World Class Culture is Easier to Build Than You Think

I routinely hear the following 3 things:

• Senior executives want to dramatically improve or even overhaul their company culture.
• Employees consistently complain how ineffective or even toxic the culture is at their current company.
• Job candidates are focused on learning everything they can about the culture of a company they are interviewing with and potentially joining.

It is clear to me that “culture” is very important to just about everyone and yet, it appears that creating and sustaining a world class culture still eludes many organizations.

According to Investopedia, corporate culture is defined as:

“Corporate  culture  refers to the beliefs and behaviors that determine how a company's  employees and management interact and handle outside business transactions. Often, corporate  culture  is implied, not expressly  defined , and develops organically over time from the cumulative traits of the people the  company  hires.”

While I agree with the overall definition above, I do have a significant issue with the notion that culture is often “implied and not expressly defined.” That is the major reason why, in my opinion, so many organizations struggle with creating and sustaining a world class culture!

Instead of focusing on why so few companies create and sustain the sort of culture that everyone seems to want, let’s instead examine the four things that will create a world class culture in your company / organization:

The Leadership

This is “the who.” Everything starts with leadership, especially when creating a world class culture. If the leadership does not care about creating a world class culture, the culture is almost certain to be less than optimal and in many cases toxic. The senior leadership at Rotation Medical (RM) committed to the following:

• Strict alignment—frequent meetings to ensure we were in agreement
• Flexibility—understood that culture evolves, especially during hyper growth
• Accountability—ownership to consistently uphold values, standards and expectations from everyone in organization

The Vision

This is “the what.” This is where it all starts. What does the senior leadership team want their culture to look and feel like for its employees? A world class culture is impossible to create if the vision is not clearly defined from the very beginning by the senior leaders. The vision should include, at a minimum, the following 3 principles for the organization:

1. Common Values—how do we treat our customers and one another?
2. High Standards—what are acceptable results?
3. Clear Expectations—what do we expect from one another?

These principles need to be established early and everyone should be aligned. At RM, both the founder and the CEO met with me during the interview process to review their vision for the company culture. They were open minded and listened to my ideas and we did not move forward until we had definitive alignment on the vision. Another key ingredient to maintaining this common vision is to always recruit and hire future talent based on it. This is crucial as your organization grows and adds more people. A single hire that does not share the common vision can cause turmoil and disruption to your culture and overall organization. The vision is a living breathing thing, not some words written on Day 1 and not reviewed again. 

The Purpose

The Purpose is “the why.” People who truly know and understand “their why” are more focused, passionate, and resilient. At RM, “our why” was to change the standard of care for rotator cuff repair. While that may seem relatively simple, it was our “battle cry” and it kept us laser focused during times of adversity. We were beyond passionate for our technology, we were out right evangelical about our purpose and personally offended when someone tried to get in our way! Employees that did not share in our passion for disrupting the rotator cuff repair market were not a great fit and were “weeded out” (held accountable to their results) by their peers. Like vision, the purpose is created early on from the senior leadership but its success is ultimately due to the employees “buying in” and taking active ownership. We considered the following 3 things when creating “our why:”

1. Emotionally driven—something that inspired our employees, partners, and customers
2. Realistic—something that could be accomplished
3. Disruptive—something that “changes the world”

Emotional Connection

This is “the how.” Many leaders routinely fail to understand this fundamental truth about human nature—people are emotional creatures first, and logical second. Some of the worst leaders I served with in my career are the ones who tried to lead people by applying strict logic. Culture is all about people. People are driven by emotion, not logic. Why then would you try to build a logic-focused culture? Here are 10 emotional factors we considered throughout our time while creating and sustaining a world class culture at RM:

1. Talk is cheap—action is more powerful than lip service
2. “Little things” matter—little things morph into larger ones and lead people to become complacent and eventually bitter; treat little things with great care and respect
3. Public Praise—“catch them” doing something right vs. something wrong
4. Celebrate the wins—winning is hard; award outstanding results with praise & extra compensation
5. Work hard, play hard—never allow the standards to lower; reward ownership
6. Mentor-ship—people want to learn, always take the opportunity to “coach them up” 
7. Develop strong leaders—demand accountability & then actively promote from within 
8. Consistent recruiting—hire for integrity, intellect, work ethic and high EQ (emotional intelligence/quotient)
9. Vulnerability—admit when you are wrong and create an environment that allows for mistakes and promotes learning from them
10. Intent—the most crucial emotional connector. People will forgive their leaders for almost any mistake as long as they trust the intent of the organization. If the intent is genuine and always about supporting the employee and helping them to succeed, they will follow you anywhere, anytime, no questions asked. Nothing is more important.

Creating and sustaining a world class culture is the most important thing a senior leadership team can do for their organization. Culture is not about some “corny” words on a piece of paper or something that is discussed once in a while after something bad has occurred. 

World class culture is an obsession, it is a way of life. 

One of my favorite reads on this is The Power of a Positive Team by Jon Gordan. Please share your thoughts in the comments - including books or podcasts you like.

In summary, a world class culture is:

• Created by defining an intentional and clear vision by senior leadership from Day 1
• Sustained by the employees and fiercely protected by everyone
• Focused on core values such as high standards, strict accountability, and clear expectations
• Enabled when companies treat people as their most critical asset and execute successfully

It is probably obvious that I am very passionate about creating a world class culture everywhere I go. I sincerely believe it is the difference maker when comparing successful organizations and ones that fail. World class culture leads to winning and as we all know, the fun is in the winning as well as the journey to get there! 

Cheers to the Journey,

Mike

Award-winning commercial executive committed to build, train, and lead dynamic commercial operations teams for start-up ventures that drive adoption of disruptive technology.