Culture Is How Energy Moves Through An Organization (What Is Culture?)

Culture is a suitcase word – it holds a lot of meanings. So, let’s unpack it. The SHRM defines organizational culture as “…the proper way to behave within the organization.” Gallup says it “simply comes down to ‘how we do things around here’.” The internet offers all sorts of additional definitions, but a common point is that there are expectations of what it means to be part of a group. These formal definitions are helpful because they make clear that culture can be demystified.

Yet for many firms, defining (and improving) the culture remains frustratingly elusive. Even for clients where employees love their company, when asked why, those same employees say “I don’t really know…I just do.” Sometimes it’s “the people” or another hard to pin down factor.

At Persistently, we believe culture is best thought of as how energy moves around your organization. If interactions in your organization tend to create productive energy – you probably have a pretty good culture. This likely means employees are telling their friends about their experience and encouraging them to apply when positions are open (one of the ways good cultures maintain themselves and benefit the bottom line). It also means people are less likely to leave when something doesn’t go their way (people don’t always need to be right, but they do want to feel heard to know that they are a part of the team).

So What Does Energy Look Like in Practice?

After a recent executive team meeting, those in the office continued with an unstructured discussion. One of the executives (let’s call her “Lisa”) mentioned that she recently witnessed a conversation between two colleagues (let’s call them “Rob” and “Jan”) where Rob was delivering some pointed criticism to Jan in a way that Lisa felt was not very productive. We asked Lisa what she noticed about the conversation. Lisa said, “Jan had been trying to help out Rob’s team and voluntarily took it upon herself to do something that wasn’t in her scope of responsibilities. Rob didn’t like the output and was maybe too direct with Jan in telling her that this wasn’t her job. Jan kept trying to explain why she did it, but you could see they were talking past each other. Frankly, it got pretty uncomfortable.”

There’s a lot to this situation. Instead of focusing on Rob’s and Jan’s interaction directly, we want to focus on Lisa’s role as the observer:

Persistently: What did you do?

Lisa: Nothing. I didn’t think it was my place to intervene.

Persistently: How did you feel after seeing this?

Lisa: Concerned. A little deflated, having been in Jan’s shoes before with Rob.

Persistently: How do you think Jan felt?

Lisa: Discouraged. Maybe a bit demoralized.

And there it is. It happens throughout organizations all the time. Two people – eager and committed initiative-takers losing productive energy. Deflated. Discouraged. Demoralized.

It happens when people’s time is consumed in unproductive meetings, knowing their inbox and task list is continuously growing. It happens when a customer complains to an employee who isn’t given the language, training, and support to adequately respond. It certainly happens when bosses give unskillful feedback or when a female colleague has something mansplained to her. Culture is how energy moves around an organization. And it’s like atomic energy – ignite it the right way and it can generate immense power. Leave it unattended and it can cause a meltdown, creating an intolerably toxic environment.

Directly below we’ll provide some practical insights on creating an intentional culture. But before we do, let’s talk about how this story could have gone differently. Lisa could see that Rob and Jan were talking past each other because she had the perspective to see her teammates’ dynamic from a different vantage point. Someone once said, “it’s hard to read the label from inside the jar.,” and this illustrates why it’s so powerful to be an active observer in meetings and other interactions between teammates. It’s even more powerful if all the colleagues are equipped with explicit expectations for how interactions should work – so they can coach each other to a common standard.

Lisa is incredibly talented. She’s fiercely competitive, energetic, cares deeply about her teammates, and is constantly looking to grow and learn. But in this case, Lisa needed something more. Specifically, she needed (a) language to help guide her through entering that conversation; (b) a common framework used in her company as a standard for giving feedback; and (c) an expectation that it’s everyone’s job to ensure energy is moving through the company productively.

But Seriously, What is Culture?

Intentionally creating a culture requires being explicit about what you want.. If you have expectations for how you want your employees to engage with each other, have you told them? Do they have the language, framework and expectations that Lisa was missing?

Fortunately the tools of culture building are well known, even if they aren’t always identified as such. They are:

• Purpose, Values and Principles

• Traditions and Rituals

• Language

• Processes & Playbooks

• Tools & Systems

• Art and Symbols (i.e. Brand)

Key Insights For Creating An Intentional Culture

• Write it Down – The best way to be explicit about what you want is to write it down and make it visible to others.

• Notice It – Start by noticing when energy is being drained from an organization and clearly naming what is causing it.

• Motivate – People are varied and unique, yet almost all are motivated by feeling connected (a part of something bigger) and feeling competent (having the autonomy and skills + resources to do good work). Build explicit cultural norms and expectations around these.

• Be prescriptive – Many companies focus on processes and systems to drive clarity (we agree). Increasingly, more companies are focusing on core values (we also agree). But there remains immense value to be unlocked for most companies by being clearer on rituals and language – be precise about what “living the culture” sounds and looks like.

• Set Standard(s) – When you establish clear expectations (standards) for how people interact, then the whole team can hold each other accountable to the standard. This can be done for various meetings, for teaching people how to give feedback, for problem solving, and any other common dynamics that arise.

• Everything Is A Remix / It’s Okay To Steal / Keep It Simple – Well over 90% of the DNA across all humans is the same. All the differences we see come from a surprisingly small variation in our coding. The same is true for companies – we all have sales, people, expenses, etc. The lesson? Borrow liberally from those who have done what you want to get done, and ask for help if you need it.

Tips For Getting Started

• Establish a meeting standard – We’ll send you ours if you need a starting point. This allows people to focus on whether they should be in the meeting, how they should participate, and what to do to make themselves more useful (how to advocate for positive change).

• Make 1:1s mandatory – For everyone across the company, establish a standard for them and train managers on how run them. This is one of the best ways to establish feedback loops that both allow employees to be heard and to inform better strategy development and deployment.

• Encourage employees to vent up or out…not sideways – Train managers to ask employees if they just need to vent, or if they are looking for help. Employees are humans, and most humans need to vent occasionally. Also, apologize to the employee spouses at the holiday party for asking your employees to vent to them!

• Pick a Feedback Framework – Teach managers and employees how to give feedback in a compassionate and direct way. You can reinforce it through creating a peer recognition program that asks people to acknowledge their teammates by using the feedback framework. We like the Situation→Behavior→Impact framework for giving feedback that was popularized by Kim Scott in Radical Candor. It’s the one we introduced to Lisa to give her a path forward with her team.

There are a range of options available to organizations of any size to be more explicit about the culture they want to have and to build into their operations the guides to get them there. Start with these simple practices and evolve from there. And, if you have some related ideas, we’d love to hear from you.