Creating Culture

A few years back, I was standing in a courier shop, filling out the paperwork to send a Christmas present off to my aunt in Montreal (last minute, of course) when I overheard the clerk behind the counter berating a customer for filling out his form incorrectly. It wasn’t so much what she said, as the tone of her voice. Clearly, the customer was making her job more difficult and she wanted him to know it.

Curious, I looked up and was suddenly struck by a vision of irony. There on the wall behind her, in large six-inch letters, was the company’s mission statement. I’m paraphrasing, but essentially it said that they were committed to providing the best customer service experience available to any business in any industry. And, as if to emphasize the point, at the bottom of the plaque was a giant signature, a proud declaration from the company’s illustrious president.

Well, I’m not one to let a good bit of irony pass me by, so when it was my turn at the counter, I casually made reference to the sign on the wall and asked the clerk what she thought of it. Her reply said it all. “When you’ve been at a place like this as long as I have, you learn to ignore stuff like that”. Wow.

Now this is a large enough company that I’m certain their people have been through customer service courses. Probably more than one. And the packages all seem to make it to their destinations, so their systems are likely fairly solid. So what’s the problem?

In a word, it’s “culture”. Culture is the compass that guides the daily behavior of people in an organization. Culture has a critically significant influence on every business, yet rarely is it given adequate consideration.

One of my life-long teachers is fond of saying, “culture eats process for breakfast”. What he means is that while systems are important for driving business value, people are critical. In the case of the courier company, there likely were existing customer service policies in place, yet they clearly had little impact on the clerk in question. On the other hand, had the clerk been personally driven to give exemplary customer service, a few poorly documented policies wouldn’t have stopped her.

Every business has a culture, including yours. The question is, how do you get your culture working in your favor? Your objective is to develop an all-star team that will help grow your business into the next level enterprise of your dreams. How can you achieve this?

To answer this question, start at the beginning. Every great culture begins with people who are a great fit for the organization. In other words, people who share the corporate values of the enterprise. For example, Brian Scudamore, founder of 1-800-Got-Junk? says he doesn’t try to motivate his people, he hires people who are already highly motivated and then plugs them into an environment that nurtures and supports this attitude.

To attract a value-sharing team, you need to know what your values are. What describes your office work ethic and personality? Whether you’re a fun, energetic team of graphic artists or a cautious, detail-oriented group of accountants, you need to be as explicit as possible about who you are when you’re building your team, so that you don’t waste time meeting people who won’t fit in.

And, perhaps most critically of all, you need to develop a workplace that offers people the opportunity to grow. In other words, you need to give your people a reason to go to work on Monday morning, other than just to collect a paycheque.

Done properly, this is what Dr. Anthony Williams, VP Corporate Learning for Coast Capital Savings, calls a “teaching organization”. A teaching organization is one in which people are encouraged not only to learn from each other, but to play an active role in educating, supporting, and helping everyone else to improve as well. A teaching environment fosters a culture where everyone is inspired to look for opportunities to make things better.

At Wardell, we have weekly meetings where everyone is responsible for teaching something to everyone else. Usually it’s on topic, to do with business, but sometimes it’s something on a personal level that everyone can learn from. When we leave the meeting, everyone has contributed something of value to the company and to each other.

To really make this work, it’s also important that you continuously share your plans for the future with new (and existing) employees. By inviting your whole team to take part in building your company with you, you create an inspiring environment, which is exactly the type of place great people chose to work. You’ll know it’s working when you hear your people talking about the company as if they were owners. For example, instead of saying “the company picked up a big contract this week”, they’ll say “we picked up a big contract this week”. The more you hear the words “we, us and our”, the better.

It will take some work, but by concertedly developing your culture, you can effectively build a workplace that consistently offers opportunities for your team to grow, to be motivated and to contribute in significant ways to the future of your enterprise.

What more could you ask for?