Culture is what sets an organization apart as either a hard place to work or a great place to work. An organization’s culture will directly impact the success of the organization. The leader(ship) of an organization is always creating culture. Culture eats strategy for breakfast. An organization can have all the strategy, processes and cool branding in the world, but if its culture is unhealthy everything else will not make it better. High turnover in an organization is likely the result of poor organizational culture.
Organizational culture is the set of values, beliefs, attitudes, systems, and rules that outline and influence employee behavior within an organization.
The leader of the organization is responsible for facilitating positive culture. The leader’s responsibility is to serve his team members so they can be successful in their roles. Culture cannot be ignored and hope that things will blow over and get better. Nor should leaders presume that healthy culture will just continue automatically. You will experience the organizational culture you are organized to experience.
Good organizational culture can be created and maintained. Unhealthy culture can be corrected and changed. It will not happen overnight or easily, so culture development must be intentional and consistent.
Consider these action steps to help create a positive culture for your team:
- Clarify the WIN. How is “mission accomplished” defined? Defining success gives team members a better understanding of what is expected of them the boundaries for them to operate within. When everyone on the team knows the real goal, they can work as a team rather than siloed parts.
- Celebrate the wins. Take time to celebrate the wins of the team. What gets celebrated gets repeated. Everyone wants to be a part of a winning team. Taking time to celebrate the wins reminds the team of the mission, honors the hard work of team members and clarifies expectation for what is expected of team members.
- Plan time to have fun together. Plan team fun days. Take the team bowling, axe throwing, to Top Golf or to an Escape Room. Make sure it is something that facilitates interaction of team members. Take the team out to eat together. The team that plays together stays together. These are not wastes of time; rather, they are investments of time.
- Overcommunicate. Work at communicating well with team members. When team members are not sure what is going on in the organization it creates mistrust and a disconnect between the team member and the organization. Help your team members fill the gap with trust by valuing them with good communication.
- Create healthy processes. Teams with an organizational culture tend to be more successful than less structured teams because they have systems in place that promote team members er performance, productivity and engagement. Healthy processes do not mean overbearing rules; rather, the focus should be to create helpful processes for how the organization is going to function, communicate, evaluate and promote. What is the organization’s mission, vision, values and strategy? What is the organization’s governing principles and accountability structure? What is the organization’s expectations of team members? How does a team member share ideas, concerns and questions within the organization? How are team members and projects/events evaluated? One more note on healthy processes – be consistent in implementing your processes. Culture is negatively impacted when the way things are supposed to be done do not match the way things are actually done. This will create confusion and frustration very quickly.
- Develop a healthy hiring & onboarding process. Hiring the right person for the organization is more important than hiring the most talented person. Does the candidate share the organization’s values? Will the candidate be a good fit for the team and culture that is being built? Is the team and organization the right fit for the candidate? A leader or organization can teach a team member how to do the tasks of a job and even him to do the work better. However, instilling values is much more challenging and undoing the harm from conflicting values is even more challenging.
Take a deep breath. Dream of what a healthy culture would look like for your team or organization. Start where you are and begin being intentional to change the culture. Culture is created by being consistent over time. Your team members will appreciate you for the consistent incremental progress that is made.
