For the business leader focused on goals, metrics, results, and revenue—the crunchy, tangible, measurable parts of business—any talk about culture can feel a bit fluffy and fuzzy, having little to do with bottom-line realities. Why put so much effort into creating a culture? We’re here to make and sell things, aren’t we?
Culture ultimately determines how you make and sell things. It’s how your employees work together, how they communicate, how they share information, share responsibility, make and fix mistakes. It’s how they feel about their jobs, which has a profound effect on how they do their jobs. Creating a culture that’s not just positive but aligned with your strategy will have a positive effect on your bottom line. Ignoring culture means you’ll end up with one that might not fit with the way you want to do business.
What Exactly Is “Culture”?
To really answer this question, we’d have to spend the next eight years pursuing a sociology PhD. For our purposes, we’ll call culture “the shared values, beliefs, and practices that characterize a group that interacts regularly.”
For a company culture to truly be a culture, it has to be more than a set of slogans on a poster or a few bullet points in an employee handbook. Culture is structural. That is, it arises out of the way a business is organized, which includes any number of factors: how employees are expected to interact with each other, whether work is individual or collaborative, whether information is siloed or shared, whether the company’s management structure is hierarchical or horizontal, whether the boss’s door is always open or there is a strict chain of command.
Culture also arises out of your processes. That includes not only how your processes work but also if there are even processes documented at all. Process documentation helps people know what they’re supposed to do, how they’re supposed to do it, who they’re supposed to communicate with, and where to find instructions and procedures if they don’t know how to do something.
Well-documented processes ensure that knowledge is cultural rather than locked away in individuals. In other words, if a key employee departs, they don’t take their knowledge with them. It stays with you, available to whoever fills their shoes.
The Fluffy Stuff Is Important
Culture can make or break a business, so do the work to ensure a positive atmosphere in the workplace. Employees are happy when they feel like they are listened to and respected, feel like the work they do is important and appreciated, and aren’t suffering from burnout. Happy, fulfilled employees are better employees.
A lot of these things that seem emotional, subjective, or nebulous actually arise out of process. When things are random and there is no set way to do things, employees feel frustrated. When there is no system for having your ideas heard and your good work acknowledged, employees feel powerless. Not only that, but a business that lacks those systems is not one that is working toward continually improving. Continuous improvement helps your business grow by giving you a mechanism for addressing and fixing the parts of the business that aren’t working as they should while simultaneously empowering employees and providing them with tangible results for their hard work.
Align Culture With Strategy
What if you have all of the above in place, but you’re not seeing anything good come from it? You might have a misalignment between what your culture is accomplishing and your strategy. You may have created a laid-back, individualistic culture, while executing your strategy demands tight collaboration between cross-functional teams. Or you may have created a hierarchical culture of adherence to procedure with little room for improvisation within a strategy that requires creativity and a tolerance for mistakes made in pursuit of innovation. This is why it’s important to think about culture not in the abstract, but as another way to achieve your strategic goals.
Start Building Culture Before Hiring
If you’re hiring strategically, you’re designing roles with your needs and goals in mind, not only filling the gaps you have now but looking forward to how your business will grow and how your employees will grow with it. Building culture strategically starts here, before you even make a new hire. Your training and onboarding programs should be built with the end goal of not only producing a successful employee but welcoming new hires into your culture.
Keep Your Employees Engaged and Giving Their Best
A few years ago, the fear was that your best employees would quit if they weren’t feeling fulfilled at work. In the current economy, quitting and quickly finding a comparable job is not an option for the vast majority of American workers. Instead of quitting, these employees are clocking in but checking out mentally and emotionally, doing just enough to fly under the radar. A positive culture keeps these employees engaged. It sets clear expectations and makes space for them to be recognized when they exceed them. Keep those employees engaged and giving their best by creating a culture that reduces frustration and burnout and keeps your business running smoothly.
