Do you have a vision for your most valuable business asset?
A June 2021 article in Forbes magazine proposed that an effective culture is a company’s most valuable business asset. Does it make sense for a company to operate without a vision for its most valuable asset?
Every organization has both spoken and unspoken expectations, values and norms within which we operate. Organizational culture is defined by the expected norms of behaviour that employees experience every day. Sometimes those norms align with the company’s stated vision and values, and sometimes they don’t. Every time we add new people to the team, we add new perspectives, behaviours and ideas to our culture - which is why diversity is such a business advantage.
Ultimately, our ideal culture is the one that’s most effective. An effective culture is one that is both strategically relevant and authentic: strategically, your culture reinforces the specific behaviours most essential to your business' success, and it’s authentic- it’s real in the everyday experience of your employees, and they value it.
That means that there is no one-size-fits-all “right culture” that you need to achieve. Very different company cultures can be equally effective in different contexts. For a new company that’s growing quickly and creating new products, a culture that expects front-line employees to use creative problem solving is key to success. For a different company where business success depends on doing complex tasks consistently in order to adhere to safety regulations, innovation on the front lines might lead to disaster.
But it’s important that we know what we’re aiming for in terms of culture, just like every other aspect of the business. If we aren’t aiming for anything, how do we know if we’re on the right track? Developing and agreeing on our culture’s norms will create points for navigation and making choices. When structures or processes conflict with that vision, we can remove or replace them. When less effective cultural norms slide in, as they will, they can be recognized and addressed before they erode the cultural norms that support our business success.
Because the ways we work together and the values that drive behaviours and expectations are multi-faceted and always evolving, culture can sound like a buzzword, or a mysterious “X-factor” that’s hard to define, influence and change. But don’t be put off. You’ve been living and working within cultures your entire life- at home, at school, in your community, nationally, ethnically, racially, regionally, and in workplaces. You know more than you think about culture, even if you’ve never really talked about it before. Once your team has a shared vocabulary and conceptual framework to talk about culture, you’ll be amazed at the insights that will emerge.
And it’s important to talk about work culture because it’s there whether we talk about it or not. It’s either accelerating our business success or holding us back. If we don’t talk about it, we can’t understand it, manage it and form it into the ideal culture for our company.
A company's culture changes as it grows, and is influenced more by actions than by words. For some companies, their culture has a focus on providing opportunities for socializing and connecting with fun activities to balance out the intense work pace. Other companies pride themselves on being down-to-earth, flexible, and providing a healthy work/life balance. Some companies define their culture by its spirit of service and they live it by making meaningful contributions through community service on company time.
Your culture can be your most valuable business asset. Does your company have a language and a framework for understanding and talking about it? In today's competitive recruitment landscape, employees increasingly consider work culture as a major factor that motivates them to join, stay, and thrive as part of your organization.
Getting started is easy. Share two questions that can be discussed at the team level, or even in a short survey for wider feedback. The first question helps everyone look back at what may have been a tough year and help you understand what strengths they value the most: What have we learned about our team's strengths over the past year?
The second question looks ahead and provides a helpful snapshot of perspectives on a future vision: Which of our values will be most important for us to really live in 2022, and why?
These questions will give you a view into how your team is doing in terms of its teamwork, morale and perceptions of business effectiveness. Discussing the answers you hear will generate ideas to update or create a vision for your most important business asset -- an effective culture for your organization.
GrowthPoints to take away:
Recognize that an effective culture is a company’s most valuable business asset.
It’s important to talk about work culture, because it’s either accelerating our business success or holding us back.
An effective culture is one that is both strategically relevant and authentic.
There is no one-size-fits-all “right culture” that you need to achieve.
It’s important to decide what we’re aiming for in terms of culture.
A company's culture changes as it grows, and is influenced more by actions than by words.