Culture club

Culture refers to an organisation’s values, beliefs, and behaviours. In general, firms with strong cultures achieve higher results because employees sustain focus not just on what to do but also how to do it.

A culture can be what connects a diverse set of businesses and makes it into one company. GE consists of six very different business divisions – it unifies its company through its culture and values. But a common culture is not just important to a large, diverse organisation. Even if your business is small, you will still benefit from creating a set of culture and values that all of your team can recognise and follow.

In some cases an organisation’s culture is actually seen, rightly or wrongly, as an impediment to getting a new idea or business launched. Often, certain ways of working are considered taboo or things have failed in the past and so cannot be tried again. Engendering a culture which supports the goals of the corporation and empowers its people is an essential platform for growth. Being an attractive place to work certainly impacts a company’s performance.

A company culture is often treated like some overwhelming force of nature that no one can exercise any control over. In today’s fast-paced environment it is all too easy to focus on short-term goals and neglect to pay any attention to investing time into putting a culture in place that engenders the traits you want in your company and removes old and unwanted behaviours. At the end of the day, when we are talking about an organisational culture we are actually talking about changing the hearts and minds of individuals.

Steps to developing a business culture

• Start small, act big

Change has to start from the top. If you are a manager, begin change with yourself – become a leader in culture change. Work with the team around you and try to understand your culture as it currently stands. You could embark on a project to identify the values of the organisation. What works? What would you like to change?

Values are only helpful if they guide us when making choices in the ways that we deal with other people. For example, a very generic value such as ‘we value being ethical in business dealings’ is probably not that helpful in motivating people. It would be more useful to identify and give examples of ethical practices. When organisational members observe a leader making a personal sacrifice for a value, it sends a strong message that this value is important.

• Build trust

Trust begins with you and your team. It is natural for people to trust the people they work most closely with, but distrust those that are in another department or function. If people don’t trust one another, you will struggle to build a culture of open communication and teamwork. Ask yourself and your team honestly about what percentage of time is actually spent dealing with political games/hidden agendas and conflicts. When you reach a figure, think about how to reduce it through having open communication channels on dealing with criticism and complaints.

• Engender collaboration

The reason that most small teams trust each other is because they have an opportunity to work with people closely and get to know them. Rather then trying to force a culture of compromise (which people resent), try to encourage a culture of collaboration, which requires commitment from people to actually listen to each other fully. To work on collaboration skills, select a project and bring together a new group of people to try and find a resolution. Encourage people to share ideas and to hear each other out. Make sure a teams’ success is celebrated. A small reward can go a long way to changing behaviours.

• Inspire creativity

Work on the challenges, both big and small and encourage creativity, by making people think of ideas they believe would never work in the current organisation, either because the idea would be ridiculed or because it was tried before and failed. Sharing ideas out of the norm helps build trust.

• Inspire action

There are many barriers to action. For example, at a personal level where too much time is spent on activities that are not critical to team goals, or at an organisational level from insufficient employee motivation and even on a leadership level that fails to engage the hearts and minds of people. So how to inspire action that breaks through these barriers? The key is to deliver. Plan on implementing ideas and execute that plan. If you meet with failure, work out why. Notice how long it takes to do the planning for the implementation of an idea and work on making the process better.

Commit to having action plans at the end of every meeting and not just an action to plan another meeting. Understand the strengths of each team member and use him or her to their full potential. It sounds obvious but make sure you have people doing what they do best.

These simple techniques can help to develop the culture you want in your organisation, starting with your team and yourself. There are many business benefits of why having a culture of openness and empowerment will drive success for your company, but the real success will have to be discovered in your own business. Engage the hearts and minds and you will see the rewards.

Bruno Heese is commercial and business development director at GE Money Home Lending