Step 1: Understanding Your Current Culture

“Culture not only defines how you will do business, it differentiates who you are in a commoditized world…its part of your competitive edge.”

Hopefully you have read part one of this series. If not, please do because it lays the ground work for everything moving forward.

Before moving forward I want to make something clear. Whether you are starting from scratch or want to reinvent or realign your organizational culture…

1.      It will not be easy

2.      It WILL NOT happen overnight; and

3.      It will not end after implementation begins.

If you understand and agree, then let’s move forward. I assure you, it can be and has been done successfully.

Company’s like Zappos, Southwest and Disney figured it out and even teach other industry leaders how, based on their experiences…for a price of course.

“Why would they give up their competitive edge like that?”

These companies know designing and driving a culture takes a high level of dedication from leaders and their teams. They bet their competitors either will,

a)     not have the level of dedication needed to see it through; or

b)     not prioritize the cultivation of their culture.

Unfortunately Zappos, Southwest and Disney were right. An overwhelming number of leaders go through the motions, pump out a vision and mission statement, create core values, develop internal media and “go team go”….then business happens and everything culture hits the back burner.

Zappos, Southwest and Disney have held thousands of seminars showing other leaders how they created, cultivated and maintained their successful cultures. Through this process they have made millions of dollars and walk the money right to the bank, knowing very few will be able to recreate what they have.

If you are a leader who wants to actively drive your culture, you need to be ready to commit to the long-game and not only for the roll out. This includes making culture a major priority for you and your entire organization. You must be ready to continuously cultivate this culture so it becomes second nature for you and your team. If you are not ready to commit to this, you will not be successful. However, if you are ready to commit to this long-game, you will see the positive impacts of an engaged and high performing team.

Understanding your existing culture

One of the first steps in this process is understanding your existing culture.

We are not in the same corporate environment that existed twenty years ago. Everything is commoditized and the only competitive edge we really have right now is how we perform compared to our competitors. Research has shown there is a definitive correlation between high performance and cultures that are intentionally designed and driven.

When everyone is clicking along together towards the same end goals, people are more engaged and perform better. They are learning together, winning together and even losing together….the key part is they are doing it together. This rarely happens organically, you need to put the pieces in place and consistently cultivate this type of environment.

However, if you don’t understand where you are today, how will you build a culture that drives success and high performance? How will you know where to start?

To understand your existing culture involves taking an objective look at how you actually behave as an organization and as individuals. Easier said than done, right?

I remember assisting a small organization a few years ago, totaling around 180 employees. They were a non-profit organization providing community based services to their customers. My role was to assist their leaders with the development and roll out of several operational processes.

I began this project like I do with any other project…gathering information. I wanted to better understand the culture I was working with and ensure I was in-line with how this team operated. The first question I asked was.

“What is your culture like?”

They were more than happy to go into detail about their culture. During this meeting I was introduced to their core values, mission statement and vision. Their HR representative, a young man by the name of Justin, did a great job lining everything out for me.

Justin also went into great detail about their hiring process, onboarding process and performance management process. He stressed how every new hire is introduced to their values from day one.

“This is what we communicate to everyone during orientation and what we expect from all of our employees” Justin stated

I listened intently, took notes and asked a few clarifying questions. The structure they had in place was really good, especially for a smaller company, but they never really answered my question, so I asked them again.

“But, what type of culture do you have?”

The HR representative began going through his notes and started rattling off everything again. I interrupted him, before he went too far down the rabbit hole.

“No, no no…let me rephrase my question, how do your employees behave and interact, is it consistent with your expectations?”

Everyone in the conference room looked at me for a minute, without saying a word. I waited quietly and finally Justin spoke up.

“Well, we have good employees but we struggle with the same things most other companies struggle with.”

I asked Justin to elaborate more and this is when I started to get a better picture of the type of culture they really had. Justin, along with others in the meeting, began discussing how they consistently struggle with implementing changes. He expressed how their employees didn’t handle change well and prior changes have failed because some of their key employees didn’t see the need to change things.

They continued on for about 20 or 30 minutes and everything they were telling me was not consistent with the values Justin listed during his initial presentation.

It became evident why they kept failing to implement changes within their organization and why they enlisted me to assist. They were not driving their culture…it was driving them.

Again, I listened intently, took notes and when they were finished, I asked

“Is this consistent throughout your organization or is this just your managers and key employees?”

There were differing answers, but at the end of the conversation no one was sure if this was isolated with the managers and the key employees they were struggling with. It was clearly evident they were not cultivating their employees to embrace the values and there was no accountability to those values from leadership.

This team of leaders also did not have a full understanding of their culture, because they were not the ones in the driver’s seat, and no matter what change they wanted to make it was going to fail. This is why it is important to always understand your existing culture. If you know where the potholes are, you know how and when to fill them in or adjust and steer around them.

I will tell you what I told them. If your managers and key employees were not embracing change, they were most likely cultivating and empowering that mindset with the people they manage and interact with, which means they won’t embrace change either. The managers and key employees were driving the culture based on their personal values, because no one else above them was, and it was going in a direction that leadership did not intend.

Was this intentional on the part of the managers and key employees? I don’t think so and they most likely thought they were doing what was acceptable. In most cases like this, the behavioral expectations were not clearly defined and consistently communicated, but I will dive deeper into that later.

What do we do to identify and understand our existing culture?

First, you need to know what you are looking for. Identify the key behaviors proven to produce successful outcomes for your organization. You may enlist the assistance of vendors and customers with identifying “what we do right” and “what we do wrong” as an organization and this will help you identify the key behaviors you want to track. This can be done through satisfaction surveys, direct conversations or reviewing complaints/RMAs/claims. All data is good data at this point, as long as it helps you begin identifying trends that lead back to individual behaviors.

Then enlist the assistance of your employees and gather feedback on how you treat each other on a daily basis. Utilize employee satisfaction and engagement surveys, one-on-one meetings and any other opportunity you can to check the pulse of the individual employees within the organization.

Again, all data is good data…especially the bad feedback.

Once you have all of this, you will be able to begin the process of painting the picture that is your existing culture.

Before going further, I want to add this note. This entire process can be done internally, utilizing your HR department as a resource to facilitate and coordinate, or you can outsource this to an objective third party. There are plenty of consultant agencies or independent consultants that specialize in doing this and are very good at it. The route you take will depend on how confident you feel you and your team can accomplish this and of course, the costs. Outsourcing can be costly, however it may give you a layer of objectivity you will not have if done internally. The essential part of this is it must be objective.

Once you have all the data, you want to look at the behavioral trends and compare those trends to what you have identified as the key behaviors you want or expect from your employees because they have proven to lead to positive outcomes. This will show you how much of a gap there is between what you identify as acceptable behavior and what is actually happening. Much like a values gap analysis, this behaviors gap analysis will show you what is actually happening so you have a better understanding of what the true culture is within your organization.

Now that I have a better understanding of my existing culture, what’s next?

The next step is designing and clearly defining the culture you want. In my next installment of this series we will begin discussing how you get back in the driver’s seat.