Culture Building in the Real World
Culture is mortar, not bricks. Culture building is laying a bed of mortar on bricks. Culture binds people together. Culture is expressed by the way people treat each other while they do the work.
Culture building is about people. Rules and regulations express culture, but culture is built with the tools of influence, not coercion.
Four channels of personal influence:
- Attitudes.
- Words.
- Actions.
- Responses.
Attitude is your habitual disposition. For example, are you primarily disposed to complain or celebrate?
Words influence behaviors. If this isn’t true, why are you talking so much? You invite people to take initiative when you ask, “What are you learning,” after responsible failure.
Consistent actions shape culture. You can tell people to take initiative but when leaders avoid making decisions, initiative goes out the door.
Responses express values and shape culture. Leaders who quickly spout answers without asking questions, put an end to collaboration, for example.
Culture building questions:
Suppose you desire a culture where people love coming to work. Here are some questions to ask top leaders.
- How much do you love coming to work on a scale of 1 to 10?
- How would strangers know you love work if they heard you talking?
- What are you doing that gives you energy? What makes that energizing for you?
- What is the most meaningful thing you can do today? Or you did yesterday?
- Brag to me. Tell me something you got done that makes you proud.
- What’s your latest happy customer story?
- How much enjoyment do you see on faces around you?
I plan to explore a simple plan to scale culture building any organization can adopt in tomorrow’s post.
I define culture as the way we treat each other. It’s mortar. How do you define culture?
I believe culture building is a top-down and middle-out activity. What are your thoughts?
I needed this today. I am in the process of revitalizing culture within a new team. This just reinforcing I am asking the right questions and applying the right methodology. Thank you!!
Brandi, this is what I do for a living. It’s so important to me that I wrote a book on how to create a well-being culture in the workplace. You can read the sample on Amazon of ‘A Cure for the Common Company’. Good luck. Rich
Here’s a link to Dr. Safeer’s book. https://amzn.to/4cFnwMm I hold him in high regard. Check it out.
Thanks for jumping in with a good word, Brandi. Congratulations on noticing and working on culture. Culture building is done intentionally. There are many distractions in organizations life, but building culture isn’t one of them. Cheers
Our organizational chart is constructed horizontally from left to right, not vertically from top to bottom. Each new team member receives a paper copy with the guidance that we all have the same footing, with information flowing from left to right, right to left, and either way from the middle. To me, that helps connotes a lighter gravity required to move inspiration from zone to zone, to and from leadership, ever contributing and renewing our commitment to a growing working culture.
That’s cool, SJ. When a chart expresses a culture that exists its a useful tool for everyone, especially new people. I wish you well.
Mortar holds the bricks together. In an organization what hold the people together? It is often a number of things.
Shared mission
Shared goals
Shared values
Shared strategy
Shared experiences
The more things employees share and buy-into the stronger the culture.
“The more things employees share and buy-into the stronger the culture.” Now that’s gold. That’s Paul.
“Consistent actions shape culture. You can tell people to take initiative but when leaders avoid making decisions, initiative goes out the door”. This one! Heavily leaning on hierarchy, when decision making is married to “I’ll have to check” becomes too much sand in the mortar causing it to crumble away when pressure/force is applied.
Thanks Dan.
Love the application of sand and mortar. I was mulling over ideas with mortar that is too wet. Your comment went another interesting direction. Thanks, WP.
Timely, as always! Thank you!
Thanks, 88.
This is good one, and I generally enjoy reading your posts. However, every time I link to your post from the email, I’ll still get an immediate prompt on your site asking me to sign up for the daily emails, even though I am already signed up for the daily emails. Is there a way to prevent that prompt from showing to those who are already signed up?
Thanks RO. I checked with wordpress on this and they tell me no. If it helps, clicking anywhere on the page makes it disappear. You don’t have to click directly on the prompt.
I apologize for the inconvenience. It happens to me too.
Fairly light treatment but yes, your attitude matters and affects your experience, as well as everyone you interact with and the culture. But, make no mistake, the leaders in the organization set the tone. That, along with the organization’s norms, rules, processes and procedures, also influence and create a culture. What is evident in your culture? Are you reinforcing the right values, behaviors and culture, or the wrong ones? Are you reinforcing respect as professionals, assuming good intention vs automatically finding fault, reinforcing innovation or trying to make something perfect with endless reviews? Or, my favorite, are you reinforcing competition and siloes vs collaboration? If your culture isn’t what you want it to be, look at all of the ways the wrong culture is being reinforced and change them. MIssion, vision and core values cannot just be words on paper, they must be lived and reinforced in big ways as well as small ones.
Thanks, Laura. Love your insights. I believe organizational culture reflects the way top leaders treat each other and the people who work for them. If you lead a team, you can impact that teams culture, but you can’t impact the whole organizations.
I feel like the term norms is another way of saying habitual behaviors.
Great Thoughts on Culture. We just experienced the power of culture negatively. An employee that accomplished a load of tasks and projects was creating a toxic culture without our awareness. People complied but complained. When we helped the person move on to another opportunity, people expressed their relief that she was gone and a fresh team of highly motivated helpers arose from the ashes! We got our people back, our culture of team back, our “Ness” back!
You bring up an important point, Paul. Culture is built by things we tolerate, avoid, and ignore. The power of negative influence exceeds the power of positive influence by a factor of about 3. (See the paper, “Bad is Stronger than Good.”
One of the quickest ways to bring positive impact on an organization is removing a toxic person. The problem is leaders sometimes ignore toxicity when it appears a toxic person is a high performer.