Today, I want to discuss culture — more specifically, company culture — what it is, how to distinguish a good culture from a bad one, and how to create a great company culture.
Every company has a culture, and it influences how you behave at work, how your colleagues work, how your boss sees you and how your customers interact with your products. Culture often makes or breaks the company.
Many company leaders fail to consider how culture affects the business’s operations. This leads to underperformance, lower-quality products and services, high churn rates, and often, employees working to undermine the company from within.
Let’s change this.
The company’s culture is everyone’s responsibility.
Culture begins in the beginning, with the founding of the business. Culture persists and develops until it settles into something that helps produce greatness or something that creates misery for those within it.
To create a better culture in your company, we need to:
- Understand what company culture is.
- Uncover the attributes of a bad company culture.
- Describe what a great company culture looks like.
- Define a set of steps to turn a bad company culture into a great one.
Before we move on, if there is one thing you should take away from this is that changing company culture is not the job of one individual. It is everyone’s responsibility.
Let’s break down each of these points.
Understand what company culture is.
Simply put, company culture is a set of traditions and rules that employees use to guide their behaviour and work. There are different types of rules and traditions.
Formal rules defined by the HR policy govern things like:
- Occupational safety and health.
- Leave policies.
- Remote working.
- Code of conduct.
- Non-discrimination policies.
- Et al.
Traditions and invisible rules are defined by the employees early on in the company’s life and can persist for years and decades. For example:
- Friday night drinks after work.
- Tolerating longer lunch hours.
- Compelling people to work late.
- Open feedback sessions.
- Et al.
Culture develops and evolves constantly, but some rules, especially unwritten ones, can persist for decades if employees stay with the company for a long time.
Uncover the attributes of a bad company culture.
There are many attributes of a bad company culture. Some are enshrined in HR policies, and some are unwritten norms that are perpetuated by management and employees because “that’s how things have always been” or because of the type of people working for the company.
The two major elements of a bad company culture are:
- Micromanagement.
- Toxic behaviour.
Micromanagement can exhibit itself in various ways. For example:
- Managers who want to be copied on every email.
- Supervisors who watch you work.
- Leaders who tell you exactly how to do your work or else.
- Needing detailed reports for trivial work.
Toxic behaviour is a much broader category. For example:
- Office gossip.
- Disengaged behaviour.
- Competition over collaboration.
- Abusive and disrespectful language.
- Harassment and demeaning behaviour.
- Chronic absenteeism.
- Et al.
There is no company in the world that doesn’t have some toxic behaviour or incidents of micromanagement. But if your company is full of these types of behaviours your company culture could be causing a lot more than upset employees.
It could be costing you customers and decreasing your profit margins.
Describe what a great company culture looks like.
A great company culture has two aspects.
It has a great set of HR policies that don’t include obvious things like no drinking on the job (let’s face it, if you need to state this in a policy, you need to hire better hiring managers). It also has a great set of unwritten traditions and behaviours that reinforce your company’s values.
A set of great HR policies includes all the standard HR policies that every company has (See list above).
A more critical aspect is having a set of traditions and behaviours that create and support an environment where teams can be successful at what they do. It requires the following five aspects:
- Psychological Safety: Can you fail at doing something without getting fired or being ridiculed?
- Dependability: Can you count on your team members to get the job done?
- Structure and clarity: Do you have a set of clear goals?
- Meaningful work: Does what you do matter?
- Impactful work: Does your work have an impact?
A great company culture is based on the foundation of these five elements.
Define a set of steps to turn a bad company culture into a great one.
Once you have decided that your company’s culture needs work, you need to define a set of steps to begin the transformation. It will take time and it will be hard work, but it will be worth it in the end.
Here are the steps you should start with:
- Address toxic behaviour when it happens. Don’t leave it to fester and grow.
- Encourage open dialogue so that everyone feels heard.
- Recognize and celebrate wins, big or small.
- Promote work-life balance to create meaning outside of work and increase productivity.
- Empower your people to make decisions and take responsibility.
- Turn failures into learning opportunities.
- Foster the attitude of accountability for creating a great company culture.
Remember, creating a great company culture is everyone’s responsibility. If someone isn’t pulling their weight, maybe your company is not the right place for them.
Today’s Action Steps
Here’s how you can act on this advice today:
- Identify one toxic behaviour that you have committed this week or last. Take steps to remedy it by apologizing and finding a better way to deal with the situation.
- Write down what you want your company’s or team’s values to be.
- Bring everyone together and talk about what needs to be changed and how to change it.
- Start today.
Outro
In today’s world, where competition is everywhere, having a great company culture is a must. No longer can you stay in business with a culture of abuse, toxicity and micromanagement. Your best employees will leave, and your business will die.
You can change that today. Start now.
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And that’s all for this week.
See you next Monday.
P.S. I’d love to hear what challenges you are facing in your business. What can I write about to help you personally?
Reply back to this email to let me know.