Products and services are basically interchangeable. That makes building and sustaining a strong, vibrant culture one
of your most important jobs as a leader.
Stay tuned.
In this episode of Results Rule! we’ll share the crash course in building a great company culture.
We talked about the specific characteristics of a great company culture in a previous episode.
You'll find the links to that information in the description below.
So let's begin this discussion with a definition.
Your culture is the habits of your organization displayed over time.
It defines what you truly believe about people performance, productivity and professionalism.
If you want to know your true culture, just look at the habits in every area of your business.
If the habit is that everyone does whatever it takes to satisfy or even amaze the customer,
well, that's your culture.
If the habit is to treat customers as an inconvenience, unfortunately, that's your culture, too.
This means that the words on your website or posters or coffee mugs might represent
your desired culture, but they aren't necessarily the actual culture.
Remember Enron, the company that manipulated the energy markets and then ultimately went
out of business because of their shady business practices?
Well, their stated values were Respect, Integrity, Community, and Excellence.
When you think of your culture as your visible habits, you realize that you can't not have a culture.
The only question is, “Are you making your culture intentional?”
Here's the high level formula for how culture develops.
Choice - where you place your focus - drives action.
Actions that are repeated and reinforced form habits.
And as we said, your habits define your culture.
So let's break that down into the specifics.
The choices about your culture are influenced by your values, beliefs and assumptions in
every area and aspect of your business.
We've mentioned Southwest Airlines in a previous episode, so let's look at them for just a moment.
Southwest believes that its customers want a safe, reliable, cost effective, and fun
experience that minimizes all the hassles that go along with airplane travel today.
They assumed that providing those things on a consistent basis could allow them to be
profitable, if they manage their costs.
They also believe that hiring great people, treating them well, and making it possible
for them to have a fun experience at work would help the company achieve its goals by
also making Southwest a great place to work.
If you look at the Southwest culture, you see every one of those beliefs, assumptions
and values reflected today.
Everyone on the crew pitching in to get people off the airplane, clean it, and board the
next group of passengers in 30 minutes or less is just as much a part of their culture
as having fun at work.
It's hard to find a company that doesn't have some version of the words, “Our employees
are our most important resource” as part of their values or beliefs.
And if building a great culture was just writing and sharing those words, every company would
treat people as assets, not costs.
The same goes for quality and service.
No one describes their company by saying, “Hey, do business with us.
We're mediocre at best.”
But we all know plenty of companies that should say that based on their actions and performance.
So let's assume that you've made your choices.
How do you ensure the actions and create the habits?
Well, the first piece is communicating what's important.
Most companies post their values on their website or they put posters on the wall.
They are probably covered in the employee handbook and the new employee orientation.
The senior leaders talk about those things that are important in all their presentations.
Unfortunately, that's where it often stops.
Building and sustaining the culture you want is an everyday responsibility.
To build a great culture, every person from the front line to the senior leader has to
know how the choices the company says are important apply to what they do every day.
Chances are that they need to be reminded of that on a regular basis, or at least more
than once or twice during their career.
Supervisors and managers then have to reinforce the performance and behavior that's consistent
with the company's expectations.
Values, assumptions and beliefs must be part of the decisions about who you hire, who you
fire, who gets pay raises, and who's promoted.
The organization has to measure, evaluate and hold itself accountable.
Processes must then be developed to ensure that everyone is doing things consistently
with the desired culture.
You might be wondering how long this all takes?
Well, the answer is, it depends.
I can promise you that it won't change your culture if you just simply have a single motivational
speaker or send people to a single seminar.
There's nothing wrong with those things, and they have their place.
Truthfully, if all it took was attending a presentation or reading a book to change our
habits, we'd all wake up tomorrow with something significantly different about ourselves, wouldn't we?
I can also promise that it will most likely take longer than the 21 to 30 days we've been
told that it takes to develop new habits.
You see, that's basically a lie.
The length of time to develop a new habit depends on what you're developing, and how
different that is from what people are at least somewhat inclined to do already.
I read that eating dark chocolate was good for my heart, and it didn't take 21 days to
develop that habit.
On the other hand, some really hard habits can take up to two years to develop.
We usually tell people to assume up to two years to see a sustainable difference in their culture.
Although that can vary by the size of your business, amount of change you're making,
the number of locations, the dedication to the effort, and the buy in from the leadership.
We provided several tools you can download in the description below.
One of the things you'll find is a list of the seven basic levers that every leader has
at their disposal to create the habits that define their culture.
You'll also find an assessment you can use to see how your company is doing at the six
choices we found in common with great cultures that consistently deliver results.
That's it for this episode.
Great cultures are designed by intention not achieved by accident.
Next time we'll talk about how you can be a more effective leader to help your team
deliver even better results.
Make sure that you hit the subscribe button and the bell to never miss an episode of the
Results Rule! show.
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and questions.
Remember, the heroes in every marketplace are known by their results.
See you next time.