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Company Culture For Dummies^®

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ISBN: 978-1-119-45784-8; ISBN 978-1-119-45785-5 (ebk); ISBN 978-1-119-45788-6 (ebk)

Company Culture For Dummies®

To view this book's Cheat Sheet, simply go to www.dummies.com and search for “Company Culture For Dummies Cheat Sheet” in the Search box.

About This Book

This book demystifies company culture and clearly lays out a practical road map that managers and leaders at any level can start using to enjoy some of the benefits of a great company culture. Whether your title says CEO, founder, manager, director, supervisor, leader, or VP, you have the power to start improving your culture.

This is about changing the face of work to create a positive, productive work experience for everybody. It’s not about a specific type of culture. I won’t be dictating how your culture should be, but I do want to help you create one that’s effective, intentional, and sustainable. There’s some basic human psychology that can help you achieve those results, and I’ll share that with you.

While I think most organizations could benefit from ideas in each chapter, you can jump around, read out of order, and focus on what’s most important to you now. Check out the Table of Contents or the Index and pick a few areas that you think need some attention in your business. I’ve given you simple, practical ideas in every chapter. The ideas don’t need to be executed chronologically but can be for maximum impact. No matter where you jump in, you can start making changes today.

Culture at work is a big topic. It’s about relationships, norms, and expectations. No book alone could ever completely change your culture or cover everything there is to consider about culture. What I’ve done is given you inroads to start thinking about how key organizational areas impact culture so you can start to unravel and rebuild.

Here’s the deal. It’s my book, full of my ideas, and colored by my experiences. It brings together twentysomething years of professional experiences from restaurants, hotels, airlines, retail, tech companies, startups, Fortune 500s, and nonprofits. It’s steeped in wisdom from the people I’ve learned from, read about, and studied. But it’s also based on things I’ve done, ideas I’ve executed, and models I’ve put in place — whether in my own companies or those for which I’ve consulted. It’s full of fresh ideas that I share in keynotes and training workshops — ideas that clients and audiences have put into practice to bring their teams together, change performance, and boost culture. There are going to be places where we disagree, where something else may work for you, and where you’re unwilling to try something out. That’s okay. Culture is complex. Relationships are complex. And there isn’t a one-size-fits-all model. I’ve tried to give you room to test, analyze, and adapt these ideas for what’s right for your team.

Defining Company Culture

Company culture can be defined as the repeated pattern of behavior of your team based on assumptions learned through experiences and passed down to other people. It’s about so much more than perks, benefits, and the feeling around the office. Sure, those things can shape culture. They send signals to people about the relationships of the people in the organization and the tone of the working environment. But there’s so much more that culture encompasses.

At the core, company culture is the way an organization expresses itself through values, behaviors, actions, and group norms. The culture of the organization is always evolving and constantly being tested to show what it’s really all about. The cultural norms of the organization are the ones that determine what’s encouraged, what’s rejected, what’s in, what’s out, and set the environment in which work will be created. When aligned properly, the culture of the organization can create engagement, drive results, define expectations, and help to unleash discretionary effort and energy.

Company culture can be understood by looking at:

Values and beliefs: Looking beyond the fancy values statement in the employee handbook to see what’s really valued in an organization speaks volumes about the culture. The real values of the organization are the ones that are adhered to whether spoken or unspoken. They show signs about what matters most, what’s celebrated, and what winning looks like to the organization. All of this is built upon the beliefs of the leaders and the people in the organization. The underlying beliefs about work, each other, customers, and the company drive the values that shape the culture. Check out Chapters 4 and 7 for more on beliefs and values.
Behaviors and communication: These are the real-world manifestation of the values and beliefs of the organization. The way in which the team behaves, acts, and communicates creates the conditions in which the company operates. Companies can be fun and jovial, or conservative and measured in their actions and communication. Both work depending on the culture you are trying to create — and both create very different cultures. Regardless of what’s documented and shared, the reality of the culture shines through in the way people perform and communicate. Head to Chapters 7 and 12 for more on these ideas.
Systems and structures: The way the organization is — well, organized — speaks volumes about the culture as well. The systems for getting things done, communicating, sharing, and collaborating speak to what matters within the company. The hiring process, the onboarding process, the training programs, and the way that goals are set all shape culture. Even the way meetings are run, communication occurs, and decisions are made start to reveal the true nature of the organization. Check out Chapters 10, 11, 15, and 16 to gain more insight on establishing systems and structures in a variety of ways.

Approaching Culture as Your Organization’s Operating System

In a computer system (or cellphone), the operating system is the layer that lives between the hardware and the software. It’s the tissue between the apps on your cellphone and the actual physical cellphone itself. Without the operating system, the apps can’t run. If the operating system is ineffective, out-of-date, or otherwise impaired, then the hardware and the apps get buggy and don’t function properly.

The same thing is true of your culture. It’s the operating system that runs your business — or rather, it’s the operating system that mostly significantly impacts how the parts of your business run.

Realizing that culture isn’t part of the game — it is the game

I have consulted on organizational culture with clients around the world, and the most common misconception at the outset of our engagement is that culture is a linear thing. My clients believe that culture started one day, and that we can together pick it up and make changes. It seems like culture is a component in the game of business right alongside operations, legal, product, marketing, and real estate. It’s often relegated to being the job of the human resources department and measured with an annual survey (see Chapter 3 to learn more about how to better measure culture). But culture isn’t just a piece of the puzzle to be picked up and added to the overall picture; culture is the puzzle. Your product, your communication, your leadership, your market share, and your brand are all outcomes of the culture you create. When you think about some of the most-loved brands in the world with products and experiences that people rave about, you can start to see that the culture within the organization is what helped produce those customer-pleasing results. These are the kinds of cultures that create conditions where employees play to each other’s strengths to create even better offerings, the kinds of cultures that rally teams behind being first to market with a new technology, and the kinds of cultures known for positively approaching conflict and crisis to safely navigate change.

Culture is the game you are playing. The things you choose to put into the culture from mission to values, from the way you hire to the way you communicate, and from the way you set goals to the way you review performance are all the tools that help to define culture and create the game your employees play each and every day.

Molding, not creating, company culture

Organizational leaders often say that they’re “ready to start creating culture.” Wrong again. Culture is created as soon as two people start interacting. As soon as the social contracts are formed around how we treat each other, the messages being sent and received start shaping the culture. The great news is you don’t have to worry about creating culture. It already exists.

Getting intentional about the type of culture you’d like involves a lot more than just writing down your mission and values. In fact, you can look across industries and find examples of companies that have expertly crafted mission and values statements but still suffer from a toxic, sluggish culture. The goal is not to start creating culture but to mold it. Culture is a string of relationships all striving to get to a shared goal. You can foster, mold, nudge, and cultivate culture by focusing on those relationships. The bad news is that you can’t just go away for a weekend and create a new culture overnight, and your team may have some bad habits that have developed over time which are creating less-than-desirable conditions in your organization. The good news is that you can start exactly where you are today to improve your company culture. You can get clear about what’s working and do more of that while also sorting out what’s not working and begin to develop new habits and systems around those areas.

The sooner you begin to acknowledge your current state, clarifying your desired state, and map out a path to take you from here to there — the sooner you can start celebrating the culture wins on your team.

Controlling the conditions

You know how certain places make you feel a certain way? Maybe it’s a fancy dinner party with new friends, or perhaps a backyard barbecue with family. Or maybe it’s a visit to a new city or a return to a favorite one. Each of those experiences is full of messages and communication. You have a relationship with the whole experience — the people in it, the way you feel about the physical space, the energy around you. All of that creates culture.

Culture is the conditions created in your business. The most you can do is control certain inputs for your team — you can choose tools and office perks, hire certain people, celebrate certain values, and codify desired behaviors. All of this ultimately creates the conditions that foster a specific type of culture.

If you think about one of these examples, it becomes clearer. The dinner party with new friends includes certain kinds of music, bringing out the fine china, maybe putting some “icebreaker” questions on the table, curating the guest list just so, and serving specific kinds of food. All these details create a specific condition, which ultimately impacts the way people treat each other and the space. The culture starts to get created. Over time, with repetition and attention, the culture gets stronger. With each passing fancy dinner, the culture is further defined. When someone new is introduced later, he or she can quickly pick up on what’s normal, what’s celebrated, and how the group functions. All of this is culture. And you didn’t even need a handbook to “create” it.

While you can’t create culture, you can do a lot to design the experiences so that culture is molded and shaped in a specific direction. Each of the chapters in this book gives you some ideas about using different areas of your business to nudge culture in a specific direction. If you realize that your company is struggling without clarity around where you’re headed, then start with Chapter 6. To get focused on hiring better for your culture, dive into Chapter 9. If you want to improve the diversity and inclusivity on your team, start with Chapter 16.

Treating culture as the perfect result

Culture isn’t magic. It’s not something that even needs to be demystified. It’s the perfect result of all the inputs. It’s not a sign about what you are or who you are but rather a reflection of what you do. It’s the most powerful force in your business. You (and your team and customers and marketplace) can see it, feel it, and experience it.

Whatever culture you have is the perfect result of the things you put into it. If your culture is energetic and lively, it’s probably because of the people you choose to bring on the team, the way you organize them, the relationships you curate, and the style in which your leaders communicate. If your culture is focused and ambitious, communicating with intention and sincerity, that’s because of specific inputs.

It’s not that hard to figure out what’s going on with a business — just watch the culture. It will tell you exactly where the pain point lives. It’ll lead you — like the little breadcrumb from the Hansel and Gretel fable — right to the source. Your culture is the perfect result of all the messages and relationships in your business. This means that whatever is happening in your culture is linked back to some specific action taking place in your business. If your culture has become one where people are disengaged, then you can fix that by being more engaging (see Chapters 4 and 5 for being a more engaging leader; see Chapters 6 and 7 for creating a more engaging mission, vision, and values statement; and see Chapters 12, 13, and 14 for ideas on improving how people work together).

When you look at your culture, feel confident that whatever you see is a result of something in the business, which means that you ultimately have control of the variables that can improve your culture as well.

The Best Company Cultures: Different but Essentially the Same

Companies like Southwest Airlines, Google, In-N-Out Burger, Zappos, Disney, Wegmans, USAA, and Netflix are all celebrated for their company cultures. Other organizations like Apple and Amazon have been in the press for their cultures — both good and bad. Yet working inside one of these organizations feels drastically different. You wouldn’t show up to work one day at In-N-Out Burger and confuse it with Google. It’s not just the products or physical space that’s different. The relationships, decision-making styles, messages, communication, and overall vibe are different. Clearly they have different cultures. In fact, you can even visit different locations of the same brand — like Trader Joe’s — and get a slightly different culture.

Each organization (and even the specific teams, departments, and locations within it) can thrive with a drastically different culture. It’s okay that Apple’s environment can be intense and forward-thinking, focused on rapid innovation and next-level quality. It’s also okay that the culture at Wegmans centers on putting employees first and high levels of care. Both can be great. Both can be levers for getting great work done.

Regardless of whether your aspirational culture is results-driven, service-focused, innovative, or happy, the best cultures all have some of the same DNA. There are components that help make them work no matter how different the end result may feel. Consider this the list of things all great teams share as well.

Establishing clear goals

Whether organizing the world’s information, being the low-fare airline leader, or delivering happiness, great cultures have a clear target and a shared rally cry. The people in the organization have an absolute understanding of what they’re all trying to create together. The tribal part of our social being seems to do best when we’re all aligned toward a common cause (look to Chapter 19 for more on setting goals). The more explicit, clear, and honest this target is in your business, the better your culture.

Setting simple rules

The best cultures have simple rules around how people should treat each other, make decisions, and get things done. This doesn’t mean there are rule books lying around everywhere, but that through establishing systems for hiring, training, collaborating, serving clients and customers, and working together, the organization has started to be specific and clear about what matters most so that everyone can get on board and contribute. The rules, meaning guidelines and systems, are simple and clear, not only because they are stated but also because you can see them consistently applied across the organization. Leaders role-model the desired behaviors and actions, managers hire for them, people are celebrated for them. If we go back to the concept of the tribe of social beings, you understand what gets you kicked out of the group and what makes you a contributing part of the group.

Delivering useful feedback

Cultures begin to decay when people aren’t able to give each other feedback. You can see it in work cultures, home cultures, school cultures, and even national cultures. When people aren’t able to give each other feedback, everything seems to stagnate. Great cultures are feedback-rich. They are full of people giving information about each other’s performance that leads to improvement, professional growth, and organizational success. The people in feedback-rich organizations look forward to hearing from each other because they know the information is going to be helpful, useful, and thoughtful. In these organizations, two-way communication about performance seems to flow in all directions. The rising tide of performance improvement raises all ships. For more on the value of feedback, see Chapter 14.

Steering Clear of the Perks Pitfalls

Just as important as understanding what culture is, it’s vital to get clear on what company culture is not. The media and career websites of lots of popular companies would have you believe that culture is about perks, benefits, and quirky offices. It’s not.

The start-up industry has given us lots of great innovations, from mobile apps that can help us find love to medical technology that can boost our quality of life. You may think that a company’s perks, be it a ping-pong table or a Wednesday afternoon beer cart, are the reasons for its success and something to emulate.

Those things are nice, but they don’t do much to improve the relationships of people at work. And they have very little to do with the things that all great cultures share.

The reality is that these perks that make work feel more like a Caribbean resort and less like a business are just icing on the culture cake (and, in some cases, hiding really toxic cultures underneath). They may help you attract a few new people to the team, but they won’t improve your results in the long run. In organizations with strong cultures, the “extracurricular” activities and perks like these can be helpful in creating cross-departmental collaboration and relationships where, in addition to ping-pong tournaments, the team is talking about the next innovation or pitch. In organizations with a weak culture, these activities tend to be the way people escape work for a little bit because they aren’t that engaged with it or each other. The good news is that there are many straightforward ways to improve culture to bring about a positive working environment, long-term employees, and measurable successes. The next 21 chapters show you just how.

Recognizing the Symptoms of an At-risk Culture

Throughout this chapter, we’ve looked at ways to understand what culture is all about. You might have even recognized some of the ways your company is already celebrating and instilling a culture that drives results while creating a great work experience for your team. But maybe you are still worried that your culture is at risk and you want some help framing the signs of a toxic culture.

Here are a few telltale signs of toxic cultures:

Lots of gossip: People talking negatively about each other behind their backs is a sign that culture is in trouble. Check out Part 4 for some tips on improving team communications and collaboration.
Leaders’ bad habits: If your management team misses meetings, loses their tempers, misses deadlines, or communicates poorly (or not at all), you may have a culture problem. Check out Part 2 for ideas on enhancing leadership and management skills.
Nothing to aim for: Do most people in your organization lack any definable goals? If asked, do they struggle to tell you what they’re working on, by when, and how success will be measured? All signs point to culture doom! Check out Chapters 6 and 7 to get started with developing your organizational mission, vision, and values. Then head over to Chapter 19 to help create clarity for your team.
Lack of candor: Are people avoiding being honest? Does everything just sound manipulatively insincere? Culture suffers in organizations where people aren’t able to be honest, direct, and open in a kind and thoughtful way. If you think your company could use some help in developing a strong feedback culture, then head straight to Chapter 14.
Watch your back: Do people throw each other under the boss? Is the team often in blaming mode because there’s a lack of safety and discomfort in failure? Is everyone competitive with each other? Cultures with this kind of vibe need a major overhaul to bring things back to a positive and effective way of working. If improving your team’s communication and collaboration is your focus, read Chapters 12 and 13.

IN THIS CHAPTER

check Identifying the key business metrics that culture affects

check Clarifying the high cost of getting culture wrong

check Learning from industry leaders with great company cultures

It’s a rare manager, leader, or executive who would toss aside organizational culture these days. Too much has been written in the headlines about the impact of culture positively and negatively on a brand, from culture-centric stars like Zappos, Publix, Southwest Airlines, and Google to companies that have had their culture linked to headline-making negative news like Uber, Volkswagen, Wells Fargo, and Forever 21. We intrinsically know that culture matters, but it’s easy to think a great culture is just a nice-to-have instead of a core requirement for success. It’s easy to dismiss good culture as some kind of magic created by snacks, craft coffee bars, and inter-office slides. But it’s possible to link culture to nearly every important benchmark a company measures: sales, profit, market position, employee retention, safety, and customer loyalty. Company culture is the core system that determines whether your team delivers results — or just skims by.

It’s trite but true — things are moving faster than ever. You can create infinite amounts of product efficiently and affordably across all industries. Still, innovation and service are the only ways to really produce a sustainable organization. Both of those qualities require talent, and talented people demand a culture in which to thrive. Culture is ultimately about getting the conditions right so that the people in the organization are able to produce the results that drive the business. Nearly every business result is improved with a strong culture, and smart business leaders are using culture to gain market share. Every single investment in company culture can be an indirect (and critical) investment into the customer experience.

Company Culture For Dummies®

To view this book's Cheat Sheet, simply go to www.dummies.com and search for “Company Culture For Dummies Cheat Sheet” in the Search box.

Introduction

About This Book

Foolish Assumptions

Icons Used in This Book

Beyond the Book

Where to Go from Here

Getting Started with Company Culture

Understanding Company Culture