Your Company Culture Is Everything

“Culture is not about words or what you talk about. Culture is about behaviors and actions.”

That’s a quote from Daniel Coyle, New York Times bestselling author of The Culture Playbook: 60 Highly Effective Actions to Help Your Group Succeed. This is a book that shouldn’t be just read, but discussed. Coyle provides 60 tips that will kick-start important conversations that can move any organization to a more aligned/unified culture.

If you Google the definition of corporate culture, you’ll find interrelated words that include an organization’s values, vision, ethics, standards and more. You’ll also find interesting quotes such as:

· Culture is simply a shared way of doing something with a passion. – Brian Chesky

· The culture of a company is the sum of the behaviors of all its people. – Michael Kouly

· Corporate culture matters. How management chooses to treat its people impacts everything for better or for worse. – Simon Sinek

· Culture is what happens when the boss leaves the room. – Anonymous

These are all great definitions and comments about culture. There are many correct definitions, and of course, a few that aren’t. There is a similarity among them, which is that they emphasize behavior, hence the opening quote of this article.

In an interview on Amazing Business Radio, Coyle shared some of his insights on culture. He believes that culture doesn’t happen by magic. It doesn’t happen just because you put a few smart words onto paper. It’s a performance. It’s like a sport or a skill. It must be practiced, which is why he chose to title his new book The Culture Playbook.

Coyle shares what he calls The Three Pillars of Building Culture:

1. Getting People to Connect: This starts with building safety, which is closely tied to belonging. People should feel confident about both the company’s future and their future with the company. It is having the confidence to know that I hear you, and you hear me. We are connected and in alignment.

2. Creating Situational Awareness: We do this by sharing weaknesses and vulnerabilities to work on them together. In other words, share the truth. Here’s where we failed and what we could have done better. This supports a culture of learning and progress, not perfection.

3. Direction: You must know where you’re going. Establish a clear purpose, which Coyle refers to as a “north star.” Great cultures operate like a flock of birds in a forest. They stay connected. They self-organize to get past problems and move toward their goal.

Regarding the quote about culture being what happens when the boss leaves the room, Coyle tells a story (tip No. 50 in the book) about Danny Meyer, the successful restauranteur who founded Union Square Hospitality and The Shake Shack.

Meyer opened his first restaurant and it was successful, so it made sense to him to open a second restaurant. Within a short time, both restaurants were underperforming. He realized that if he wasn’t at the restaurant, the team didn’t act as they were supposed to. Meyer was the culture. When he was in the room, the team knew what to do. But he couldn’t be at both restaurants at the same time, so he temporarily closed the restaurants and went on retreat to analyze and write what would eventually become his own culture playbook.

While he recognized a number of behaviors that would drive his culture, he came upon two words that perfectly defined his north star: creating raves. If everything was right—the food, the service, the cleanliness, the ambiance, etc.—the experience would create “raves” from his customers. So with that two-word sentence, “Create Raves,” he designed the non-negotiable behaviors that everyone would be trained to deliver.

Culture does not, as Coyle says, “descend from the heavens. It is not going to flow out of your personality like magic.” It takes work, and requires you to pause and intentionally answer some questions:

· Where are we going?

· How do we define that?

· How are we going to stay connected?

· How are we going to be vulnerable and open with each other so we can share the truth with each other and not hide it or be uncomfortable sharing it?

These questions (and others) will help you build a stronger, healthier, better team—a better culture.