Your first year as CEO... how do you create a High-Performance Culture?

For my first newsletter of 2024 I thought I'd imagine myself taking on the role of CEO at an SME.? The company is 200 people, with big bold ambitions for growth.? Knowing what I do about workplace culture, human behaviour and designing for performance, these are the top 5 priorities I would have for 2024 to create a culture that delivers against the ambitions of the company:

One: Design Your Culture

As Brian Chesky (CEO of Airbnb) says, "...you have to design your culture.? If you don’t, you might not like what you end up with".? Most companies don't do this, but I think that trend will change quickly over the next few years...

My approach to culture design is to focus on three main ingredients:

1. What are the company Mission/Strategy/Goals. You start with the end game in mind. What are you aiming at, and what behaviours do you need from your people to get you there? Most companies don't do this! This is what connects the culture to business performance, which in turn means that the whole leadership team will care about it. It's critical.
2. Valued Behaviours. What got you to where you are today? You've been successful to this point by establishing the culture you have today, so let's work out what needs to be kept and nurtured through the next stage of growth. This is about listening and learning from your people so they come with you on the journey.
3. Customer Brand. What do you need the customer of the future to think of you in order to meet your ambitions? The most successful companies in the world do this part brilliantly. Think about the words you'd use to describe the Amazon App experience, then look at their 12 leadership principles . See if any match up...

(If you want to know more about Designing your Culture then drop me a message or have a read of this article . Or both ??)

Two: Therapy!

Stephen Bartlett once said on a podcast that he thinks every CEO should have therapy… and I don’t disagree with this principle at all!?

As CEO, you hold the most influence over the company culture.?Your tone, behaviours, reactions, what you spend time on (and what you don’t), what you say (and what you don’t) etc… will all have ripple effects throughout the company.?

So you need to be the best version of you for as much time as possible.? Invest in yourself physically and mentally, so exercise, take walks outside, eat right and TALK TO SOMEONE QUALIFIED to help you succeed!? This also role models a wonderful principle for the rest of your leadership team.

Three: Connect your People

This is my go-to superpower for 2024.?

If I could do one thing successfully as a new CEO, it would be to crack this equation.? There isn't a company I know that doesn’t have internal silo's, competing functions, lack of cross-departmental collaboration and every other way of describing people not working together.

Business improves when your people have a high quantity of quality social connections at work.? It doesn’t mean they need to have 20 people they could go for a beer with, but it means that have 20 people they can call and say "I need some help" or "what do you think about this problem" or "I'd love to run this idea past you".?

There is a whole industry built on team building which often focusses on specific teams, which is useful, but the magic happens when you grow those connections outside of your team and across the company…

Four: Talent

I would ask my managers and leaders to consistently do 3 things:

1. Try the Keeper Test (this is a Netflix gem... can be controversial but for building a culture of high-performance, I think this has a place). Nice article on this here if you're not familiar with it.
2. Hire the best and get out of their way. Age old mantra that will always stand the test of time. Give people context to do their best work, veer away from control.
3. Learn how to coach! If you're responsible for people then you need to be a coach. A coach is responsible for getting the best out of their people. That's their priority. I'd want my leaders to be super coaches, not metric chasers.

Five: Psychological Safety

(you knew that was coming right??)

Any high performing culture that depends on people working together in order to achieve success will need people to feel safe to speak up.? This is a core foundation for success, so I would role model that as CEO, I'd invest in the training for my leaders and managers to do the same, I would create awareness in the workforce, celebrate the behaviours that create psychological safety and measure to learn where we need to improve.?

I'd love to know what you'd add or what you've done to build high-performance cultures!

Thank you for reading as always, please comment and share if you enjoyed it ??

...and if you're a newly appointed CEO of an SME/Start-up then let's have a chat!

#CultureHack

Todays culture hack is based on a very common challenge I'm asked about by leaders... How do you deal with the "Moaning Myrtles" (we watched a lot of Harry Potter over the holidays...). If you're not familiar, these are the people that can't seem to wait to come and moan at you about all that is wrong with the company. For managers this can be a real energy drain. For colleagues, it can damage the culture and impact engagement.

The tried and tested approaches have been "bring me solutions, not problems" or simply "stop bloody moaning"... The danger of both is that you can stop important information flowing up about challenges that, as leader, you do need to know about.

So, here's an approach you can try:

Think of people bringing you problems as an opportunity to coach them. Consider the scenario of raising awareness of a problem as a 5 level pyramid, and you want to help them reach the top.

• Level 1: The individual doesn't recognise the problem and doesn't know how to solve it.
• Level 2: The individual can identify the problem but doesn't know the solution.
• Level 3: The individual recognises the problem and has considered multiple solutions, but is unsure which to choose.
• Level 4: The individual identifies the problem, has multiple solutions, and proposes one.
• Level 5: The individual has already encountered a problem, found a solution, and acted on it, and now reports the resolution post-action

The game is to identify which level your Moaning Myrtle is bringing you problems at (probably 1 if they belong in this naming convention...), then help them to see how they can move to Level 2 the next time.

It's a wonderful way to give useful feedback and clear direction on how to improve.

Credit to the wonderful people at Corporate Rebels for this one!