People: The Real Infrastructure of Your Business

The following is adapted from Culture for the Left-Brained Leader: Strategy, Tactics, and Implementation for Transformative Results by Andrew YJ Kim.

I remember when I first started my business. I was eager to build a business that delivered a great service and product. I planned on delivering this through being extremely organized through the best systems and procedures, streamlining data acquisition to accurately measure quality assurance, and telling my team which areas they could improve on whenever discrepancies formed. I was sure this was the way to go.

I looked into the best systems that the industry had to offer. Not only did I do that, I cross-referenced them with best practices from other industries. Then, I adapted them to my customized situation. Afterwards, I filled positions by plugging people in and ensuring they were compliant. I believed this would breathe life into the organization with strong processes and dedicated people.

This worked very well for a while and we met our short-term goals. We actually grew very rapidly, built a good reputation, provided great services, and exceeded our business goals. Then we got to the point where we needed to grow further. Suddenly, we encountered challenges we’d never encountered before. I learned that the systems I had introduced were dependent on me personally maintaining them. The demands of growth began to spread me out too thin, and I was unable to maintain those systems. We hit a plateau, and we couldn’t grow any further.

I found myself in a situation where I was stuck. As a business owner, I was accountable for everything in the business. Financial and operational pressures began hitting home and affected my personal life. To grow, everything needed to function and sustain itself without me, because I couldn’t be everywhere at once. I discovered that systems wouldn’t hold when I wasn’t there in person to reinforce them.

I was investing in systems infrastructure first, then trying to develop the people infrastructure after that. I realized I had to do it in the reverse order, because what I had built had a weak foundation. I had to invest in people infrastructure first, then systems infrastructure second. This was a very difficult paradigm shift to make. It was hard for me to let go of the systems.

I was able to reconcile this when I realized that shifting my focus to people infrastructure didn’t involve completely letting go. It was just a different way of approaching the challenges. I could focus my efforts on building the most elaborate people infrastructure, which turned out to create much more long-term value and broke the vicious cycle of being stuck.

Some may say, “Hey! We have a real business to run. We don’t have time to focus so much on the people.”

Without a doubt, organizations need to demonstrate competitiveness to reach goals and penetrate the market. However, some people take that notion and carry a misconception that being a people-focused organization means they are not a goals-focused organization. Such people think that the two cannot coexist.

That cannot be further from the truth. The relationship between being people-focused and goal-focused is not antagonistic! Rather, the relationship is better described as two different dimensions that can overlap with each other. In fact, there are four types of cultures that exist.

• Synergistic Collaborative: This is the culture that this book recommends. In this culture, a goal-focused mentality is maintained and accomplished by creating synergy through collaboration and people development. It has the potential to yield greater market competitiveness through the value of Synergy.

• Traditional Competitive: Historically, most profit-based companies exhibit this form of culture. It has a strong focus on goals and achieves this through a strong sense of hierarchy and competitiveness. We do see a higher tendency toward this culture in traditional organizations, which tend to manage through authority and goal-orientation.

• Social Club: This type of organization has a strong people-focus but lacks a goal-oriented spirit. Many people misconstrue people-focused organizations as this type of organization exclusively. It is commonly seen in extremely social organizations that don’t need a strong goal focus to sustain them, such as some nonprofit organizations and social clubs.

• Isolated Silos: This type of organization lacks both people-focus and goal-focus characteristics. There is neither a push toward an objective nor collaboration. This is sometimes seen in organizations that lack motivating leadership and well-developed objectives to sustain them, such as certain public sectors (some Department of Motor Vehicles offices come to mind).

Why People Who Are Accustomed to One Form of Culture Don’t Naturally Acclimate Well in Another

It is important to understand that each type of culture has its own beliefs of what are acceptable and unacceptable behavior. This creates a great deal of tension when you try to mix them. For example, if you transplant someone who is accustomed to a Traditional Competitive culture into a Synergistic Collaborative culture, a great deal of clashing ensues. Even in the opposite direction, when someone from a Synergistic Collaborative culture is transplanted into a Traditional Competitive culture, they often do not sustain themselves when left to their own devices.

Therefore, mixing cultures without plans for reconciliation is usually not successful. Neither is trying to achieve culture change with uncoordinated, incremental efforts, as it tends to create artifacts of mixed culture categories that clash with each other. Rather, true culture change usually involves restructuring the foundation of a company to recreate the common definition of acceptable and unacceptable behaviors.

The Synergistic Collaborative culture is highly people-focused and goal-focused. When a company succeeds in creating this culture, there is a need for ongoing culture alignment. People naturally have varying mindsets of acceptable and unacceptable behavior. Many people may not be accustomed to this type of culture and will spontaneously revert to what they are used to without alignment maintenance. This can be achieved through reinforcing the concepts on an everyday basis, making it a part of onboarding, developing leaders and managers to champion it by living by example, refereeing it, and implementing the culture strategy at an enterprise level.

Based on the four types of cultures, ask yourself the following:

• Which is your culture?
• Which culture do you want your organization to be?
• Can you mix your current culture and your desired culture? Will incremental efforts in reconciling them be impactful?

Occasionally, I encounter people who represent a Traditional Competitive culture, and have been trying to implement a Synergistic Collaborative culture without success. If that is your case, ask yourself:

• Have you truly transitioned to a people-focused mentality?
• Has that permeated at an enterprise level?
• Do you see how incremental efforts can lead to an unsustainable situation?

If you answer no to any of these questions, we may be able to identify where your challenges are arising from. We may be overlooking the true nature of culture strategy or forgetting to reassess the foundation of the company as it relates to this strategy. In essence, you may be underestimating the scope of work for this change.

You Can Create Strategic Infrastructure

Changing your team’s culture does take a lot of work. There’s no denying that. It requires a shift from placing systems infrastructure first to prioritizing people infrastructure. That means the foundation of your business becomes people development, optimal communication, coordination, and synergy through relationships and culture development.

Systems, data, processes, and documentation then sit on top of that foundation. A culture change requires you to look at situations through a deeper root cause lens, instead of a visible root cause lens, so you can identify underlying issues and change your trajectory.

Culture strategy creates an opportunity to leverage relationships rather than direct them, so you don’t need to be a subject matter expert in every capability within your organization. Nor do you need to focus only on goals or on people; the two approaches are not antagonistic.

When built together from the ground up, you can create a Synergistic Collaborative culture that works with both approaches to yield greater market competitiveness. You create a strategic infrastructure for organic, sustainable, innovative, and exponential growth.

Now, imagine trying to push this kind of culture in an enterprise level, which goes beyond your personal reach, interactions, and observations. All of a sudden, it becomes an enormously complex and deep topic that engages many subtopics. You may be wondering to yourself, How would you even accomplish that? That’s what Culture for the Left-Brained Leader is all about.

For more on strategic infrastructure and how to take it to the next level, Culture for the Left-Brained Leader can be found on Amazon.

Dr. Andrew YJ Kim is the Co-Founder of Culture ’n Strategy, an advisory firm that helps scaleups and fast-growing companies navigate their growth journey. He specializes in a synchronized approach to strategy and culture, a complex intersection between two advanced topics that few can navigate.

Drawing from his extensive experience in his own businesses and in guiding organizations through strategic culture transformations, his book will walk you through an extraordinary journey of reaching greater heights.

Learn more at www.culturenstrategy.com.