Why asking me to be innovative and proactive isn't gonna make me

Tags: Product & Program management, Content, Marketing, & Growth Hacking

Innovation, diversity, minimalism, flat hierarchy, continuous learning, teamwork, exponential growth, determination & <insert 10 other similar high-value words>.

Think for a minute about where have you heard these words! These are the words that employees & general public use to describe office/work culture. Several companies and employees believe that they stand by those high-value words. And then, there are some, who have had a realization that this is marketing bullshit from the internal communications & organization heads.

When it comes to the face value of work culture, it is a measure of how an organization operates, and how it channels employees towards intended behaviors. It is how employees behave with one another, and the outside world (mainly investors, customers, & new recruits).

The culture hits you first, which is why it is so damn important. So, if you are truly building an organization where people love to work and enjoy their time till it lasts, here are a few things to consciously assess to get the right culture in place for your organization.

How Business Heads Take Actions & Make Decisions?

This is by far the most important area to assess.

If I want my employees to be customer-centric, to focus on quality, to be fully accountable for their work areas; then, I need to make decisions and take actions that invoke such behaviors. My asking my team members to be customer-centric isn't going to make them.

For instance, if I want my employees to be customer-centric. I conduct a workshop about "Know Thy Customer" and conclude it with assignments that have employees implement the learnings to actually know thy customer. Also, reward an employee who did a great customers behaviour study in a massive way. Similarly, if you need your organisation to be innovative, you may want to open up meetings to every damn intern to voice their ideas. Ask managers to take educated guesses, experiment with intuition, and reward fantastic failures. That's one way to inculcate innovation & experimentation in your work culture.

Similarly, fire the most valuable player in the organization if he was found to have harassed a vendor/employee. That sends out the message that harassment is a strict NO even if you are the best. If that guy isn’t fired, it will send out a message that employees (especially, managers & business heads) can go ahead & be harsh on others & ill-treat others as they like (echo: the recent Uber case).

The point is, asking employees to be innovative & proactive isn’t going to work if you are always instructing them about most things, and not enabling them to be in an environment where ideating is an obvious activity.

Employees learn about the culture from such actions and protocols, they internalize what the organization encourages, and follow the path.

How you do internal communications?

What’s understood is spread. And to add to that, if your communication has a sense of seriousness coupled with some really odd/unexpected terms in it, employees are more likely to remember and utilise it.

For instance, say "Move fast and break things" instead of "A workplace that encourages iterative development and rewards risks". Similarly, say "Don't be evil" as opposed to "Maintain professionalism and impeccable work ethics at all times".

Say "let's work our ass off this month and take a paid vacation in XYZ island for 2 weeks" instead of saying "your hard work will be amply rewarded in due time if we get this project to completion".

Some of the things you (organisations/business heads) say maybe a time-bound motto of the company. However, as it contributes to the culture of the company and spreads like wildfire throughout the organization, it is best to make it personal.

Also, millennials love it. So, try not to communicate in a marketing/motivational jargon. Usually, HR does internal communications in the organization and sometimes there is a sense of lethargy in the communication that employees receive, and such communication gets ignored. 

How you enforce culture at entry with no double standards?

Office culture trickles down from the board of directors to the janitor, the more experienced to the less experienced, and the most authoritative to the least authoritative. Or sometimes, the HR to everyone in the organization.

HR/leadership can inorganically define the culture they want to see in the company. Different teams within the same organization can sense different work culture based on how their managers’ operate. That’s why certain organizations have an "unlearn session" as part of their joining formalities. Why? Because the organization stands for a few things that everyone must clearly identify and follow. No exceptions there.

So, irrespective of my highly-valuable enterprise background at some of the most prestigious firms, when I join Facebook, it ensures that I unlearn some of my (non-intended) behaviours from my previous experience and learn some new ones if need be. That's enforcing culture right from the beginning.

How you teach/spread culture? 

We do a culture check at the time of interviewing candidates. Primarily, employee personality and how s/he fits in the existing teams.

Most aspects of culture can be evaluated in an interview, nevertheless, if you don't see a certain behavioural trait in a new hire or change of behaviour in an employee, it is better to lead by example.

Culture cannot be readily instructed and learned in abstract lectures. It will take the time to sink in. So yeah, sorry if an employee did not become proactive after you specifically asked him to. Asking won’t do, get him to work with your most proactive employee and see him change in a month or so.

All that said. When I think as an entrepreneur/owner, I envision an office where everyone works 12-15 hour days and regularly does things beyond his or her “job titles”. The thing is I am looking for someone just like me to work towards my goals.

There’s a catch if you dig deep! My level of commitment and my motivation comes from disproportionate profits that I foresee w.r.t money/status/desires. So, if you want your employees to show the same level of commitment as you, you have got to hire extremely passionate people and ensure that they “truly” are the owners of the activities they were hired for, and they have an ability to make disproportionate profits from their throughput.

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Interesting perspectives on widely discussed aspects of running a business & personal productivity:

• How we unconsciously cheat on our plans?
• The actual cost of the endless meetings at work
• Motivating employees in the right way & building the right company culture
• Making the right decisions - The thinking behind it
• Content is King - 4 key areas of a Content Strategy