Tilling the Company Soil
Three considerations and one positive approach to creating an environment where the people essential to your company’s success can grow and thrive.
Plants and trees grow and thrive in vastly different soil textures and structures, with varying pH and nutrient levels. Some are acid-loving; others might fare better in clay soil.
I mention this because a company’s culture is the fertile ground on which people grow and thrive, which is a true competitive advantage over having their employees simply tolerate the culture.
For example, someone told me about when she was working in the early 1960’s. One of her co-workers called in sick on a Monday after getting a very bad sunburn. Feeling that the “sickness” could have been prevented, their manager and a woman from HR drove to the employee’s house and brought her to the office to work.
The woman relaying the story was not appalled by this. She was very comfortable with “that’s just the way it was.” While other areas of the country were in the throes of a cultural revolution at the time, command and control or managerial leadership was still the corporate culture norm in the buttoned-down ‘burbs.
By the 1990’s, things were changing. More than 50% of women over 16 years old were in the workforce, and they were bringing their own leadership skills to the field.
Their skills were rooted in compassion and relationship-building derived from organizing events for the PTA, managing children, or being part of non-profit organizations.
In the workplace, these skills easily transferred to being mentors, championing for better benefits, and being perceived as honest, ethical spokespeople.
All of this helped to cultivate an an era of team-based work.
Owing to these generational and even regional differences, it’s easy to see why culture, like soil, requires careful attention. People’s needs change. Social norms and demographics change. The business landscape changes.
There’s far less tolerance for “that’s just the way it is” in corporate culture today.
The demand for an inspired culture is now the norm.
Successful business leaders in many new companies create cultures that are, in a word, dynamic. It is, in part, what’s allowing them to attract and retain talent, grow revenue, and innovate.
Business leaders in established companies take note; it’s time to tend to your company’s culture in meaningful ways because:
Your culture enables your company’s (or department’s) why. What will help the company achieve its specific and genuine reason for being? Should it encourage resourcefulness or elicit invention? Will it be playful and caring or structured and orderly? Does it need to be a bit rebellious to get the needle moving?
Once you’ve established that, it’s vitally important that you’re able to get a diverse group of team members working comfortably as well as effectively and efficiently in that environment. Regardless of what type of culture you create, the person who leads your marketing efforts will have different talents, desires, learning styles, and communication skills than the person who’s overseeing the finances.
Create opportunities for everyone to grow and thrive within the culture so that everyone is better equipped to deliver on your company’s purpose.
Your culture is a reflection of your leadership. Leaders must also be able to thrive in the culture they create, otherwise it’s very limiting to the organization.
Case in point: the leader who desires/asks for/demands innovation but is constantly explaining why the ideas offered won’t work. In reality, the leader is terrified by the muddy “tries” that innovation requires and the risk associated with doing something new. This type of contrast sucks the joy out of an organization, and it doesn’t always happen quickly. Sometimes it’s just like a very long drought during where countless seeds of really fabulous ideas wither and die on the vine.
Whatever culture you want to create, be thoroughly, unabashedly, and completely ready to walk the walk and talk the talk.
Your company’s space and place reinforces its culture (and it does not lie). The original motivational posters from Successories hit the market the 1980s.
I was in Client Services and New Business Development at the time, so I visited a lot of companies. Many of them had these posters on their walls, making it super easy to decode the company’s “real” culture. When I saw Attitude, Achievement, Perseverance, and Compete posters, I knew it was a highly-competitive, sales-driven organization regardless of how the marketing materials portrayed it.
We are so fortunate to work in a time when huddle spaces, phone call or other quiet spaces, and really creative conference spaces — like yurts and pirate ships — are sprouting up. Take this opportunity to connect your company’s physical environment with its culture.
Here’s one additional tip that could be advantageous to creating culture within your company.
As you think about the life-inspiring values, creative practices, enduring rituals and symbols you need to put in place to demonstrate your commitment to the company’s purpose and your team, think of how you can do these things in ways that are ethically and/or socially responsible and good for the planet.
When you look through this lens, you’ll find new and exciting options you might not have thought of before.
Maybe you’ll consider open book management, on-site composting, paid time for self-directed personal development, and employee ownership programs. Maybe you’ll discourage multi-tasking, provide gender-neutral restrooms, hire and train people with chronic barriers to employment, encourage a culture of volunteerism, offer support to breastfeeding mothers, and so much more.
From time to time you’ll need to make adjustments, or till the soil, and each time you’ll learn and grow a little too, which is far better than the alternative.
