Culture

Are cultures intentional?

Sometimes they are not. But they should be.

Every organization, every team, always has a culture. Always. It exists whether leaders intentionally build the culture they want, or they simply allow it to haphazardly create itself.

Remember, there are two parts of an organization’s culture.

Most people think of the ‘social’ culture first.

And this is where the word ‘values‘ comes to mind.

Leaders can either use values to shape decisions and outcomes, or vice-versa. That second approach is pretty dangerous. For example – the CEO personally values honest and fair dealing with customers. But, they don’t make a point of talking about it with the staff because, well, everyone should already know that. And, although people may know it, temptations occur. When the sales team promises certain features (that will never get built) just to make a sale and get their bonus they may justify it as “that’s the way it’s done”. Then word gets around and the culture gets defined through this example of self-justified and dishonest dealings. The CEO could have been more diligent to create the desired culture. But it never happened. So the culture built itself based on the most expedient and self-serving examples.

When building your social culture, which values do you need to focus on? There’s no perfect set of values. But one of the most fundamental duties of executive leadership is to define the values that they want to guide the organization. The executive team might value aggressive risk-taking. Or they might value conservative growth. They might value a fun-loving atmostphere. Or they might value diligent focus. There’s clearly no right answer.

There are some values, however, that might seem good when discussed in a vacuum that end up, instead, encouraging harmful behavior. The rewarding of short-term ‘wins’ can lead to excessive risk-taking. Placing high value on the opinions of the loudest voices in the room can discourage others who really have the best insights. The executive leaders just need to think things through.

Aside from these somewhat obvious toxic practices, the executive leaders have a lot of latitude to inject the values they want. Then, they need to communicate them. Then, they need to live them.

And that brings us to an often overused concept – ‘authenticity’. Even if it is overused, it’s definitely relevant. If the executive leaders can’t authentically live the values that they’re talking about, there is no chance of building the culture they say they want. These executives can talk about values all day. But if their actions are in any way contradictory, people will emulate what they see, not what they are told.

Now let’s talk about the ‘performance’ culture.

As we said in other posts, the performance culture flows from the fundamental responsibility for governance. We defined governance as “the structure that assures that everyone in the organization is doing the right things, in the right way.” The performance culture is how the organization acts, day-to-day, in living out that governance responsibility.

For many executives, it can be easier to build and maintain their performance culture than their social culture.

Unlike the ‘social’ culture, the ‘performance’ culture is much less subjective. There’s little room for personal preference. Either it works well or it doesn’t. So executives need to base the performance culture around practices that will work. Every time. In any situation. Across the entire organization.

And that’s where TRM comes in.

Executives and team leaders can use TRM as a clear and intentional step to build a highly-effective performance culture. This is far too important to not be intentional. TRM is going to feel simple, practical, complete, and sustainable. In other words, it will be both comfortable and effective.

Not a bad way to build a performance culture.