Your org culture has left the building. Now what?

Why does the return-to-work feel awkward, cold, and unfamiliar? If your company is like many, your company culture has changed – and not for the better.??

What can you do to reclaim or reimagine your corporate culture as a leader??Try these five steps:

1. Understand the problem. Several things can radically change a corporate culture. Are any of these happening in your organization:?a continuation of work-from-home? high turnover rates? a mass layoff? a changes in leadership? a big change to the company (e.g., merger)?

2. Understand your culture today. Assess the dominant values within your corporate culture and understand the subcultures that exist within units, teams, divisions, etc. For example, many of our clients use myGiide to do a quick temperature read on their companies’ cultural values. They are looking for two things: dispersion across the company and differences across groups. If the company believes it has a strong corporate culture, both are indicators that they are wrong.??

3. Identify the ideal behaviors. As a leader, you probably know the corporate culture and values you desire. Spend time to identify the observable behaviors that align with the company’s ideal values to produce the culture. You don’t need a list of corporate values hanging on the wall or words printed on their coffee mugs. Rather, determine 5-7 behaviors you could observe if employee norms were aligned with your corporate culture. (To check that the list is not too abstract, be sure the opposite is also true. What would you observe if they were not aligned?)

4. Socialize desired behaviors. Once you know the 5-7 behaviors you want, think of ways to socialize them. Socialization is the conveyance of norms and expectations to newcomers by more senior, tenured, and highly respected members of the organization. It is not a one-off orientation or onboarding program. It is consistent and unwavering. Over time, the newcomers start to say “this is how we do it here”. Voila. Your corporate culture starts to re-emerge.?

5. Test the effect. After a period of socializing the 5-7 key observable behaviors, do a temperature read to check whether the desired behaviors are tightening your corporate culture. Our clients will have their employees re-take myGiide (repeating step 2) to determine the shifts.??

With consistency reinforcing behaviors, daily in-person exchanges and feedback, and #culturalagility in your company, you can create the consistent behavioral norms which drive the organizational culture you lost.

Culture is socialized. Socialization takes time and effort but is doable -- even today.??