“But I told them the policy committee is to be disbanded!” exclaimed a frustrated CEO. “I announced that I’ve decided policies will be approved by the area executive and we will not be going through the committee anymore!” Instead of disbanding, the committee went underground and insisted on meeting anyway quietly behind the CEO’s back. It became a “ghost” committee, influencing policies anyway, despite words being said from the top.
That's culture talking.
“Why isn’t the needle moving on our customer engagement scores?” asked a CEO in a meeting with leaders. “I thought we agreed to this and other objectives as our top priorities. But yet the numbers aren’t changing and our revenue is declining. What is going on?” The organization had set top objectives and engaged in many initiatives to accomplish those objectives. The CEO had called a leadership meeting in hopes to learn why the objectives were not being met. However, the room felt uncomfortable, many leaders were nervously checking their smartphones, writing fake notes or doodling. Questions were met with silence.
That’s culture talking.
Shock and disbelief overcame leadership from a large west coast health care system when they learned of a patient who died on a particular nurses’ watch. A lot of money, people and resources were thrown at the problem like training and setting performance expectations of proper quality protocols. Despite all of that effort, one night a nurse ignored protocols that required checking on patients periodically through the night. She falsely stated in the file that the patient was okay, when in fact the paraplegic patient had slipped down between the bed mattress and rail, suffocated and died. The nurse never truly checked on the patient despite what she wrote in the file. When asked why she said, “that’s how we do it here.”
That’s culture talking.
Today, organizational culture is being scrutinized on a very public level. Uber brought under the public microscope sparking outrage with its aggressive, unrestrained and toxic culture. In 2015, the media industry investigated Amazon’s culture for having what was described as a hyper-competitive and “bruising” culture. Now Netflix is said to be expecting its culture to be examined by the media. The stories are many. Organizational culture will take form on its own and will speak for itself.
The Great Organizational Culture Disconnect
Well-meaning leaders feel all they have to do is utter words, set expectations, or throw money and resources at it and all will magically fall into line. Tragically culture is often seen as too nebulous, too hard, or too complex to wrap our minds around. Most leaders won’t think of organizational culture until there is a problem.
Busy Professional Takeaway: If organizational culture is left unmanaged or weakly managed, it can become dysfunctional or toxic. On the flip side, a nurtured healthy organizational culture (or mini-cultures) can enable the ability to recruit and retain top talent, develop a solid brand, deliver consistent customer experience, and ultimately increase revenue and a viable future. Which reality do you want?
What is Organizational Culture?
Organizational Culture is the shared norms, beliefs, and assumptions of individuals and groups within an organization. The culture guides how you act, interact with others, and behave. As you can see from the opening examples above, organizations will only go as far as their organizational cultures will take them.
Busy Professional Takeaway: Think of it this way, you are a wild horse. You want to gallop and go far. Think of the organizational culture as a very tall fence that can’t be easily jumped and goes very deep into the ground. To go far, you have to change or manage the fence.
Symptoms Of Organizational Culture Gaps
- Turnover is High
- It’s Hard to Recruit Good Talent
- Change is Hard
- It’s a Struggle to Accomplish Goals and Objectives
- Team Members Seem Distant or Silent
How Leaders Can Shape Organizational Culture
True engagement is connecting the hearts and minds of employees to the mission and vision of an organization. Change happens at the emotional level. Cultures can change one conversation at a time. It starts at the top and is executed on the floor…every moment of every day.
1. Define the Ideal Culture and Gaps
Defining the ideal culture and gaps requires a senior leadership team to deliberately talk about what the organization needs to look like to be successful for years to come. It’s better to be brave, discuss and listen to those who know about the organizational culture--before culture speaks for itself in its own way. If you are department leader, start with your division.
Busy Professional Takeaway: Don’t get overwhelmed, just start with answering these two questions: What does the ideal culture look like and what does it look like today? Go ahead be brave.
2. Design Clear Mission, Vision, and Values
Can people see themselves in your mission, vision and value statements? Can they see that they can impact and support them?
Busy Professional Takeaway: Having a great mission, vision and values is a great start. But you can’t stop here and call it a day. Go on, read the other steps.
3. Leader Behavior Modeling
Culture starts from the top with attitudes and tone that is exhibited by leaders. An organization can be its own worst enemy when it enables toxic or weak leaders. Leaders who operate with a “do as I say, not as I do” approach is destined to torpedo any hope of a healthy organizational culture.
It is critically important to ensure that leaders are modeling the values every time, every day. Leader behavior expectations shouldn’t be a secret. Leaders need to know how their behavior contributes connects or disconnects employees desire to move the needle on results.
Busy Professional Takeaway: Assuming every leader understands or carries out ideal value behaviors or has a complete skill set to be successful, is a mistake. How do they treat employees and behave when you are not looking?
4. Business Practices Alignment
Value statements are only as good as the piece of paper you print them on if there isn’t alignment within the organization. Think of the hundreds of communication touchpoints you have with employees. Recruiting; onboarding; orientation; policies; training; meetings; committees; huddles; evaluations; corrective actions; coaching; emails; memos; newsletters; company picnics; celebrations; service awards, and so on. Do all of those business levers and messages align with the culture direction you wish to go?
Busy Professional Takeaway: If any of your business practices hold contradicting messages to the ideal culture, then you are misaligned.
5. Measure and Monitor
We can talk and debate all day on how to measure organizational culture. The truth is that it’s pretty hard to do and no one really agrees on the best method. But there are ways to measure the impact of organizational culture.
Busy Professional Takeaway: You can measure perceptions, attitudes, knowledge, awareness and resulting activities such as turnover and absenteeism.
Wrapping It Up
Shaping culture is for only those who are serious about raising the bar of performance. A healthy and effective organizational culture doesn't always happen by itself. Isn't it better for leaders to deliberately shape its culture and future, instead of organizational culture talking and taking charge of you?
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