It’s about what you do

Through my time as an entrepreneur, I became obsessed with understanding company culture. Mostly because every entrepreneur I meet will give me the same advice: “Pay attention to your company culture. Culture is important, and you will want to shape it as your startup grow.”

But what is company culture?
Maybe it is the ping-pong table you have for people to play at lunch? Nah, that’s a perk. Maybe it is allowing dogs at the workplace? Lovely, but also a perk. Company values then? No, those are aspirations at best.

If you look at Wikipedia, it defines organizational culture as having to do with the “ behavior of humans within an organization and the meaning that people attach to those behaviors. “

Behavior is what you do. It’s what the other leaders of your organization do and how their actions influence others. It’s about the decisions you make, how you make those decisions, and why.

I failed to showcase desired behaviors to shape my company culture before, and sometimes I still do. You are probably doing it too, especially if you are in a leadership position. We do it every time we say people come first and re-schedule 1:1 meetings. We do it every time we say communication and transparency are essential, and we fail to provide clarity.

We are still influencing our company culture with a negative behavior; we are just not helping shape it to what we aspired when we set up our company mission, goals, and values.

Let’s make an experiment, quietly answer the following questions:

• Is that email so important that I need to return it today, or can it wait till tomorrow?
• Is the quality of this deliverable good enough, or should I keep working on it?
• Do I have to be on time for that meeting?
• When using company money, should I buy a cheap or expensive option?
• When I negotiate this contract, what’s more important: the price or the partnership?
• Should I point out what my peers do wrong or what they do right?
• Should I go home at 5 p.m. or 8 p.m.?
• If I know something is not working in the company, should I say something? Whom should I tell?
• Is winning more important than ethics?

How your team answers these kinds of questions’ is your company’s culture. Now ask yourself, would the majority of your team have the same answers?

These are a few decisions we make in our day to day work, and there is no manual for answering them. Even if you put effort into choosing your company values to help employees make these decisions, in reality it most likely won’t help much.

Your culture is how your team makes decisions; it’s the set of assumptions your team members use to resolve the problems they face every day. It’s how they behave when managers are not around.

So, as a company leader, how do you design and shape your team’s behaviors, and therefore, your company culture?

Start by understanding who you are
As a leader take time to reflect on your own personal values. Understand your personal weaknesses and strengths. Reflect on what motivates you about life, about your work. Seek and be open to feedback about your personality, how you are perceived, what could you be doing better. If you never did any self-reflection exercise, I would recommend starting with here.

Deliberately design the culture you want to see
You should still choose the values you aspire your company or team to have. But when doing so I recommend doing a few things:

• First, make sure your existing leadership team are currently displaying those values, ideally these values should come from who they are
• Second, make sure your values align with your business goals; if you are trying to scale your company or growth fast and you decide to have a value that says “take it easy” you are very likely to display inconsistent behavior.
• Third, ensure that the values you chose are actionable; they have to be linked to things you do, not aspiring beliefs.
• Fourth, ensure that your new hires display the values and behaviors you aspire to have in your organization.

Be aware of what message your behavior is conveying
This comes back to those questions above. The decisions you make on those situations and how you act on a day to day, as a leader, are the biggest signals of culture your organization has. Don’t be fooled by your cool flat structure, as a leader, your team is always looking at what you are doing to shape their own actions.

Don’t be afraid of giving criticism
There’s a saying in the military that if you see something below standard and do nothing, then you’ve set a new standard. Occasionally, someone on your team, or even yourself, might display a behavior that is not aligned with the culture you are trying to foster. When that occurs, it’s essential as a leader to course correct that behavior before it influences the way the team acts.

This cultural conversation is not easy, it’s incredibly nuanced. Different companies have different cultures that appeal to different people. Your culture might change as your business objectives change and some behaviors become more desirable than others, but regardless of change, always be aware of how you and your peers act.

If your company values aren’t displayed in everything you do, it is possible that your company’s culture isn’t what you consider it to be.

I referenced and used the language of quite a few authors, here are a few resources I would recommend checking on this subject.

10 great TED talks about organizational psychology
Adam Grant, specifically his podcast with TED
Book: What you do is who you are by Ben Horowitz
Book: Business culture design by Simon Segmeister
Book: The Culture Code by Daniel Coyle

Originally published at https://coelholucas.substack.com.