Unpopular Truths of Company Culture

Discussing one of the 3 key focuses of a CEO: Culture

Company culture can be the difference between a successful and failed company. It can also be a major recruiting and retention tool. I’ve written before that I think company culture is one of the most important things for a CEO to worry about every day. I’ve lived in both good and bad company cultures and through these experiences I’ve developed a few insights on culture. While a lot is written on culture there are five unpopular truths that I don’t often see written about on what it takes to build or change a culture in an organization. Of course these don’t just apply to the CEO. They can apply to any manager or group in a company. Culture isn’t just at the company level, but also the team level.

Culture is intentional

Okay this one is written on and it should go without saying, but unfortunately it requires saying: a desired company culture is intentional, not an accident. Accidental cultures happen when leaders neglect culture and allow one to emerge. As leaders you need a plan and need to act on that plan every day. You need to think through processes, how company meetings happen, how to handle internal conflicts and on and on. Even a small company benefits from this effort.

I’ve worked with one early stage company who have spent extensive time on culture and to me it shows. When they recruit, it’s a tool. Internally it has a positive impact on communication and productivity. Think it through. Have a plan for how open an environment you want, how you want problems solved, how empowered you want teams to be, how customer problems are solved and so on. Worth the effort.

Culture isn’t just events

I was speaking with another CEO and asked him to describe the culture and his first comment was “we have a beer cart”. That is a mistake many make. It’s not about socials, free food, free manicures. Yes, those are nice perks, but they are accessories to culture. They can also be a cover for management to think they have built a culture.

Culture is really about how he company operates on a day to day basis. As I’ve said, communications, customer service and communications are key elements of culture. So you can’t drive a culture change through having free food or having socials. Those are there to reinforce and support the culture.

Now those accessories can be important as well. If that free food brings people together, fosters communications, causes people to enjoy being together and form relationships — then it’s well used. In one of my companies we had a solid breakfast in the office. It wasn’t cheap to support. However, I supported it because I witnessed many people each morning together, catching up, sharing info, often solving problems. I would see people from different areas of the company talking and building relationships. I felt those relationships were key as people had to go ask someone else for help, needed to serve a client or would need to resolve a problem.

Sometimes you have to change people to change culture

I have seen many instances of this fact. At times there are people who just won’t behave in a way you want the culture to operate. They may not be willing to collaborate and if that is something you highly value this is a huge problem. They may not work at the pace you need or won’t take problems head on. Now this doesn’t mean that you fire anyone that doesn’t fit right away. You have to invest time with these people, especially if they are top performers. You want to invest in them and help them grow. However, if they won’t change or don’t grow, you can’t tolerate the behavior. Remember as a leader the people you keep around and the behavior you tolerate is just as much a culture example as the actions and behaviors you do yourself

Leaders have to live the culture; they don’t get a pass.

I have found this to be very hard. If the company desires a totally open environment, then leaders have to be open. That isn’t just an “open door policy” that is sharing what info you can, being open to input and criticism from others, or even acting on input from others. I’ve seen many instances where a leader wants two set of rules, but they don’t see it that way. They want people to behave in a way that may be set out or defined by the organization — and in many cases by that person — but their real day to day behavior doesn’t match. This erodes the culture, erodes confidence and over time will create an informal culture that tends to mirror the behavior of the executive.

I’ve had this issue and had to grow past it, learn from mistakes. One simple example was in a previous role the company was very email intensive. Everyone felt it was a competition to do the most emails, brag about how full your email box was, how many hours a day you did email. It caused tones of people to be copied on emails, everyone thinking they had to respond and so on. It resulted in people constantly feeling burned out, overworked and decision making moved too slow. I contributed to the problem, even though I as an executive that could change that culture. When I changed to the next company and became CEO I thought back to that and started to rethink when email was needed and even started to informally do “no email on Saturday”. Unless it was related to a major customer situation I would not do email on Saturday. It wasn’t long till people noticed and started to follow suit. I had people tell me it contributed to making their weekend better and they felt the pressure off a bit each week. Remember the small things.

Culture takes a LOT of time -more than you think

Everything I have discussed to this point makes it clear, culture takes a lot of time. It has to and it’s so important its worth that time. It’s OK to spend time on culture. It’s OK to spend time thinking through processes, communication, decision making. You don’t have to document it all. Sometimes its as easy as you modeling the behavior and others follow, like my email example. But it takes time. Plan for it, accept it, and you will have a chance a building a stronger culture.

Good luck!