Capturing Culture — The Art of Defining Your Values

At the start of my career, I was in advertising. To be more specific, I worked in the field of branding. Now for those a little less familiar with branding, it’s essentially the practice of shaping people’s perception of a company. Your goal is to have them quickly recall, relate, and understand the business. And if you’re good, you’ll get people to associate several key words or ideas with your company (Google = Innovative. Zappos = Customer Service. Fulfillingly = Prosperity. Etc).

Now if you’re bad or don’t attempt to brand your business, people will still relate certain feelings or adjectives with your company — They just won’t necessarily be the same across the board and it won’t be in your control. The brand still exists, regardless of action. And this truth, leads me right into company culture. You see, whether you dedicate the time needed to properly develop your culture or not, it’s going to be there. You can either control it or pray for the best.

The Benefits of Defining Your Culture

I believe it’s tremendously valuable to take this task on and the statistics agree. According to Professor James L. Heskett of Harvard University, culture “can account for 20–30% of the differential in corporate performance when compared with ‘culturally unremarkable’ competitors.” Beyond boosting the performance of existing employees, it does wonders for your hiring program. Just look at this list of advantages…

• Recruiting Tool — Builds a reputation among people with similar values.
• Time and Money Saver — Quickly decide if a candidate is going to be a fit before they’re hired.
• Competitive Advantage — Allows your company to differentiate and standout from similar businesses.
• Attracting Candidates — Creates a deeper connection with more qualified candidates by advertising opportunities with a mix of values and responsibilities.

Now to get these benefits, you have to have the right systems in place. And to put the right systems in place, you have to properly define your culture. The reality is, your culture is the foundation to everything (thriving business, healthy hiring practices, happy employees). In order to define your company culture, you have to understand 3 key areas:

• Boss’s Belief System
• General Employee Ethos
• Business Operations

You take the time to understand these 3 areas, and put in the effort to hire around these concepts — you’re going to have a strong, unified culture.

From the Top — The Boss’s Beliefs

Everything related to culture, is connected to leadership. Their beliefs and their decisions, it’s all going to have a profound affect on employees’ attitudes, behavior, and drive. And that influence, is why I recommend starting with this group as you begin to define or build your culture.

So what do you need from leadership, in order to understand your culture? You need their honest position on 4 main areas…

• Work Environment — Competitive vs. Cooperative
• Decision Making — Consensus vs. Leadership
• Focus — Short Term Goals Vs. Long Term Goals
• Definition of Success — Increasing Customer Satisfaction vs. Increasing Profits

These 4 categories are going to set the tone of the company and influence every decision an employee makes. Now it’s important to note, despite having 2 options (competitive vs. cooperative), leadership doesn’t always have to be for one and against the other. It’s just about realizing leadership’s tendencies when a situation needs a decision between the two positions. Here are a few examples to give you the full picture.

• A co-worker is struggling to reach his/her sales goal this month — will I be rewarded for taking the time and offering advice or breaking my monthly sales record?
• I’m managing a marketing team and we wants to implement an affordable emailing software — do I purchase it or wait for leadership’s approval?
• I’m the C.F.O of a start-up — do I suggest going public for the immediate cash injection or will this upset the C.E.O because he/she doesn’t want to give up some percentage of ownership and compromise on decisions with a board down the road?
• I have the authority to change the packaging, which reduces cost by 5%, but increases damaged goods by 1% — do I approve the change?

Understanding leadership’s stance on each topic, is going to allow the individual to make his/her decisions quickly, which saves everyone time (and time always equals money). But that’s the easy part. The hard part is, building a culture around these choices.

You see, any misalignment between employee and task, and the company pays for it. The reality is, employee morale is very much tied up to the actions he/she takes at work. If an individual is working on a task that they don’t agree with, their productivity drops and dissatisfaction rises — and that’s contagious (very deadly).

The good news is, there’s a vaccine. By hiring individuals who value your leaderships’ core beliefs, you’re going to get a more fulfilled and happy staff. And a happy staff is a productive staff.

Now if you are the boss, and you’re about to define / build your culture, I want to reiterate how absolutely important it is to answer these questions honestly. It’s great to say you’re all about consensus decisions, but if you don’t actually listen to the collective voice, it doesn’t mean shit — your culture will crumble because of the misalignment. Don’t just talk the talk, you need to walk the walk.

Culture Committee

I recommend assembling a small group of co-workers, containing leadership (should be CEO), mid-level staff and entry level employees. It’s pivotal to collect voices from different ranks at the firm; that’s the only way you’re going to truly understand the culture. Additionally, and this is a personal opinion, these meetings should be part of an open discussion with no repercussions. Because, to be effective, you need a dialog, and that can’t happen if an entry level person is afraid to call BS on the boss.

My final tip on the culture committee — don’t let it be a one time assignment. As you’ll discover, culture is always changing. I know, the main idea here is to build around a singular culture, but as a business grows, it inherently changes. Have these meetings every quarter or bi-annually to see what’s shifting, what’s working, and what future actions need to be taken on.

General Employee Ethos

Motivation. Loyalty. Honesty. These are the traits of a strong team, and our main focus for this section.

Because without motivation, there’s no will to persevere through the hard times. Without loyalty, there’s no support when the work gets challenging. Without honesty, there’s not enough candidness to prevent bad ideas from succeeding. A staff that does not contain these values, is destined to fail. That’s why this is so important.

Now the good news is, there are a variety of methods one can use to keep the team motivated, loyal, and honest. Unfortunately, the bad news is, there are a variety of methods one can use to keep the team motivated, loyal, and honest. This means, choosing the right approach isn’t always the easiest decision. However, to avoid a hit or miss scenario with your tactics, I recommend defining and/or understanding how your company’s employees feel about 3 main areas…

• Relationship to the Work
• Drivers for Success
• View of Co-Workers

By completing this task, you’ll be getting to the core of what’s keeping the staff motivated, loyal, and honest. You’ll understand the why behind certain reactions, and that’s powerful.

Additionally, you’ll know which methods will help bring forth these specific traits, while quickly shutting down any ineffective actions you may want to take.

Employees’ Relationship To Their Work

Bringing a company’s vision to life, is a monumental task that will be filled with difficult times. If you want to achieve this goal, you’ll have to find ways to keep your team going. This means getting to the heart of what’s pushing these people forward and giving them the energy needed to complete tasks — day in and day out. Delving into their relationship with each task, is how you do just that.

Essentially, you’re determining whether the staff, finds meaning in their work or views each task as an assignment that needs to be completed. Now more often than not, this decision will be made by leadership.

For start-ups this is absolutely true. Base your position around your management style. If you’re someone who sees purpose in tasks, find people that need meaning in their work. If you believe work is just a series of tasks, find someone who thrives in an environment where work is an assignment to complete.

If you’re staff is already filled out, survey the employees to see which way they lean. This will help you decide on new staff members as well as new management. When a superior is taking over a group that’s motivated by meaning, there’s going to be inherit conflict when he/she just gives out assignments and vice versa. Unless you’re trying to change the culture. But that’s a article for another day.

Before I move on to the next section, I want to highlight the importance of building around a collective mindset on this topic. When everyone’s on the same page, you can quickly determine which tactics will work and which will fail. Time always equals money, and the longer people are unmotivated, the more it’s going to cost your company. Additionally, when management uses a motivational style that aligns with the employees’ views, you’re going to have a happier staff. And a happy staff, is a productive staff.

Drivers for Success

You know the old adage that goes, “there’s two sides to every coin.” Well in this article, drivers for success and employees’ relationship with work, are those 2 different sides of the same coin; They’re both motivators. The only difference, one is short term (employees’ relationship to work — pushes them day-to-day), and the other is long term (drivers for success — Keeps them going year after year). Now you’ll find that there are 4 main drivers for success.

• Getting a Larger Salary
• Gaining a More Prestigious Title
• Praise from Co-Workers
• Mission of the Work

Each bullet is a tool that can be used to retain employees and keep them loyal. Obviously, you don’t have to use just one tactic, but the frequency and the degree in which you use these tools, will shift your culture and affect your bottom line in different ways.

Because of this, I suggest ranking them in an order from most valued to least. Again, if you’re running a start-up, this decision will be based on your values and beliefs. If you’re an established company, this will already be embedded among the staff, and a quick survey will give you the information needed to know what’s driving your staff.

Employees’ Views of One Another

If you’re looking to create a thriving business and healthy culture, it’s essential that you cultivate an environment where the staff can be honest with each other — in any situation. The most effective way of doing this is by understanding the relationship your staff has with one another. You want to know, do they see each other as friends or strictly co-workers?

And what you’re really determining is, will this emotional connection help or hurt honesty? Some people feel that being emotionally invested with other employees, hinders their ability to perform their tasks, while others believe it can enhance the experience and bring the team to new heights.

Clearly neither option is wrong, you just have to make sure everyone is on the same page. Any misalignment here and there will be conflict. Either the employee feels as though everyone around him/her isn’t taking the job seriously enough (view other staff members as co-workers) or that everyone is extremely cold to one another (view other staff members as friends). In both cases, the employee is not fulfilled.

When this happens, they withdraw from the group because they don’t believe they belong. And when you don’t feel like you belong, you hold back your thoughts, and that can be detrimental.

“In teamwork, silence isn’t golden, it’s deadly.” -

Mark Sanborn

Conversely, when the person is in the right environment, they’ll open up and contribute to the best of their abilities. They’ll be engaged and do what’s needed to bring the company’s vision to life.

Business Operations — Actions and Attitudes

This is the last big piece to your cultural puzzle, and it’s all about trust. Without trust, your staff is going to have the hardest time getting over the tiniest of hurdles. This means lost business and low morale.

Now it’s important to note that each business is unique. They all have their own set of practices and methods, which impacts the culture in a variety of different ways. Fortunately, despite this, there are several that remain prevalent from business to business. These universal business operations are…

• Overtime
• Technology
• Types of Products and Services

Once you understand how these 3 business operations influence a culture, you’ll be able to spot others within your firm, study their governance over employees’ attitudes, and start to build a culture around them.

Overtime

I’ll start by saying it’s rare for a company to culturally define their stance on overtime. However, the ones that do, are thankful they did, and here’s why… Trust. You see, nothing causes friction like a team split between working late or calling it a day.

Let’s say worker A’s assignment is connected to worker B’s task and the culture is overtime-centric (work until the job is done). It’s reduces so much stress to know that employee B won’t leave until their portion is done. This also goes the other way too. If employee A and employee B both value leaving when their schedules end, they’ll do the best they can to complete the task efficiently.

Now the truth is, understanding a company’s view on overtime doesn’t just build trust between employees. When properly defined and enforced, it also used to build trust between the staff and the company.

Some people absolutely value a strong work/life balance and others don’t mind spending the night at the office. Knowing that your company respects whichever stance you have, absolutely makes the staff feel more fulfilled. And conversely, when there’s a misalignment, everyone suffers (upset employee and poor quality of work).

It’s truly unfortunate that overtime is so often overlooked because it has such a profound impact on the staff’s day-to-day emotions. Good thing you found this article.

Bonus — Screening for Overtime

More often than not, companies that do define their stance on overtime, usually do a terrible job screening candidates to ensure his/her views align. Because of this, I’ve put together a quick little article, highlighting some important steps you can take in the interview process. This way you won’t face any of the issues brought up earlier. You can check it out here.

Technology’s Impact on Culture

Technology, whether you notice it or not, is playing a significant role in your job. And, with each passing day, it is only becoming more prominent. To drive home this point, here’s a list of technology used just to facilitate conversation…

• Emails
• Video Conferences
• Phone Conferences
• Text Messaging
• Social Media
• Discussion Boards

All Encompassing Software

• Slack
• Dropbox
• Google Drive

This isn’t a short list, and it’s only going to get longer. Now don’t get me wrong, this perpetual growth is extremely valuable; each day there’s a new tool that can take your business to the next level. But it is a double edge sword.

By implementing new technologies, you’re naturally going to create change. This change will either, damage the trust between your staff and the company, or make it that much stronger.

Take the communication tools for example. On the surface, they appear to have minimal impact on a company and its culture. However, when you really look at it, you’ll see that they influence trust in a number of profound ways. Including …

Level of Intrusiveness

• Connecting Outside of Work Hours

Confidence in Sharing Ideas

• Ability to send messages quickly
• Ability to send information from certain locations

Level of Privacy

• Type of Information that is Shared on a Platform

These are pretty profound effects for something that can seem like a minor update. That’s why I highly recommend taking the time to identify the potential impact these changes have on your company. Once you do that, your next move is to decide whether or not these shifts are going to build or destroy trust with the staff.

To ensure trust is being built, the new technology must meet the following criteria; improve performance and stay within the boundaries of your staff’s core values.

Knowing this, let’s take another look at the list above, and use “the ability to send information from certain locations,” as an example. This certainly improves performance. But, if you expect your staff to send/receive messages outside of work hours, you may be crossing the line in terms of their values (Work only during my schedule). Betraying this value, will ultimately cause tension and effect the worker’s performance.

This is a useful point to showcase because it also demonstrates how different segments of culture are connected to one another. By defining and hiring around your views on overtime, you’d immediately know whether or not this use of technology would be infringing on your staff’s core values. This saves you time, money, and a lot of headaches.

It’s important to note, if a new technology is truly beneficial to the company, but has certain capabilities that impose on your staff’s values, you don’t have to miss out on it. Just be sure there are rules in place that make the new technology work within your culture.

One More Point About Technology and Culture

I need to highlight, the addition of more consequential technology — something like the implementation of highly functional robotics inside a manufacturing plant.

What do you think that would do to the culture? What impact will this automation have on the employee psyche? What will it do to their trust?

These are important questions to ask, even if this type of technology is years away from being implemented. Remember, each new technological installment, whether small or large, is going to send reverberations throughout the company, especially the culture. And that’s why taking the time to analyze your company’s technology is so vital.

Products, Services, and Culture

Just like overtime, the types of products/services you provide are often culturally overlooked. Don’t make this mistake. You see, this aspect of your company is extremely powerful, especially when you’re first starting to build/define your culture.

Now your products / services will fall into one of 2 categories: Revolutionary or Time Tested. And one of the biggest mistakes you can make, is assuming they fall into a specific category because your company operates in a certain industry.

Earlier, I mentioned my time working in the marketing field. Being new to the industry, I initially thought that all marketing firms fit into the revolutionary category. Well, I was wrong. I ended up working at 2 different companies and the truth was, both agencies sat on the opposite sides of the revolutionary/tried and true spectrum.

The two companies were successful, but their cultures were very different. On one end, you had the tried and true firm, which was filled with mostly established professionals. They had earned their status by developing certain skills throughout the years. The revolutionary agency on the other hand, was filled with newcomers, who were willing to take on new tasks and learn new skills. This was absolutely needed because the revolutionary agency would update or add new software every few months, and the staff needed to be adaptable.

So, despite being in the same field, everything was different about the two — even the dress code (jeans and tees vs. button ups and slacks), and it all stemmed from the type of products/services they offered.

Accurately Determining the Category

The best advice I can give is to study your competition and the tools they use. This will give you a clear signal as to which type of products/services your business offers.

Additionally, you’ll uncover some strengths and weaknesses within your company and the businesses you contend with. It’s a truly valuable practice to undertake.

To make sure you maximize your efforts, here’s a few ways to gather this key information …

• Call Them (Yes — this actually works)
• Explore Their Website
• Look at Their Social Media
• Survey Customers
• Watch Who They’re Hiring (LinkedIn could give vital information)
• Go to Conferences They Attend

Once you’ve study the competition and placed your products/services into the correct category, you can begin to understand specific qualities a person will need to thrive inside your company’s culture.

To get you started on your list, I’ve put together some common traits that belong to each type of product/service (These are not all the traits and they are not exclusive to each product/service, they just tend to be found within the type they’re listed under).

Traits for Revolutionary Products/Services

• Adaptability
• Problem Solver
• Curiosity
• Proactive
• Willingness to Take Risks / Fail
• Persuasiveness

Traits for Tried and True Products/Services

• Deep Understanding of the Field or Specific Task
• Respects the Chain of Command
• Loyal
• Disciplined
• Reliable
• Hard-Working

Again, these are not all the traits, but they will give you a strong foundation. And from that foundation, you’ll reveal other aspects of your culture.

Let’s use the revolutionary agency from my earlier story as an example. They add new software every few months, so they need individuals who are adaptable. Now in order to be adaptable, management agreed that employees have to be comfortable. To be comfortable, they determined that staff should be allowed to dress casually. Notice how it all stems out from the products/services they provide. That’s why this is so important.

Of course, each firm is different. So just because your company is considered revolutionary, it doesn’t mean your employees can dress casually. You still have to work with clients who expect certain standards or your staff may require a uniform to properly perform their tasks.

So my last bit of advice would be — In order to have a strong culture and optimal performance from your staff, you have to find a balance between your employees’ traits and the nature of the job. This time spent, is absolutely worth it.

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