The real ROI of good culture is high performance

Too often, I see culture boiled down to happy, engaged people who enjoy working at their company. Don’t get me wrong, all these things are positive/valuable outcomes of good culture, but if we are going to work on our cultures, they need to deliver a lot more.

Setting the right expectations for your culture

A good culture needs to:

1.????? Help people and teams perform at a higher level: by making key behaviors and skills a critical part of your culture, such as better communication, distributed accountability, high trust, better capacity planning and idea-generation

2.????? Accelerate the execution of your strategy: where culture is embedded within your ways of working (the “HOW” we do things around here) to drive better decision-making, planning, problem-solving, capturing opportunities and prioritizing…. In a repeatable and scalable way.

3.????? Become a strategic asset: that attracts customers, becomes a talent magnet, creates shared purpose THAT PEOPLE ARE TAKING THE HILL FOR AND LOVING IT and enhances the company’s brand. Seriously, what’s not to love here?

When I work with companies, we are not just defining and promoting a culture, we are designing it from within, investing in developing organizational capabilities and building supporting systems. This ensures our people have the skills to show up in the right way and the culture doesn’t depend on any one person (or group) to sustain it.?

Sound like a lot? It doesn’t have to be.

Let’s look at an example:

1.??Pick one thing in your culture to prioritize, let’s say accountability.

2.??Decide on one key belief you need to make this important and 1-2 behaviors to do this in real life.

• Key belief: everyone is accountable for results
• Key behaviors: 1. Ensure you are clear on the work you are delivering. This is a two-way street where the person “assigning” the work commits to being clear in setting expectations and 2. If deadlines are slipping or an impediment has cropped up, it is okay to raise your hand to discuss alternate timelines and everyone involved assumes positive intent.

3.???Finally, determine one way your team will stay on track with doing #2. Make it part of how you work.

• For example: make expectation setting/work deliverables a conversation, not just a directive. Both parties walk away owning their respective share of the outcome. Make it part of your process. Repeat.