Step 2: Defining Your Culture

Before moving forward, please be sure to read the first two articles in this series.

Driving the Culture You Want

Understanding Your Current Culture

Now that you are all caught up, let's get started.

Ok, I understand my existing culture and I don’t like it…how do I change it?

As I stated at the end of the first part of this series, there is not a turn-key “system” that automatically turns the culture of your organization into a well-oiled machine, pumping out success story after success story.

I am sure, at one time or another, you have googled culture change or culture alignment and found Google comes back with about 2,670,000,000 results. There are thousands of scholarly peer reviewed papers, blogs, YouTube videos, memes and experts claiming they have the perfect “system” for you to build a culture that will make your organization the best.

“If it seems too good to be true, it is.”

        - Every dad ever

I will say it again…there is not an automated, turn-key “system” that builds and maintains the culture you want. If there were, every business would have it and every business would be reaping the rewards from it.

You are dealing with human behavior and anyone who has interacted with more than one person in their life knows, all people are different and most resist change. It takes time for people to accept and embrace any change and the more you try to use brute force to enact that change, the least likely it will be embraced.

Culture, at its core, is how the individuals within your organization behave within various situations, on a consistent basis.

I am emphasizing behavior again and here is why. Culture, at its core, is how the individuals within your organization behave within various situations, on a consistent basis. Unless you clearly define, consistently communicate and reinforce the behaviors you expect, your employees will behave based on either past experience of acceptable expectations or the direct expectations of their immediate supervisor or manager.

The only way to successfully design and drive the culture you want is to invest the time and resources needed AND make it a top level priority for your organization. There are a few ways you can approach implementing a culture of your design and the method you choose really depends on the size and maturity of your organization. Before getting to this stage, however, we must identify where you want to go and how you want to get there.

Defining your expectations

While I am discussing this process I will be doing so from a top down perspective, as if the chief executive of the organization is leading this change initiative. I am doing this because this is the level where change really needs to originate, embraced and influenced down from. As the leader of your organization, you are the one that leads the way to either success or failure within your organization. Your people look to you for guidance on how they should be performing and take their behavioral ques from you, so you need to be the change you want in your culture.

With that being said, let’s get this ball rolling.

Remember when I discussed identifying what the existing culture was? The first step was to identify behaviors that lead to positive and successful outcomes within your organization. Now is the time to expand on this and begin the process of clearly defining the behaviors you will expect your employees to exhibit daily. When you define these expectations, you need to do so in a collaborative way while maintaining ownership over the final decisions. Remember, you are leading the charge and this is a culture of your design.

Bring together key leaders and influencers, whose input you trust and feel will add value to your decision making process, and involve them in the brain storming and defining process. I want to emphasize the importance of making sure those you involve truly add value. Do not involve those who will instantly agree with whatever you say. There are times to have individuals that will agree and lead the charge with you and there are times where you need people willing to express differing perspectives, as it will encourage constructive debate and collaboration.

This is one of those times you need those differing perspectives.

Once you have your team selected, inform them you want to clearly define behavioral expectations that will help drive higher performance and better employee engagement. Make sure you express your expectations for their involvement upfront, so they understand you are only gathering input and need an objective sounding board. To avoid confusion on the purpose of their involvement, be sure to express you own this process and will be the decision maker, utilizing what you learn through these sessions.

You also want to avoid involving too many people because it will dilute what you are trying to do. I would keep the number involved around 5 or 6 people. This will give you enough people to create meaningful and constructive dialog for the brainstorming process.

I will say this again, you want people who can truly add value to these sessions. If they cannot add value, do not include them because it will just dilute what you are trying to accomplish.

Collaboration is great, but there is such a thing as too much collaboration. So keep it tight and keep it focused.

Storm away!

Before you begin this process with your team, ensure you are not influencing your team members with your perspective on defining these expectations. By doing so, you will inadvertently sabotage the collaboration process and the rest of the team will feel you already have a direction you want to go and be less engaged or willing to give their input.

Simon Sinek, author of “Start with Why”, best describes why this is so important.

“The skill to hold your opinions to yourself until everyone has spoken does two things. One, it gives everybody else the feeling that they have been heard, it gives everyone else the ability to feel that they have contributed. And two, you get the benefit of hearing what everybody else has to think before you render your opinion.”

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3EPLItTf-QU

When you begin the process with the selected team members, express what you want to accomplish but do not muddy the waters by giving your opinions or input up front. Ask probing questions to get your team to begin the brainstorming process and let them express their opinions and give their input first.

Ask what behaviors they see that frustrate them or what they hear others complain about. If they are frustrated or complaining about certain behaviors, then others are as well. Identify these trouble areas, so you know what not to expect.

Ask what they believe is the ideal employee, from a behavioral perspective, and document their input while probing deeper to understand why they feel these behaviors are ideal. Seek to understand their reasoning thoroughly and do not accept it at face value.

After you are done listening and clarifying the teams’ input, then it is your turn to give your opinions. Make sure to ask for their feedback on your opinions and input. Build this into a collaborative discussion so you can gather as much information and insight as possible. This will help you make the best decisions possible when you begin to draft out what you want your culture to look like.

Meetings are done…where do I go from here?

The downfall begins with the desire to keep it short and sweet, easy to remember and something “brandable”

You’ve gathered valuable insights and input and now you are ready to start drafting out what you feel are the behavioral expectations that will lead to the successful outcomes you want.

In my opinion, this is one of the most important parts of this entire process and is where I have seen the beginning of the end with some organizational cultures. The downfall begins with the desire to keep it short and sweet, easy to remember and something “brandable”…

Forget all of that.

This is not the purpose of what you are doing. You are building the behavioral foundation that supports everything moving forward and it needs to be directed internally, not externally.

·        If you create something that is short and sweet, you are not investing properly in your own cultural development. You don’t have to reinvent the wheel, but you do need to ensure the end product you are creating reflects the level of importance you expect others to give it. If you don’t, your people will know and they will only give it the same level of priority as it is perceived.

·        If you create something designed to be easily remembered, it will become something your people just go through the motions with. Utilizing just core values within your culture is a great example. In my previous piece I detailed a discussion I had with a client regarding their culture. They were quick to recite their core values and were extremely proud that most of their people could do the same. However, it was evident they were just going through the motions. The values were easy to remember and anyone could recite them on the spot, but they had no real meaning…it was just words on paper.

·        If you create something that is geared towards branding, you are focusing on the wrong audience and your people will notice. They will lose faith in what you are doing quickly and look at it for what it is, a blatant marketing ploy or a “check in the box” to help differentiate yourself from the competition. Your efforts will be viewed as the new flavor of the month.

Focus on developing this for your employees.

“If you take care of your employees, they will take care of the clients”

                                                                                             - Richard Branson

As you go through the drafting process, do not worry about how many behavioral expectations you identify for your organization. Just start building your list based off of the data you gathered and input received. Once you have this list bring your team back together and review them. With your teams input, rank each behavior from most important to least important and start weeding out those that have the least impact to the desired performance outcomes.

Again, do not worry about the number of behavioral expectations you identified. As long as you consistently communicate and engrain them within your organizational framework, they will stick and your people will embrace them. With that being said, you do not need a list of 200 behavioral expectations either. You want your list to be focused on the behaviors identified as key to developing the desired performance outcomes for your employees and ultimately your organization.

Once this is accomplished, the next steps are communicating the new expectations, engraining them and weaving them into how you do business moving forward. We will begin this discussion in the next part of this series.