In our research to understand where business leaders stand in their perception of culture, we’ve noticed three particular trends that we find worthy to mention.

As with everything in the world, people have an entire spectrum of their opinions and of course it makes sense to understand the position a person is in in order to be able to fully empathize with their point of view and position on a particular topic.

Here we base our opinion on a proven successful track record of building high performing team culture environments within both elite professional sports teams as well as some of the top tech companies in the world.

In times of isolated remote work, culture is the key to keeping team members engaged and keeping them in general

In our line of work of engaging in open and vulnerable conversations both with leaders as well as their employees and team members, it is becoming crystal clear the separation that occurs between what is visible on the outside and what is actually happening behind closed doors and hidden cameras.

Please note we are totally against the use of hidden cameras, time tracking technology, butt sensing chairs 😆 or any other type of technology you may have considered in the past as any form of “engagement enforcement”. <- THAT is definitely not going to fly in 2021!

So what is missing in trying to build a great culture at work?

1. Understanding what culture really is

Recently we came across an insightful podcast with Reed Hastings, founder of Netflix discussing how they’ve specifically built a culture of innovation at Netflix. You can listen to it here on a16z podcast.

Here’s a particular excerpt we’d like to highlight…

What is culture?

Ben: We’ve been talking about culture, but culture means a lot of different things to a lot of different people. It’s a very overloaded word. When you speak of culture in the context of Netflix, what do you mean?

Reed: I think company culture is the behaviours that get you promoted or get you let go. Everyone, when they go into a company, has to figure out: What’s the real culture? What are the values and behaviours that are rewarded, and which ones are violations?

Sometimes there’s a written culture, and sometimes companies follow that written culture. Other times, there’s a written culture, like Enron famously had respect, integrity, but those weren’t actually what got people promoted. What got them promoted was trading profits, and then people cut corners to do that, and eventually, the company blew up. In any company, the real culture is shown by who gets rewarded and who gets pushed out.

We’d highly agree with Reed that culture is really a set of behaviours that get rewarded, or at least that it should be considered in this way.

Here’s an example that differs in the definition of what culture means. It seems that inside the company Slalom Build culture is considered to be the social dynamics like “collaborating around a whiteboard, eating lunch together, or building a LEGO Hogwarts castle“.

When you believe that the foundation of culture are these social activities whether done in person or remotely, you will have a hard time trying to get all of your people to engage fully in a Friday night pizza and beers or one of these 37 Virtual Team Building Activities that seem to have become popular with everything that is going on.

Introverts who are not as open to large group social activities or people with children, families and their own social circles or those engaged in after-work activities like sports, arts and music will opt not to engage in such “culture”.

And would that be wrong for them to do so?

Unfortunately many companies, bosses and managers do end up promoting those members of their teams who they’ve had more chance to connect with over a Friday night chat than others who chose to have a life.

That doesn’t really speak for a value of “balanced lifestyle” if you’re promoting and rewarding people for engaging in “extra-curricular” work activities not allowing them time for hobbies and family life – the key foundation to a well-balanced and joyful living experience.

Similarly… culture is also way more than just the mission, vision and values of a company that a large majority may have assumed. Especially if nobody in your company knows what that mission and values are outside of the yearly review process, or even the behaviours that represent those values.

Culture is a living, dynamic element that is unique to each company and each team within that particular company. And when it is thought about intentionally, culture may lead to a fun, productive and meaningful work experience.

2. Separating theory from practice

In one of our recent calls with a manager passionate about culture, she asked a question, “How can you guys guarantee that a culture training would stick?”

Understandably you see that a lot with any kind of training. Whether it is a consultant who comes in for a day or even an hour or you attend a week-long seminar and a trade show, you’ve seen it happen… excitement is high during the training itself and then fizzles out as the time goes on.

We really loved this graphic represented in one of the ads run by WalkMe, a walkthrough training assistant for any type of a web-app (mostly used for training sales teams and others using new Salesforce flows).

Here’s how humans learn…

It is through a consistent application and re-application of principles that they become engrained into a human psyche.

How can you apply this to culture training or employee experience?

The practicality of it requires initial learning curve on both the side of the team leader and everybody else on the team. The key differentiator is that the team leader must go through the learning curve him or herself first, and on top of that quickly build up the confidence and certainty to be able to support every other team member as well.

If the leader is not fully committed to making a culture shift the whole theoretical application may just stay in the books or the shared drive somewhere in the cloud.

Once the commitment is there from the leader, then the buy-in also needs to be earned from every other member as well. The good thing is that when you engage everybody in the process itself, the buy-in is quite easy to get once they see the numerous benefits that apply to each member’s personal lives and experience.

This is also when employee feedback must be accelerated!

Especially in the time of remote work and a constantly accelerating pace of change as we enter into 2021, feedback must be on the priority list of any executive measurement.

Things like this feedback mechanism at Salesforce…

Your best employee engagement strategies can become obsolete if you don’t constantly improve on them by seeking feedback. We hold bi-annual employee surveys to gauge employee engagement and the health of the work culture.

Bi-annual surveys, like annual performance reviews are so 20th century! 🙄

Tools like TinyPulse and others are here to assist with a much faster and much more open lines of feedback and communication, not to mention a much more effective format for 1-on-1s.

Here though we must tread really carefully as we talk about the third missing link when attempting to shift company culture, and that is…

3. Keeping human emotions under the lid

Ask a few of your friends for some gossip on their office culture and you’ll hear it loud and clear!

The unfortunate fact is that this same gossip rarely gets into the hands of those who are responsible and accountable to transform it.

Simple things like requesting office equipment to assist with home office environment. Somebody may want to get a new webcam, a better set of headphones or a noise-cancelling microphone.

One side of the story is that employees and team members themselves would be hesitant to ask for such a thing if they did not know it was possible. Notice in this case how a lack of an environment allowing for safe expression would require a larger than average display of courage or assertiveness on the side of the team member to make such a request.

On the other side it is the response of the management and leaders of the company as for how they respond to such a request. Going through extended effort to open lines of communication and feedback just for such requests and feedback to fall on the wayside will waste all of the effort!

Culture is not just a weekend training or this one thing or that one thing. It is an underlying foundation of putting people first.

And the behaviours you see in your culture today are the expression of the actual values the company chooses to embody vs the usual “trust and integrity” that so many are striving for! 🥳

If you’d like to see where you score with your team culture today, try our Remote Culture Scorecard as a guide to uncover any remaining gaps you may want to fill as a courageous leader.