“Shaping your culture is more than half done when you hire your team.”– Jessica Herrin, Founder, Stella & Dot
Company Culture has only recently found it’s place in the Business Dictionary. But in the past 20 years it’s become arguably one of the biggest challenges fast growth businesses face and one of the key things keeping leaders awake at night. So, what is it?
Like everything, when you break it down it’s simple, what’s harder is when you need to change it. A company’s culture comes in three parts, one strategic goal and two tactical inputs.
The strategic goal is what someone, or better yet many people, decide they want the company’s culture to be, usually expressed as a set of Core Values. The two tactical inputs are;
- What leaders are making the culture.
- What everyone else is making it.
A strong company culture occurs when these two tactical inputs overlap directly with the Core Values:
Problems arise when any of these three elements widely differ from the others. A leader can talk about a strategic goal but day to day if they’re not inputting the same values through their actions employees quickly lose faith in the company. The same is true if employees don’t engage in the strategic direction or are allowed or encouraged to behave in ways which don’t overlap with the core values.
So if you’re looking to define, build or change your company’s culture you should start by examining these three elements. If you don’t have your Core Values yet, you’ll need to build those and I’ll cover how to do that in another post. From there gather as much feedback as you can about what behaviours managers and employees alike are inputting day to day. There’s no such thing as enough feedback at this stage. Actively hunt out the gaps and misalignment’s and from these build your steps to realign your three elements.
If you find that any one of your three elements isn’t working, don’t be afraid to change it. Your Core Values shouldn’t change often, but if they’re no longer representing what feedback says is needed then refresh them.
If your leaders or staff aren’t engaged with the strategy, start rewarding and recognising people who are. Build Core Values into your performance reviews and your townhall meetings, pick your employee of the month based on them – openly praise those who are promoting the culture you want and privately speak to those who need to get their actions to better aligned.
It’s a simple enough formula, but it’s all you really need to start building a stronger Company Culture.
Laura Kelly,
Laura Kelly 