It’s the challenge of embedding culture, init!

Despite very clear dictionary definitions, articulating a business’ culture consistently can be quite tough. Ask five people to describe the culture of the business they work for, and it’s not unusual to get five different answers. The degree to which this inconsistency manifests into a business-impacting issue depends on many factors. In a highly competitive environment where it is generally accepted that there is a positive correlation between employee advocacy and customer advocacy, it is a business factor that would be unwise to ignore. 

For the sake of completeness, the Oxford English Dictionary description of ‘culture’ is ‘…the customs and beliefs, art, way of life and social organization of a particular country or group’. So much about a business’ culture can be in the moment and is a great proponent of the phrase ‘perception is a persons’ reality’. A team performing highly may describe the business’ culture as positive, engaging, friendly, high-energy. A team performing poorly may describe the same business’ culture as pressurized, threatening, and blaming. This can obviously happen at an individual level too. It stands to reason therefore that businesses that care about how their brand is perceived, will want to ‘manage’ these perceptions (outputs) to a great degree by managing the factors that influence them (inputs).

So, where the dictionary can help us understand what culture is, it doesn’t help with the more challenging aspect of embedding a culture that isn’t just designed and documented but is also experienced consistently by colleagues and customers.Large corporates are good at defining their culture, and this often comes from the most senior leadership in the business. Strong leaders define the principles of their vision and engaged teams align recruitment, training, performance management, reward, and recognition with that vision. Over time, the vision becomes the reality because it is clear to everyone in the business what the accepted behaviours are and this permeates across the customer landscape too.

Without strong cultural leadership though, culture can become intangible. Unlike a business’ products or services, it remains undefined and these businesses can grow up and operate with multiple cultures, and each of those cultures are likely to evolve over time. It can be like a marriage where a couple don’t share their individual belief systems or talk about what is and isn’t acceptable behaviour prior to tying the knot. This is fine during the honeymoon period, but in the years to come it can create deep rifts and unhappy marriages where each party is effectively following a path travelling in the opposite direction to the person they decided to share their life with.

If we accept that it is preferable for businesses to nurture their culture, they must consider it in the same way that they do their products. Positive cultures will flourish where they are maintained by conditions suitable for growth.

PWC's 2016 Global CEO Survey revealed that 50% of CEOs worldwide consider lack of trust to be a major threat to their organisational growth. Empowering colleagues with effective decision-making powers doesn’t build trust in itself though. Colleagues need to feel protected and supported by the business when their decisions go wrong. Don’t give the baby the antique vase if you are going to shout at them when they break it! There’s a degree of acceptance in a business that operates a true Trust Culture that mistakes will happen, some will be minor, others may be difficult to smile through.  As my mother used to say, ‘I can still hit you while I’m smiling’ in response to my attempts to make her laugh to avoid a good crack for breaking her rules! I’m open to all offers of sympathy!

A business operating a true Trust Culture won’t smile, but they won’t hit you either; they will have a framework to ensure closed-loop learning from all experiences, both good and bad. Enabling failure within a bubble of protection can have significant benefits for the growth of a business. It can reduce bureaucracy and fence-sitting and encourage a greater degree of entrepreneurial creativity

Perhaps at the other end of the Trust Culture scale is Cancel Culture. A relatively new phenomenon borne out of an increasingly powerful social media. It refers to the practice of denigrating public figures who have expressed opinions considered objectionable by others. Businesses can suffer the same fate, and it is increasingly important that internal cultures and belief systems are clear and represented by colleagues to avoid a PR disaster involving an employee making a statement that is considered representative of their employing brand.

Strong and positive cultures emanate from businesses that put ‘culture’ high on the leadership agenda and take the time and invest the funds necessary to ensure that it is both clearly defined and embedded top down and bottom up. To be truly embedded it must run throughout an organisation’s operating model. At the recruitment phase, the desired behaviours should be assessed. In onboarding and training, the desired behaviours should be drawn out and developed. In performance management, the desired behaviours should be recognized and perhaps rewarded. Many of us do this with our children from the earliest ages, and whilst I’m not suggesting we put our colleagues on the naughty step or start issuing gold stars, it really can be as simple as applying the same principles of positive reinforcement that we know to be so effective in parenthood.

Operating in this way enables businesses to leverage outsourcing most successfully. The process of knowledge transfer becomes seamless and emulating a business culture as the outsourced service provider becomes as easy as learning about products and services. 

At durhamlane, we support some very well-known brands creating demand for their products / services and converting that demand into sales. Understanding the culture of the brands we represent is at the top of our priority list. We will appoint colleagues in our team that are highly experienced in the front end and end to end of the sales process, who are also closely aligned with the belief systems of the business they are appointed to represent.

Trusting us to become a true extension of their business enables them to respond quickly to their changing business environment and be fleet-of-foot where others may be suffering the itchy and hopelessly recurring business of athletes’ foot! You get the picture. Better analogies on a postcard please! A defined culture enables flexibility and expedites the process of procuring additional support as and when required.

We are open to interrogation of our business culture on request and for the right reasons of course. Our only ask is that if we show you ours, you’ll show us yours! Collaboration is the future.

Drop me a line at [email protected] if you would like to share with me just how special your business culture is to you, as we would be more than happy to share ours. Also, for all those forward thinking CRO’s & CCO’s out there, who are interested in sharing their success story, I would love to hear from you, as we are currently building our interviewee line up for the forthcoming series of ‘Tea with Lee’, drop me an email to find out more.