I was talking to a founder this week, their company is overwhelmingly busy, they desperately need to create more throughput and wanted my help to improve productivity. When I raised the concept of culture and that ‘an engaged team is a highly productive team’ they countered with ‘yeah, but at the moment we just don’t have time for all that soft stuff’.
But what if we thought about culture not as the “soft stuff” but as a lever for engagement which is a powerful driver of productivity.
Getting started with Culture can take less than an hour
It takes a long time to build a culture, right? Not necessarily, this blog includes a framework for creating a strong cultural foundation which could start driving value across your company in less than an hour.
What is “Culture” anyway?
Let’s define culture as the ‘values that will guide your team when a specific way of acting has not been prescribed’. As a leader, you are already building a culture either consciously or subconsciously Your style of leadership is already influencing behaviours within your company. So it’s worth being deliberate and intentional so that you don’t unwittingly end up with a toxic culture that you have to correct later.
How will “Culture” help me get ahead? Give me a tangible metric.
Your company culture is a manifestation of your company’s mission, it helps employees understand what they are working towards and what is expected of them. It also defines what is special about your organisation. These concepts will be something for your employees to connect to and be inspired by, they will drive greater employee engagement. Engaged employees are motivated, productive, creative, innovative. These attributes will fuel to your company’s growth.
Congratulations, you have a great product! The market loves you, you’re getting investment and you need to scale fast which inevitably means increasing the size of your team. Hiring at pace is difficult and the age of the ‘great resignation’ finding and retaining talent is a real problem. A strong company culture is proven to works to attract and retain talent. Done well culture can deliver a significant advantage in a competitive talent market.
Getting started! A simple, quick and effective framework:
So how do you start to build the foundations for your culture, without falling into the cliché of mistaking culture for perks? Spoiler alert, it doesn’t involve a fusball table!
The following easy framework was inspired by Y-Combinator’s Tim Brady. The first steps require little more than a conversation with your co-founder. Treat this as a thought experiment and remember you can iterate your culture just as you would your business plan.
1 – Define your mission.
Your mission should be long term and inspiring, something for your people to get behind. Try this formula or make your own: Company mission = (The output) + (The twist) + (The quantification) + (The human connection)
2 – Identify the values and behaviours that you want to be known for.
Keep it short. Stay specific. Address internal and external goals. Make them unique.
3 - Share your vision, values and behaviours with your team.
Put them somewhere visible and accessible and take simple steps to make them “sticky”. Use them to start conversations, weave them into team meetings and performance reviews.
4 – Embed your vision, values and behaviours into your hiring plan.
Your vision and values reflect your identity, as well as assessing technical and soft skills, assess a candidate’s alignment to your values, talk about culture during the interview process and emphasize them throughout the on-boarding process.
5 – Be deliberate about creating a diverse team.
It’s much easier to intentionally and proactively create diversity than to retrospectively engineer it and change mindsets, later. There are a ton of resources on the web but here are two ideas for getting started:
Invest in diversity and inclusion efforts, celebrating the existing diversity within your team is a great way to build that Culture.
Expand your hiring pipeline to include remote candidates and tap into a broader and more diverse talent pool.
6 – Review and iterate!
In the spirit of a thought experiment, test your ideas. It will be much easier to do this before you get to the point where you need to scale fast. Here are a couple pointers to get the assessment started:
With your co-founder: As a result of embedding your vision and values, did the hiring process filter the way you expected it to?
With your people: What do they like about the vision and values? What else would they recommend you do to improve your company.?
Get started with Culture today and make a significant investment in your company.
Culture isn’t a buzz-word and it isn’t the ‘soft stuff’. It’s your people. Yes, the framework above will help think about culture in the short term, it could be driving value across your company in as little as an hour. It is also a powerful long term investment in your company. A visible culture will not only drive engagement, which increases productivity, creativity and innovation, it can become a tangible growth metric.
GrowPerform can help you to ensure you're maximizing the potential of your people, giving your company a significant productivity boost. Try the framework above, see how it goes and to learn more about the Culture of your company, book GrowPerform.co for a "Cultural pulse check". We can deliver insights and easy to action, impactful recommendations. All we need is 2-3 hours with your team.
Get in touch: info@growperform.co
Tim Brady's Guide to Building Culture: https://www.ycombinator.com/library/6r-building-culture
Gallup's state of the American workforce report: https://www.gallup.com/workplace/238085/state-american-workplace-report-2017.aspx
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