whether prompted or not, this person should very quickly explain his or her responsibilities to give context. If I was interviewing a guest for a podcast, and I asked that guest to introduce his or herself, my immediate follow-up question after hearing a title would be “tell me a little bit more about what you actually do.” So, it’s best to just be proactive!

A few years ago, I witnessed this title drama first-hand. A colleague and I were working on a partnership with another company, and this company’s business development executive was in our office. As we were walking down the hall to the meeting room, we bumped into one of our fellow team members and politely paused for introductions. John Doe (as we’ll refer to him), as part of a prior negotiation, received a title of EVP (executive vice president), but was actually responsible for various forms of business development. Our partner company’s executive introduced himself with his name, and what he did for his company. John simply said, “I’m John Doe, and I’m the EVP.” My other colleague and I tried not to laugh at both that introduction and what our partner said next – “of what?”. That’s right, in a very direct way, our business partner wanted to know what our “EVP” actually did. The first impression was not good, and the exchange was brief and abrupt - John was obviously a bit thrown off and quickly went on his way.

Another form of overselling that I hear too often (and admit to having used myself), is something like “I run such and such function”. It’s common to describe sales territories but also functions, such as Engineering, Support, etc. The projection is both archaic and hints at “management” versus “leadership”. Company leaders don’t actually run anything, they inspire and empower talented teams to execute on important objectives, hold them accountable, and are themselves held accountable. Sales representatives are accountable for a quota within a specific region or vertical, and equally important, are customer advocates. They don’t actually run any business though. Is this really the best, most modern way to project culture? It’s not, but again, it’s pretty easy to do sometimes (guilty as charged), when given 5 seconds to introduce yourself. A simple hack, even if nothing else changes, is to say “I’m responsible for such and such” rather than “I run such and such”. Customers who are trusting your company with their business should be delighted to hear that each employee they talk to takes responsibility for something, that the they’re held accountable for it, and that they’re proud to articulate what they actually do. Who wouldn’t want to buy from a company that projects like this at every interaction? It’s interpersonal peace of mind in a nutshell.

The Undersell

On the other end of the spectrum comes the undersell: most commonly, Individual contributors who say things like “I’m one of the engineers”, or “I work on someone’s team”.  While it’s humble for someone to say he or she is “one of” or “part of” a larger team, it doesn’t project anything other than the company has people organized in larger groups, working on stuff. Newsflash: all companies do. Are there companies where employees really are just invisible cogs in gigantic machines? Of course. Is this really the culture that a dynamic up and comer looking to earn business on merit wants to project? Of course not – the reason customers are even entertaining buying from smaller firms is because they believe they will get superior service, more attention, and more flexibility – precisely the opposite of what companies with armies of marginalized individual contributors tend to offer. In fact, it’s highly unlikely a smaller firm can even stay in business without well-defined employee responsibilities at every level. Employees can be very transparent about what they do and it should automatically project ownership, empowerment, and accountability –the exact qualities smaller firms should be eager to highlight.

Examples of Introductions that Project Ideal Culture

I encourage you to try these types of introductions on for size, and in turn, you should try encouraging your teams to follow suit…

“I’m the (co)founder” (if relevant) should become “I started (or helped start) this company 3 years ago to help customers get better insights from their data. I’m responsible for our analytics products and services.”

“I run the Southeast” should become “I’m responsible for helping customers in the Southeast discover our products and services.”

“I’m one of the solutions architects” should become “I’m responsible for helping customers choose the right options from our product and service catalog to solve their problems most effectively.”

“I work in technical support” should become “I’m responsible for helping customers get the most out of their experience with our products and services.”

And so on. In all cases these introductions project a culture that promotes pride of ownership, accountability, and customer-focused problem solving. Customers will never think they’re dealing with self-righteous figureheads, irrelevant cogs in giant machines, or feel compelled to ask “of what?” They can read business cards or LinkedIn profiles on their own, so use the personal introduction phase to project the company culture that will inspire confidence and peace of mind instead!