A Company’s Culture - Creating it, sustaining it, and not losing it. 

‍WHY TALKING ABOUT CULTURE IS IMPORTANT. 

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Company Culture is one of the most important elements in a company’s progress to stability and success, but it is also one of the most undervalued and under-pursued elements of most companies. In other words, it seems for most people, company culture is left to chance rather than intention. 

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And this is a problem.

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47% OF ACTIVE JOB SEEKERS CITE COMPANY CULTURE AS THEIR DRIVING REASON FOR LOOKING FOR WORK.

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EMPLOYEES WHO DON’T LIKE THEIR ORGANIZATION’S CULTURE ARE 24% MORE LIKELY TO QUIT.

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ONE-THIRD OF JOB SEEKERS REPORT BEING WILLING TO TAKE A 10% PAY CUT FOR A JOB THEY ARE PASSIONATE ABOUT.

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58% OF EMPLOYEES WOULD STAY AT A LOWER-PAYING JOB IF IT MEANT WORKING FOR A GREAT BOSS.

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The statistics show that poor company culture drives employees away from their jobs. That’s why one out of every two people applying for work at your company are fleeing bad cultures. If at this point, your company culture is haphazard, meaning, it’s just developing into whatever it’s developed into, that process is going to repeat itself. Eventually they’ll leave your company too.

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But there is this other opportunity that exists for you: RETENTION. 

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We’ve seen that people are more likely to leave a company that has a bad culture. But the opposite is also true, they are more likely to stay at a healthy company if two elements are met. 

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First, the work they are doing is meaningful. 

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They feel impassioned about the work. 

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Second, the people they are working for are good.

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They accept less pay if the person they work for is a “great boss.”

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One way to look at a healthy work culture is to simply aim for these two targets: help employees see how work is meaningful; develop healthy leadership skills so that you can actually be a good boss to those who work under you. 

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If a company just focused on these two areas, this would be enough focus and change alone to make a noticeable difference in a company’s culture. 

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DEFINITION.

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A healthy business culture is birthed from clear and intentional thinking, its aim is to develop others incrementally, and seeks to share the burden of decision making and problem solving. 

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1. CLEAR AND INTENTIONAL THINKING. 

I’m reminded about a favorite quote from Abraham Lincoln, 

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“Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe.”

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This quote is perfectly suited for the business world and for leadership. At its most basic level, it’s a quote about preparation. I can see this quote being used to encourage students to go college, “before rushing into the workforce, spend time preparing!”

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But for your business, this is important. So here’s the principle, 

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To lead well in life, you need to do pre-work. What Abraham Lincoln is arguing for is a bias for active-leadership over reactive-leadership. 

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If you practice active leadership you will, 

1. Instill confidence in the people you lead. 
2. Provide a healthy example for your employees on what good leadership is. 
3. Be better at problem solving, and will come up with better solutions. 
4. Think deeper into the future and make decisions based on medium to long-term goals versus day-today thinking. 
5. Lower the temperature of the office. You will have less heated moments, less outbursts of anger because you are solving problems before they become problems. 

A healthy work culture is developed when leaders know what their goals are and what direction the company is heading in. 

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2. DEVELOP OTHERS INCREMENTALLY. 

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THE PEOPLE MATTER. 

The people you hire matter. And everyone you hire will fit into one of three categories, 

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UNICORNS. People who match the culture of success you’re trying to build.

TRAINEES. People who you can grow to mAtch the culture of success you’re trying to build.

PIRATES. People who will never match the culture of success you’re trying to build.

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Your team should consist of the top two groups, UNICORNS and TRAINEES. With these two groups of people you are able to build a successful and healthy culture. 

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But then the next question, “what do we do with them?”

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The obvious answer is to put them to work. But that’s an incomplete answer. It’s incomplete because it lacks a full view of what we’re able to accomplish with our employees. In this sense there are two different mentalities with two completely different outcomes. 

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YOUR MENTALITY MATTERS. 

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UTILITARIAN MENTALITY

If you have a utilitarian mentality that means you see your employees for what they able to accomplish for you. They are tools to be utilized. In one sense, no problem. An employer has a need, to accomplish some task, an employee has another need, to earn money to support themselves. In this sense, both the employee and the employer have a “utilitarian mentality.”

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No big deal. 

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But, this “utilitarian mentality” is inherently short-sighted and healthy culture is not built when this is the basis of the relationship and goals. 

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DEVELOPMENT MENTALITY

But, if you have a “development mentality” you have a longer-term view of what you are trying to accomplish with your employees. And this mentality has some important presuppositions built into it, namely, 

1. Whatever “bits” you put in, the more “bits” you get out. (This is good for the company). 

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2. Part of your purpose on earth is to do good. (This is good for your soul). 

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3. SHARE BURDEN OF DECISION MAKING. 

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AN EXAMPLE FROM THE WAR IN UKRAINE. 

There have been a lot of surprising aspects to the War in Ukraine. The biggest surprise was Ukraine not falling to Russia within the first day, which most people thought would happen. But as the war continued there was another surprising aspect to the war, Russian Generals were dying. 

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If you remember the news, “four Russian Generals are believed to be killed,” then the number was eight, currently, its thought that 12 Russian Generals have died in the war. And the big question is, how is this happening?

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Here’s an article from a military news website, they explained it this way, 

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Another reason why senior commanders may be on the frontlines of the Ukraine war is the Russian military has a very centralized decision-making process, said Rob Lee, a former Marine captain who also spent a year with a defense-focused think tank in Moscow.

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“The units are smaller, and so officers have responsibilities that in the U.S. military are done by NCOs [noncommissioned officers],” Lee told Task & Purpose. “They have far more officers in the military than we do. They don’t have a strong NCO corps. As a result, officers make more decisions.”

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That also means that Russian soldiers at lower levels of command are delegated less responsibility and they show less initiative than enlisted U.S. service members, Lee said.

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What seems to be happening is that Russian leadership is centralized. And the more centralized leadership is, the more responsibility for the day to day logistics and planning fall onto the people at the highest levels. 

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In the US, the military has a leadership strategy called Decentralized Command. What this means is that more authority and decision-making responsibility is thrust down the chain of the command. 

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The result is two-fold: 

1. US Military units are able to be more nimble and responsive. They have the freedom to make tactical decisions. 
2. The higher ranking leaders have more space and freedom to focus in on big-picture problems. 

In other words, the lower-ranked soldiers bear more responsibility and the higher ranking officers are not weighed down by minutia. 

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Now apply this principle to your work environment. If you were to build a culture at your business that trains and releases your employees to take on more of the decision making process, it would guard you as owner/boss to focus on the more important aspects of your business. 

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The next question is, how do you make that move?

1. Give employees freedom and authority to make these decisions. 
2. Accept that you’re going to have to watch your employees make mistakes and bad decisions as they grow this skill. Make this a safe and edifying environment, it will work out in the long run.

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