Is Your Culture What is Needed Today?
If you read my previous post, you learned about the importance of looking into the future to assess your culture today. If you've been in business for a while, so much has changed…so we asked if your organization's culture will support your vision for the future.
As important as exploring an ideal future state is, the information that drives a desire for change may be right under your nose.
So, the question we pose in this post is, "Does our culture support our organization now?"
As mentioned in the previous post, I believe every organization should reassess, and possibly refresh, their culture regularly- at minimum, every few years. An organization is a relationship and, for many, a significant one. So just as good relationships succeed because they are intentional about the relationship, organizations need to be intentional about their culture.
This is especially true if the culture was created by a small group of leaders and then cascaded down to employees. What may have made sense for the time and for the leadership group, may not make sense for those on the front line. Frankly, it's possible that living the values is impossible for the frontline given their work environment.
So how do you know?
Just Ask. The easiest way to check on the organization's culture is to go to members of the front line, ideally include some from the most marginalized group in the organization, and ask them what they know about the mission and values. A lot can be learned by those responses. Please keep in mind, that no answer is wrong…it's information. If these employees can speak clearly about the values and how they live the values and contribute to the mission, great. If not, there is work to be done.
Be a secret shopper. The next way to check is to "secret shop" areas of work. Just like in Undercover Boss, we can learn so much by just watching. Pay closer attention to meeting dynamics, notice how people interact with each other, watch what happens at the end of the day or shift. Do the behaviors align with the behaviors expected in the values? Again, there is no wrong answer.
To inspire my clients to slow down and watch, I ask, "what would I see if I shadowed you for the day?" It's a great question to ask throughout the organization, especially where teams and departments are dispersed. Just like I can observe the behaviors of culture at Disneyland, I can do the same in your organization.
Check your work. If the behaviors don't align with the stated culture, it's important to ask if the behaviors have even been defined and shared. Many organizations have written an incredible mission statement and values that they believe they live by, but when asked about the behaviors that drive the culture, I have received blank stares or empty answers.
This work is hard and takes time, so it gets missed in the urgency of rolling out the culture. I promise, this is a step not to be missed. If the values haven't been defined at the behavioral level, it's impossible to hold people accountable to them.
Backing up a bit, it's possible to find that the mission and values are just decoration on the wall. No judgment, but an indicator that the culture is not supporting the business.
If you don't have mission statements or written values, check out Part III of this series to learn more about developing culture (you can find it here). The mission and values may not be written down, but I am certain there is a culture in place- it's "the way we do things around here."
Dig into the data. Many years ago, I worked with an organization that measured everything. My job was to coach and develop the leaders and teams with the lowest engagement scores. My success metric was statistically significant improvement on the next engagement survey…But engagement wasn't the only metric we looked at. This organization narrowed down the most important question on the engagement survey and statistically correlated its impact on other measures. This has forever changed how I look at and measure culture.
What was the question? Something to the effect of, "is it safe to speak up?"
Where this question was rated “high,” the teams we generally in the top quartile overall in the engagement survey. For the teams where the question was rated low, the opposite was true. But taking it a step further, for teams scoring in the lowest quartile, they also found that turnover and worker's comp injuries were higher than the norm and quality and customer satisfaction were lower than the norms. So, if the culture was such that employees didn't feel like they could speak up, it was safe to assume the team was not performing on other key indicators.
There is a reason Peter Drucker famously said, "culture eats strategy for breakfast."
To be clear, I'm not a statistician, so I'm not going to tell you how to statistically corelate all of your metrics, but I have found anecdotally for this to be true. So, dig into the numbers and ask:
What is our turnover and is it higher than the norm for this role in the industry?
What about worker's comp claims, how are they compared to the norms for the industry? Your insurance company can provide this information.
What are our quality metrics? How do we score against industry norms?
How do we measure customer satisfaction? How do we score against industry norms?
It might be hard to see cultural impact at the organizational level, but it gets really interesting at the departmental level. When organizations can see the difference between the leaders who shine and those that don't, leadership can begin to manage, and/or update the culture towards the values and behaviors that are most successful.
Though this should probably be at the start of the post, but alas, I am leaving it for the end…what happens if we don't change is another important question.
Using the data above, you can determine the cost of not changing by looking at:
Turnover above the industry average for the roll. Baseline calculation is 33% of salary, but that's a conservative measure of the financial impact of each turnover. There is a ton of information about how to measure the cost of turnover at all levels of an organization, so research the numbers that make the most sense to you.
Worker's comp claims, time away from work, etc. all have costs associated with them. Just ask your actuary.
Quality measures can be monetized, so what are your measures of quality and what are the costs of errors and mistakes above the industry standard?
Finally, customer satisfaction. How much would it cost you to lose a key customer due to someone not servicing that customer in alignment with the values of the organization? What are the other costs of poor customer service?
You get the idea. For most organizations, assessing culture and the integrity with which it is lived within the organization can have a significant impact on the key measures of success.
Want help? We'd be happy to support you in assessing your culture. We start with a 30-minute conversation to figure out what you need. Click the button below to schedule.