Building a Great Culture by Using Processes and Behaviors
Great culture doesn’t just happen. Building a strong culture requires planning, effort, and incorporation into your daily processes and behaviors.
If culture is the sum of our daily actions, then people and teams are the true drivers of culture. The people you choose to be leaders, the individuals you promote, the way you organize teams, and who you decide to hire all send strong messages about your culture.
Ensure cultural fit is an evaluation criteria for selecting leaders or employees. Make cultural fit part of your design considerations for organizing a team.
At one consulting firm whose culture is very strong, they focus on being a meritocracy. People are valued about all else. Selection to lead teams and become a partner at the firm is based in large part upon people leadership and cultural fit for their behaviors.
One candidate to become a partner used to beat their teams up. He would overwork them, not show appreciation for their work and, in some cases, be disrespectful to team members. During the partner evaluation process, 360 evaluations were conducted. This person received very strong negative feedback about their behaviors. They weren’t promoted that cycle. He was given a clear development plan to behave in a more culturally appropriate manner. He did change his behaviors and eventually got promoted to partner.
Let’s look at tying culture to organizing your teams. There are several techniques for building teams that will support your culture:
Leadership Role Selection
When selecting someone for a leadership role, assess their prior efforts and how they’ve strengthened or weakened culture. Have the strength to pass over someone who gets results at the expense of the culture you’re trying to build.
Promotion Selection
Make culture a promotion selection criteria. When you promote someone, ensure you discuss their cultural contributions very clearly in the promotion announcement. When you do so, people will see that culture is clearly a consideration for promotion and hopefully they’ll modify their behaviors accordingly.
Hiring
During the hiring process when you have a consensus meeting to discuss the candidate, have an explicit conversation about a candidate’s cultural fit. If there are strong reservations over cultural fit, pass on hiring that candidate no matter how strong their track record is elsewhere; because if you hire them, you may be adding a bad actor into your cultural mix.
Team Structure
When you structure teams, consider team mix as it relates to culture. Mix cultural champions or exemplars with young team members or with problem team members. Having those strong performers living and working alongside the people who don’t know the culture yet or the people who aren’t living up to the culture can accelerate the behavior change you’re looking for.
When I was at the United States Military Academy, roommate assignments weren’t random. Every semester we got a new roommate. There were many situations where the Academy said “we’re going to take this high performer and have them room with somebody who needs a little cultural tuning up.” The notion was that the low performer could learn from the high performer on a daily basis. A lot of times that was a successful approach.
As you look at building and organizing your teams, make sure you have culture as one of the major evaluation criteria for who you promote, who you hire, and who you have working with one another.
Want to learn more about this topic? How about taking an entire course on it? Check out the video below to learn more about Creating a High Performance Culture to get started. You can also go directly to the course and start learning how to create your own high-performing culture. The entire course is available at lynda.com. Enjoy!
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Why do all of the images of women in this article about “Building A Great Culture…appear to be white? Was your intent to suggest that only “white” women are worth focusing on when discussing issues of “progress” in the workforce? You the word “culture” repeated in the article, but never actually discuss culture, nor define it. This leaves readers wondering who was your intended audience and why?
Thanks for your comment Dr. Bullock. To be clear right out of the gate – no – there is no intent whatsoever to imply any race, gender, sexual orientation, veteran status, disabled, or any other group are “worth focusing” on for culture issues or any other. Nowhere in that article did I say anything about any of those topics of classifying people and saying one is more worthy than another. Your comment is a gross overreach with implications that are both facile and insulting.
By your logic, in the following articles I would be implying that only:
white men are creepy (https://www.thoughtleadersllc.com/2011/12/how-you-can-prevent-the-dreaded-scope-creep-from-attacking/),
African-American women are humble and powerful (https://www.thoughtleadersllc.com/2017/01/is-humble-leadership-about-how-you-act-or-who-you-are/),
old white men run boring meetings that suck (https://www.thoughtleadersllc.com/2016/02/3-tips-for-making-your-staff-meetings-not-suck/),
white men are criminals who take credit for other people’s work (https://www.thoughtleadersllc.com/2015/10/how-to-deal-with-someone-taking-credit-for-your-work/),
African-American women are great teachers who help others learn (https://www.thoughtleadersllc.com/2014/11/the-importance-of-continuously-learning-from-others/),
white men are drug addicts (https://www.thoughtleadersllc.com/2014/07/the-importance-of-diversifying-your-business/),
bald white men are bad bosses who scream at employees (https://www.thoughtleadersllc.com/2014/06/turn-the-bad-boss-blame-game-to-your-advantage/),
white men are rude drivers and rude people (https://www.thoughtleadersllc.com/2013/05/how-to-make-rude-people-lose-their-minds/),
and African-American men are great at setting a vision versus focusing on tasks (https://www.thoughtleadersllc.com/2013/05/how-to-make-rude-people-lose-their-minds/).
I’m sure I don’t need to explain how flawed or accurate many of those conclusions are. But to infer those conclusions based on a picture selected and what the post is about is pretty fatally flawed.
A suggestion – try on a behavioral rule I’ve always encouraged with my colleagues, teams, and for myself. It’s called “assume positive intent.” When you see an act you find questionable, assume the person is trying to do the right thing and they only have good intentions. Seek clarification of their intentions with the assumption that those intentions are pure. Only once you have confirmation of malicious intent should you draw that conclusion. This rule of assuming positive intent makes for a more collaborative, positive workplace (and world) versus one where people are undeservedly maligned or condemned.
My apologies for not fully defining culture in the post. The definition I use is the set of behavioral norms of an organization. Those norms are a function of the sum of people’s daily behaviors. If everyone behaves in a positive manner and treats each other with respect in every interaction, you’ll end up with a respectful culture. If people are predominately aggressive in their daily behaviors, you’ll end up with an aggressive culture. I encourage you to look at your daily behaviors and conversations and ask “am I creating the culture I want to work in and want others to work in?” If the answer is yes, keep driving those behaviors. If the answer is no, change the behaviors.
In my firm, I know my daily behaviors and those of my team are ones that foster collaboration, excellence in service, respect, fun, and celebrate our individual differences. My team consists of men and women, veterans, members of the LGBTQ community, democrats, republicans, and libertarians. We are white, African-American, Asian, and Hispanic. We are bald, have great hair, and receding hair. We are PhD’s, Master’s or Bachelor’s educated. We’re from the East Coast, the West Coast, and parts in between. We’re married, single, and divorced. We are different. We are diverse. We are proud. That is our culture. I celebrate it. I defend it. *I’m* proud of it. That’s probably why I’m spending so much time and effort on this reply – because I cannot abide anyone insinuating we behave in a manner contrary to those cultural beliefs and norms.
So to reiterate – no – there was no intent whatsoever to suggest anything related to race or gender. I picked a piece of art that I thought represented growth and excellence in building something. I trust this clarifies. Thanks for reading and sharing your questions.