How to develop an effective corporate culture
Anytime you get a group of people cooperating towards a goal whether it be earnings results, finding a customer, or delivering value to the world, a culture develops amongst them.
I worked at a company once where an executive openly said that he didn't believe the company had a culture. This is a company that had been around for decades and he truly believed that it was devoid of any kind of personality or belief structure. Anytime you get a group of people cooperating towards a goal whether it be earnings results, finding a customer, or delivering value to the world, a culture develops amongst them.
The degree to which this business executive even thought about company culture, he thought of it more like a company "vibe." What's the vibe around the office? Are people optimistic? Do they feel valued? Are they happy to be working at the company? These are all important questions, of course, but they aren't central to the idea of corporate culture.
Values
Company culture starts with values. Values are positive, affirmative foundational beliefs. These beliefs, either spoken or unspoken, drive behavior and expectations. The question isn't whether there's a culture, the question is whether you understand what it is.
It is not uncommon for the foundational beliefs that undergird a company's values exist under the water like the larger part of an iceberg. Company leadership must first understand what those values are before they have a chance of influencing them.
Leadership
Companies with extremely strong and entrenched cultures can often reject a leader no matter how dynamic if that leader does not align with the culture. A dynamic leader can move and adjust the culture. A poor leader can poison a culture just as quickly.
Executives often feel their way through the question of developing corporate culture. Those who are culturally aware can effectively contribute to company culture simply based on their inherent emotional awareness. But even this approach leaves too much to chance. Leadership has an opportunity in almost every interaction to reinforce, redirect, or build a healthy corporate culture.
Communication
Communication is the lifeblood of corporate culture. Whether you are directing that communication or not, the flow of ideas, principles, and values up and down the organization perpetually reinforces a building corporate culture. Unfortunately some of the values that are being reinforced are either toxic or unhelpful. To make matters even more difficult, too many corporate communication departments are stuck with the facile and outdated belief that the most effective communication is written. Companies spend an enormous amount of energy developing employee handbooks, corporate policies documents, weekly corporate newsletters, and intranet blog posts. These are important, but they are only the first step in effective communication. If you stop there, you are sure to fail to reinforce the values and corporate culture. Effective communication must be done in nonverbal ways as well. Architecture, office layout, office design, corporate events, leadership activities, corporate policies, awards and recognition, and employee management are only a few of the most effective ways for business leaders to communicate corporate culture.
Effective communication can't just be pushed out, either. Leaders must learn to listen. Corporate culture is a dialogue amongst the employees, of which the executive team is only one voice. And just like push communication, listening requires more than just an occasional town hall meeting with questions and answer sessions. Executives must learn to hear what employees are saying even when they are not speaking.
Alignment
No matter how sincere you are in promoting the values you want to undergird your corporate culture, if your business practices, policies, and actions do not align to those values, the values will be meaningless. And even worse, those spoken values could be seen as evidence that the corporate culture is based on a foundation of cynicism or hypocrisy.
A pharmaceutical company that espouses the value of improving the quality of life for Humanity through the development of effective drugs can quickly be undermined through aggressive pricing strategies and misaligned R&D budgets.
A company who claims to value employee well-being can be quickly undermined by offering substandard benefits packages.
A company who claims to be customer focused can be undermined quickly when the customer is not mentioned in any meetings when making decisions about resource allocation.
Company leaders are always better served to pick values within their control then to espouse high-minded values that their actions undermine.
Resources
One of the most effective ways of undermining a company's values, and thereby poisoning the corporate culture, is to refuse to allocate resources to the very things you claim to value. Of course, it would be naive to believe that there are infinite resources, but it is equally as naive to believe that you cannot find the resources for the things that matter to you. This need not be a zero-sum game, though. A small company need not be able to commit hundreds of millions of dollars to a worldwide problem if making a difference is part of their company culture and values. But some resources, within the scope of the size of the company, must be committed to reinforcing the values.
There is a famous saying in personal finance, if you want to see what somebody values, look at their calendar and their checkbook. This is true of companies as well.
Consistency
Leaders who are committed to the development of a company culture must be prepared to be consistent in their promotion of the values that matter to them. This can't be a single quarter initiative, no matter how public or dramatic. Developing a corporate culture is much like parenting, quality time and consistency over time is essential.
