Ivy Sea Leader Exchange: Be as you are - Aligning corporate culture and reality

On face value, most companies would say that they are being authentic — what else would they be? And yet, year after year shareholders, employees, customers and partners are asked to change their behaviors in favor of initiatives and strategies extracted from management books and seminars.

In this coming age of professed authenticity, isn’t it time that companies examine who they are instead of, like managerial lemmings, following the latest string of business fads?

Stated simply, "Being who you are" means that company decisions aren’t plucked from the recent advertising trends, market data reports or issue of Management Guru Journal. Decisions and strategies are based on the company’s mission and the processes and culture that suit that mission best. For example, a company the size of a Big Three auto maker can’t whip itself into a new direction because flat organizations are ‘in.’ A clear chain of command and stringent policies (such as quality standards) have kept these companies on top of the car industry for years. Imagine one of the Big Three companies engaging the new "prosumer" fad, where companies leave product testing and debugging to the customers, just to get the product to market faster. Would you ever drive another Big Three car again?

Here at Ivy Sea, we bucked the common consulting firm or agency trend to grow through sheer revenue-based planning based heavily on a high-tech clientele in favor of a more long-term plan supporting and carrying out our mission of mindful communication for a better world. Today, we have fewer employees and a select group of clients — the beginnings of a critical mass that will help us reach our goals. And we’re a profitable company — no easy task when mixing a dedication to a social mission with the desire for a financially healthy for-profit firm that remains a small business.

Being who you are gets at the heart of corporate culture — what tangible and intangible aspects of the company attract the employees you want? What do employees like about working for the company? What wouldn’t they change? Why is that consistent with the firm's vision and mission? Here is where we find the real opportunity for a company to be authentic. And all too often it's the place where many companies make a huge mistake — or make their real mission, profit, painfully visible — by shifting their culture at the whim of the gurus or in a blind dash for maximized short-term investor profit. Unfortunately, by creating a gap between espoused vision and priorities and the firm's actions, even profit and the financial health of the company is jeopardized.

Culture is the driving force of the company because it largely determines how motivated, cooperative, skilled and productive people are able and willing to be.

There is solid evidence that culture ties directly to profits and to business success in general. In their 1992 book Corporate Culture and Performance, John Kotter and James Heskett reported phenomenal differences in the long-term results of companies that ‘managed’ their cultures well as opposed to those that didn’t:

As reinforced in many surveys and reports, a company's ability to attract and motivate strong employees was crucial to its success. Poor morale proves very expensive, financially and culturally, as does high turnover. CEOs said that an organization's culture was a vital factor in attracting and motivating the type of employees that best suited the organization. So, what makes up a culture? Culture is made up of everything from dress codes (written and unwritten), meeting style, leadership style, type of customers, and geographical location. Cultural norms are shared by employees at all levels and are reinforced by each person’s behavior.

Tips for creating, assessing and maintaining the culture that fits your business

Ask employees: If people make up a culture, where better to start? Ask key employees what they like best about the organization, why they stay, what motivates them, what they wouldn’t want to change about the culture, and how the workplace sets itself apart from competitive employers. Don’t forget to get specific examples of how the culture manifests itself in daily activity for the employees. (How will you ever expand "fun" without knowing what "fun" means to the employee(s)?) Be sure to interview ‘key employees’ (those who clearly make an outstanding contribution to the group and whom you perceive as core members of the culture or what’s going right in the company) as well as employees you perceive as unlikely long-term good-fit employees. Why? Hearing both angles of the culture topic will give you a 3D image of what works well and what might not. These interviews are most successful and most valuable to your business when conducted anonymously by an objective third party as that employees are more forthcoming with information.

Survey customers and partners: These people stick with your company for a reason, and a large portion of that reason is most likely associated with your culture. Similar to your employee surveys, get to the nuts-and-bolts reasons as to why they enjoy working with you.

Compare your vision with your actions: Pull out the document you first created when establishing your business or the product of your most recent visioning exercise. Thoughtfully consider whether your vision is playing out in the daily activities in your company. Move beyond the mission statement, and compare the ideal picture painted in the vision with today’s reality. Is your company culture the prodigy of that vision, or an unrelated stranger? Be certain to take your assessment to the action level by recommending what needs to change, and how to redirect the company culture toward the vision. Make no mistake, this is an enormous – but do-able – task that takes concentrated, strategic and tactical planning, outstanding communication counsel and unwavering support from executives. Don't bother if you're going to do a half-...baked job of it; chances are excellent that you'll do more harm than good. Be committed, which means time and resources.

Crunch the numbers: Determine the actual costs, losses and profits resulting from the last culture shift your company made (or fad that it followed). Include financial results as well as retention, productivity, stockholder expectations and customer loyalty. Combined with the feedback you gain from employee and customer assessments, these measures will help guide you away from fads and refocus your attention on what’s best for the business.

Assess your gut feelings: Too often, leaders will stifle their intuition or gut feeling in favor of wisdom from an expert. It's the, "They must be smarter than I am" Syndrome. Certainly, one should seek out and learn from expert knowledge, particularly in areas outside of one's expertise. What makes them right? Have a healthy, constructive cynicism, and allow your response or reaction to an issue to inform your decision as well. Think of all of the information and recommendations you receive as ingredients in a stew. They’re all in there, but in proportions that suit you palette (read: culture).

Replicate past successes: You could have the answers to your culture woes in your very own memory. When did the company seem to be in a flow — less internal inertia, more satisfied customers, higher retention rates, reduced stress among the leadership team, etc.? These slices of time can serve as clues to processes and mindsets that created a good-fit culture for your business. Unearth those gems and see how you might replicate them in today’s culture.

Continue learning: As with any part of your leadership role, the best advice is to continue learning from a variety of sources — books, conversations, the web, surveys, seminars — to enrich all of the decisions you make.

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