Culture Change – Where Do You Start?

I was visiting a client the other day for our quarterly checkup meeting and stayed at a nearby airport hotel the night before. In the morning, the hotel was kind enough to have the shuttle driver take me to the meeting location. The shuttle driver greeted me with a broad smile, a warm hello and an offer to place my suitcase in the van. As he started the vehicle, he asked me if I enjoyed my stay at the hotel. He proceeded to tell me how great a hotel it was and gave me the impression that he wanted to make sure I would return to the hotel the next time I was in town. He described all the amenities available and asked if everything about my room was satisfactory. He told me the hotel welcomed all comments, whether bad or good and it would do everything in its power to make my stay was perfect.

As a direct representative of the hotel, he made a great impression. This was a very impressive display from a person who clearly believed in making guests feel important, welcome and satisfied. He loved his job and was prepared to go out of his way to do his job better.

Wouldn’t it be great if all your employees demonstrated this characteristic? Maybe I can state this a different way. Wouldn’t it be great if the people who demonstrated this characteristic worked for your company. Hopefully, you’re now starting to get the picture.

What is Organizational Culture

Companies should strive to create a strong positive culture where employees are proud of their individual jobs and where they are proud to work. Consequently, I’m often asked “how can we change our organizational culture.” What this question really says is “we have low morale, lack of trust, employee conflict, unproductive employees, high turnover, and client attrition.” These are the characteristics of a dysfunctional organizational culture.

Your company culture is who you are. It’s how you treat your customers; it’s how you treat your employees; it’s how your employees treat your customers and their fellow employees. Effectively, your company culture is how you do business. It naturally follows that your employees have to be of like mind in order to practice and follow this culture. So wouldn’t it make sense to hire only those qualified people that demonstrated the qualities you valued to operate your business? A great culture is essential for competing with other companies that are able to provide the same quality of service as you can. That needs to be one of your three uniques.

Where Do Your Start

The best starting point is to take the time to identify the three to five core values upon which you want to operate your business. Core values are defined as a small set of timeless guiding principles This may take time and is not an easy process, but it is essential if you want to improve your corporate culture. The process begins by making a list of potential core values. Visualize those employees who are in your organization and whom you admire for the way they go about their business. For instance, if you admire the fact that Linda in customer service is always up-beat, smiling and complimenting customers, add “Upbeat” to your list. If Fred in Operations always seems to meet his deadlines, add “Fulfils Promises.” If Joan in accounting always presents complete and accurate reports on time, you might add “Accountability” to the list. You can also observe those who work in other businesses and identify the characteristics that you would like to see in your business and add those to the list as well.

When you have listed the core values that are meaningful to you, evaluate each one and decide whether to keep, kill, combine or reword the core values you decide to keep. Make sure your final list clearly reflects your intention and does not exceed five. If there are more, it becomes far too difficult for all employees to follow.

Once your core values are finalized and documented, circulate them to everyone in the organization. This will now become the document every employee must follow. It will become the guidelines to hire, fire, review, recognize, reward all employees going forward.

Over a period of time, everyone in your organization will share and follow those core values. When the entire organization shares the same core values, everyone can now row in the same direction and work as a functional, cohesive and effective team. Following this process will definitely improve the culture of your organization.

In my next article, we’ll discuss how to ensure that the core values are followed by all.