4 things you can do today to shape your company culture

So I have this entirely unoriginal thought that culture is one of the most precious and valuable things in an organization or team. In my life & career I have been a part of good ones, great ones, and some that left a lot to be desired. I have seen cultures desperate to preserve themselves and others trying so hard to become something else. I have run the surveys, helped craft the initiatives, been the voice of the dissatisfied, and been the ear for leaders to all that was being said. 

Through it all my enduring conclusion is that everyone wants to be in a culture that values them, helps them grow, is genuinely fun, and in which they make their greatest contribution. And I think the best way to create such a culture is to think of creating/changing/influencing culture as being about the seeds you plant and not the fruit you want.

So with the backdrop of a plant struggling for dear life behind me I offer some suggestions on how to think about the seeds of culture, in four very obvious parts.

Part 1: Plant some seeds

This is obvious, very obvious, but it is worth saying anyway because we’ve all spent too much time in conversations where people are complaining about things they haven’t taken action to change. So plant some seeds and and while you do this I’d suggest:

1. Don’t plant the seed that somebody told you needed to be planted. It will be an absolute pain to authentically maintain and will struggle to grow in your soil.

2. Don’t leave it to someone else - this is one of those areas where everyone gets 100% of the responsibility and an extra 100% if you have a job title with senior/head/chief/lead

3. Do take your time to observe, discuss, learn what would best serve the people and the goals of the group - being able to explain ‘why’ it matters is an accelerant to growth (insert fertilizer joke here)

Part II: Water the seed

We can all tell stories of team building events, happy hours, training courses, and the dreaded ‘optional’ lunch with senior management that were the starts of good things but faded with last call. In my experience these are all well intentioned and often result in temporary shifts in behavior but if you want them to grow you’ve got to do the unglamorous watering. This work looks like what you choose to do on a Wednesday at 3pm with the pressures of life and work looming. Watering is everything you do to close the gaps between your words and actions and it is things like:

1. The meetings you keep and cancel

2. The feedback you withhold

3. The feedback you act on immediately

4. The random acts of kindness (they always have a huge blast radius)

5. The shield of invulnerability and omniscience you are willing to let down as a leader

Part III: Weed

We've established I am not much of a gardener but I do know that there are always weeds in the garden. They pop up and make things look messy, restrict growth, and suck energy from where it should be. In your team that could be a person or a thing or a meeting or an unspoken assumption. Thankfully they are super extremely very simple to identify if you know the question ask. The magic question is “if you could change anything around here what would it be and why?" or as a colleague would often ask "if you could be king/queen for a day what would you do?".

In my experience the hard thing for leaders is not finding the weeds but deciding to do something about the behaviors/unhelpful words/toxic leaders/etc that you hear about.  

Part IV: Let other people plant

Finally, what I find most helpful about thinking about seeds is that it reminds me that others should be able to plant theirs too. I confess that there was a time when such a thought sat uncomfortably with me - it was uncertain, I so badly wanted the outcomes to be ‘good’, etc. - but I’ve since learnt that as long as I keep planting, watering, and weeding more times than not the garden that is culture turns out wonderfully (& sometimes weirdly) well.