The Language of Culture: How Defining Purpose Transforms Organizations

After I gave a talk on the importance of recruiting and culture, a CEO approached me and was concerned that the culture of his company was “not that good.” He was right to be concerned; there's been a huge shift in the labor market in the last couple of years with the best employees looking for meaning and agency. However, the process of building a strong culture isn't as hard as we think. It starts with having a clear and defined core purpose statement. Just that act alone will start a process within an organization that, if done right, can take on a life of its own and produce unimaginable benefits. There's something very powerful about the simple process of creating language that everyone recognizes and owns, representing who you are and why you make the most important decisions. Language shapes the way we think. So, when we uncover language around our culture, we can highlight it in the minds of the people who work with us, allowing them to see opportunities that wouldn't be visible without purpose.

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In 2008, I had the great pleasure of meeting Simon Sinek and learning about the work he did exploring purpose and its role in culture. Simon views purpose as the concept that drives people to work together toward a common goal. Being able to articulate your “why” makes it clear that everyone in the organization is showing up to work for the same reasons, looking to achieve the same thing, and even making sacrifices for others in the service of that purpose. It is the core statement that anchors a culture and allows people to see the world through the lens of that culture in order to make decisions, highlight opportunities, and have clarity on what's really important. But I think it goes a lot farther than that.

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Language has a huge impact on the way we think, so when we create language that defines our culture, it allows people to see opportunities and have a greater sense of behavioral options as a result of that shift in thinking. Language is an external influence on how we think and see the world. Humans were incapable of seeing the color blue until the word blue was invented. The Pirah? people of the Amazon do not have specific language for numbers. As a result, they're unable to conceptualize specific quantities of anything. When people learn a second language, it has huge motivational changes when it comes to their decision making. When brain imaging was done on German speakers compared to native Arabic speakers, it was clear there was a real difference in how their brains worked as a result of the differences in their languages.

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So, if our language has an impact on how we think and see the world, and we have difficulty imagining concepts that we don't have language for, then wouldn't the mere act of creating language to define our culture have a similar impact? I believe so. When you create language around purpose and values, it highlights events that are indicative of and in line with those values and purpose. At one of my previous companies, we created a decision-making matrix based on core values. My partner and I wanted a tool that employees could use when they didn't know what to do. What ended up happening went well beyond transactional decision making.

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I had a really big problem in my company, and I didn't know how to solve it. Using that matrix, a group of my employees was able to identify the root of the problem and address it in a really novel way. The solution we ended up with was to dismantle the process that was causing the difficulty and rearrange other processes to accommodate the change. As a company, we were able to move much faster, with greater accuracy and employee satisfaction. None of which would have been possible without shared language and a deep shared understanding of how to use it. When employees are inculcated

in the specific thinking around purpose and values, it allows them to see opportunities, patterns, and threats to that purpose on their own. Opportunities, patterns, and threats that would not be visible to management can be addressed because shared language made those concepts visible to everyone within the organization.

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Having a defined and visible culture has aided several organizations and created growth opportunities that would not exist without them. For instance, one of the mechanisms developed out of Google's culture is their “20% time” policy, which allows employees to work on side projects with 20% of their time. This employee benefit, created out of Google's purpose “To Satisfy Every Curiosity,” led to the creation of products like Gmail and Google Maps. Zappos’ purpose is “To Deliver Happiness.” It is this purpose that has allowed for their culture of exceptional customer service. Do you think the myriad of legends about Zappos’ amazing customer service happened by accident or was part of the employee manual? No, Zappos hired people who were a match for their culture and gave them the leeway and context to create those magical moments. But it started with culture.

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Clearly, the mere act of uncovering your purpose and articulating the values that lead to the purpose is not an end in itself. There must be life within the organization, and employees need the confidence and the permission to act as guardians of that purpose and culture. The result if we don't? We all know organizations with really inspiring words about culture on gilded plaques that don't take care of their employees. In turn, their employees don't take care of their customers.

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So the very act of defining key cultural elements such as purpose and values creates a common language and understanding that allows everyone in the organization to see culture in action, make decisions that will advance that culture, and see opportunities that can advance the entire enterprise, highlighted only because of the common language around culture. In a time when employees are demanding meaning from the work they do and agency to decide how that work can be best done, it's critical that CEOs prioritize the important work of uncovering their purpose and spreading it throughout the organization. As a leader within your company, it is important to ask yourself: Are you truly harnessing the power of purpose and language to shape your company's culture? The world is moving faster and faster. So, the future success of your organization could depend on your answer. You can’t control everything, and you can't see all the problems and threats to your company.?But your employees can.?So take action now to establish a purpose-driven culture and free the hidden potential within your company.

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I've written a worksheet to help organizations uncover their purpose, if you would like a copy, just leave a comment with the words "Purpose Worksheet" and I will send it to you.

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About the author -?Peter Laughter?– I walked away from a 25 year entrepreneurial career in the recruiting and staffing industry because recruiting is screwed. I founded?True Bearing?to reinventing recruiting using purpose, values, and storytelling as the currency companies can use to supercharge referrals and cultivate pipelines of rockstar talent.??