Culture Definition
“If you get culture right, most of the other stuff will just take care of itself.”
- Tony Hsieh, Zappos
What is your culture?
If you can’t answer this question in a fairly straightforward way, it’s likely you’re missing an opportunity not only to be able to talk about your company in a compelling way…but also to know who you’d recruit and why, who you’d promote and why, how you make decisions and why…
How do we define the culture?
A Culture Tour is a way to understand, unearth, and define what your culture is, as lived by your employees.
Too often, culture is defined in some back room by the senior most leaders or the board, and then announced to the employees in hopes that the minions will just get in line. But that always backfires. Always. If you want to understand your culture, you need to hear about it from the people closest to it every single day. When we hear about how our values show up, how they don’t show up, and how work gets done from people at every level in an organization, we not only learn about how power can provide a different version of reality, but we also uncover opportunities for change and improvement and find places where a spotlight should be shone.
The Culture Tour
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It all begins with a survey. A way to hear from everyone in the organization. A way to show the organization that we care about your opinion, and we value your input.
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Selecting high performers, cultural champions, and game changers in the organization, our interview process can help elucidate the nuance, raise the bar, and ensure that our definition does not fall to the lowest common denominator, but rather elevates the collective experience across the company.
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Everyone looks to the senior leaders to set the tone, be the model, and hold people accountable. If leaders don't take the culture seriously, no one else will. Getting leaders not only "on board" but to a place where they are shouting from the rooftops is imperative for culture to thrive.
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Ensuring that our culture definition is accurate is important. But ensuring that it is in line with the actual culture in tone, voice, language, and feel is imperative. If we take an overly corporate tone within a casual, disruptive environment, it will backfire. The deliverable will be the definition of the culture - values, behaviors, expectations, and more - in a way that resonates with the employees and leaders, alike.
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Defining the culture is the first step. But ensuring that the culture is embedded into the daily processes and procedures quickly follows, and is where we ensure that the culture has a "stickiness" to it. We find a way to ensure that we're recruiting for culture, we're promoting for culture, we're rewarding for culture, and we're removing people for not living the culture.
“[she] has been instrumental in guiding the development of our culture, leadership and organization.”
— DOUGLAS P., CLIENT
