Driving Culture

Domain: Strategy - Estimated reading time: 4 minutes

Most organizations have their mission, vision and values posted somewhere. They're certainly on the website. They're probably on marketing materials and company swag. Maybe they're even painted, in large bold lettering, on the walls of your office.

While that may make them visible, it's not what creates and drives the culture.

Culture is actually built through the behaviors and norms that are consistently demonstrated throughout an organization.

So who or what determines which behaviors are consistently demonstrated? Well, leadership plays a large role in that. Over time, people tend to self-select the behaviors that are either tolerated or rewarded.

And there is a distinction between the two. Tolerated behaviors get repeated because they are easy, almost automatic and are generally left unaddressed by leadership. Rewarded behaviors may require more intention but they are also acknowledged or celebrated through feedback, raises, promotions or other incentives.

These are the signals people pay attention to and they are always louder than the actual writing you've placed on the wall.

Knowing this, the best way to drive culture is to design your organizational systems and frameworks with the desired behaviors in mind. Here are six areas where you can intentionally shape cultural expectations within your organization, with examples provided for each…

Your behaviors

People often look to leaders as the example for desired behaviors. If they see you doing it, they're more inclined to see it as a safe and even desired behavior.

Work/life balance is a great example for this. You can encourage people not to take their work home with them, but if you are sending emails at 10pm at night you are sending a more powerful signal that normalizes the opposite behavior.

Performance reviews

Performance reviews are one of the more obvious opportunities for rewarding desired behaviors and values. They should be at the center of every one of your performance reviews. Many managers make the mistake of focusing only on goals and metrics in performance reviews and overlooking value-driven behavior.

Take "Integrity" as an example. It's the most commonly cited company value. If this is true for your organization, then you need to be addressing how each individual either demonstrated or failed to demonstrate integrity through their work within the performance review. In this example, you can and should still speak to results but also highlight the way in which they demonstrated integrity while achieving those results.

Hiring

Hiring is one of the most critical things a leader does. Hiring the right person sets the team up for success and hiring the wrong person can create issues that last years.

There are multiple points throughout the hiring process where you can and should be signaling your values and desired behaviors. This is your opportunity to start communicating those things before a person is even in the door. Include them in the job description, design interview questions around company values and make sure that anyone in the hiring process is rating individuals based on that criteria.

Onboarding

How you onboard new employees is also a powerful opportunity to establish cultural expectations. At the very least, they should be expressly re-stated during the onboarding process, but that's not enough. The process itself should reinforce the values the organization prioritizes.

Take collaboration or teamwork as an example. It's another popular value shared by a lot of organizations. Those organizations then have an amazing opportunity to make collaboration and teamwork part of the onboarding process. Have different people on the team help with different parts of the onboarding process. You could also design a mechanism for the new employee to provide feedback on their observations. A fresh set of eyes will see opportunities that others take for granted.

Process design

The design of your processes should support your values. Doing so incorporates desired behaviors into everyday processes.

For instance, if one of your values is sustainability, then your process should be designed with an emphasis and priority on sustainability. Are documents digitized? Do you audit supplier sustainability practices? Is your work environment energy efficient?

Feedback & recognition

What you choose to provide feedback and recognition on sends a strong signal as to what is either tolerated or rewarded.

Feedback should absolutely be given around desired behaviors. This means giving positive feedback when those behaviors are demonstrated and giving constructive feedback when behaviors conflict with company values. Consistently giving feedback on both sides of your values shows that they are important. Don't let things slide. If it contradicts the culture, address it immediately.

Thank you for reading. My hope is always that you've found something helpful and easy to implement. If you have feedback, suggestions or questions, please reply to this email.

If you are interested in exploring one-on-one coaching to transform your leadership, email me at [email protected] and we’ll coordinate a free, one-hour discovery session.

This week’s action items:

1. Identify the cultural behaviors that are most critical to your organization based on its vision and values.

2. Review the operational components above with those cultural behaviors in mind.

3. Choose one of them that can be revised with more intention to help drive the culture you want.