Culture: The Foundation of Winning
Culture is fundamental to the success of your team, organization, or company. The challenging part of culture is that it is often silent and hidden from view or obstructed with meaningless gimmicks.
People love to discuss process or tools or strategy as the failings of a company. But how can process, tools, and strategy be to blame? It’s simple really, culture is your foundation.
Culture is often confused with company perks or “do you like who you work with enough to grab a drink with them” but it’s so much more. It’s the foundation that everything else is built on. Culture is made up of the principles of how you’re going to work with others and the beliefs that will lead to success. It’s your company’s stance on how you’re going to be different by what you deem important.
The last point is important. Every company is different. There isn’t a culture playbook that can be bought. Leaders can lead by example but they cannot create a culture on their own. Unfortunately (or fortunately), culture cannot be created because it happens organically but you can shape it. Mia Blume describes this as culture gardening and I can’t find any better way to describe it.
Parts of Culture and How to Improve
What’s Important to Your Success
What do you value that separates you from your competitors? Your values are what bring everyone together with a common mission.
What to Do:
- Create your team/organization’s values be facilitating a workshop that everyone participates in.
- Involve individual contributors as much as possible since they’re going to instill the values.
Environment
Your workspace has a profound effect on your work. It demonstrates your company’s personality.
What to Do:
- This is where designers can really shine by displaying their work in public places.
- Create spaces for all types of work.
- Read articles on the fallacies of open office spaces.
How Individuals Do Work
What are the important behaviors you expect from individual contributors.
What to Do:
- Managers need to acknowledge and commend value-aligned behavior.
- Facilitate a workshop that makes everyone a problem solver and has them suggest rituals and objectives that aligned with your values.
- Managers need to Key Performance Indicators that align with the values.
Social Contract Between Employees
The expectations people have of each other and how they work together.
What to Do:
- Identify and empower culture mavens
- Establish collaborative rituals that align with your values.
