Dont Let Your Company Culture Just Happen

Right now 7 out of 10 people in your organization are not actively engaged at work. Disengaged
workforces are a global problem; and the costs are high. In the U.S. alone, companies are
hemorrhaging $450 billion to $550 billion in lost productivity each year.

Companies try to motivate their people with incentives and unique perks like ping-pong rooms
and free meals, but none of those approaches address the deeper issue of why employees are so
disengaged.

We believe the answer is culturethe formal and informal values, behaviors, and beliefs
practiced in an organization. Very few companies intentionally work on their culturein fact,
many companies just let culture happen.

XPLANE founder Dave Gray says that a companys culture is like a garden. You can design
culture but nature will still be a force. You cant control everything about your culture but you
can intentionally take it into your own hands. Culture will emerge through constant care and
nurturing.

To become more systematic about culture design, we use a tool that our company, Strategyzer,
and Yves Pigneur co-developed with Gray. Its called the Culture Map. The Culture Map allows
you to have a conversation about the three key elements of organizational culture:

Outcomes. These are the things you want (and dont want) your culture to achieve.
 Behaviors. These are the very visible parts of your culturethe positive or negative
actions people perform everyday that result in the desired or undesired outcomes for your
company.
Enablers and blockers. These are the formal or informal policies, rituals, actions, and
rules that enable or block your culturethe elements that are truly intentional to
achieving a desired culture.

Lets look at how you can use the Culture Map to intentionally design the culture you want to
increase happiness and engagement.

There is no right or wrong way to design culture. Every organization is unique and you will
design what fits your needs. The Culture Map is simply a tool to help you facilitate a
conversation with you and your team.

Outcomes: What are you trying to achieve?

You start by describing the outcomes you dont wantwhat youd see if your people werent
engaged. What are the outcomes you dont want to see? You could pick a theme, instance, or
incident that has taken place internally to get the conversation started. In this example, the main
theme or incident is unhappy and unengaged workers. This helps you understand what youre
trying to actively avoid.

The outcomes youre trying to avoid may include:

People perform poorly

People hate coming to work
People have checked out

To illustrate how this process works (and keep it simple), weve selected three broad outcomes.
When you start to discuss implementation inside the company, your conversation will yield a
greater number of more detailed outcomes.

Next youll identify the outcomes of your desired culture that will counter the negative
outcomes.

In this context you might identify that you want the following:

People are happy at work

People are engaged
People do their best work

Your desired outcomes may often be the opposite of your undesired outcomes but it might be
helpful to think about what your company has and what your company may desire. For example,
an internal pro-environmental stance to become a carbon neutral workplace may engage
individuals, but the outcome may not directly answer a negative element in your existing culture.
Behaviors: What do you want to see in people inside your organization?

Then you look at behaviorsthe very visible part of your culture. These are the actions people
perform every day that result in the outcomes youve just listed. That is, what do you want
people in the organization doing and not doing? We recommend that you look at three categories
of behavior: individual, team, and leadership. Again, here you look at undesired and desired
behaviors.

In this example, you might list the following undesired behaviors:

Individual behavior. Show little interest in their work, procrastinate (surf the web),
avoid responsibility
Team behavior. Participate in in-fighting and blaming, look out for oneself, have a
personal agenda, sabotage projects
Leadership behavior. Care about personal power and prestige, only focus on quarterly
numbers

Then think about what are the good behaviors that could counter bad behaviors. You might list
the following:

Individual behavior. People show passion for their work, are transparent about their
work and progress, people take ownership; and most importantly, people look forward to
coming into work
Team behavior. Collaborate and help each other, are open and honest, have fun
Leadership behavior. Listen to teams, help people grow

Enablers & Blockers: How do you intentionally shape the culture?

This is where you have the ability to influence the outcomes and behaviors youve identified.
The enablers and blockers are the formal and informal levers that leaders, teams, and individuals
can intentionally pull to drive a companys culture.

Think carefully about each of these four elements:

Incentives are a basic element of doing good work. People should be paid fairly and
competitively for their roles, and increases in compensation should be a predictable
process. In addition to pay, the culture should work to reward results generated versus
hours worked. Employees shouldnt feel anxious about how visible they are in the office
or on projects, and strict timekeeping can create a sense of mistrust between teams and
management. Lastly, and this is something we care about a lot, good failure should not
result in career suicide.
Context and rules will determine what rituals and processes allow people to do great
work. If initiative is punished instead of rewarded, people will feel less compelled to push
new ideas internally. The ability to make quick judgment calls and move decisions
forward will outpace any lengthy or cumbersome internal approvals process. The same
goes for autonomy and flexibilitydo you trust your teams to lead while you get out of
 the way? Are teams allowed to participate in flexible work options that encourage their
productivity? Your teams need the right tools and resources to do their jobare they
spending more time fighting for what they need? If access to those resources is limited,
individuals will be less inclined to take part in initiatives with so many blockers in front
of them.
People are the core of a great organization and the processes and systems you use to hire,
promote, and reward them can be both enablers and blockers. Bob Suttons famous no
asshole rule is an important factor when hiring people for your company, especially if
theyre star performers. Sutton believes that star performers who are demeaning can
wreak havoc on organizations. You just cant compromise your business on people like
that.
Leadership has to play a role in the culture if the whole organization is to transform.
And leading by example is a pivotal component of management enablers (and blockers:
leadership can lead by poor example as well, of course). If leadership exhibits the
behaviors expected of teams and individuals, then people in the organization will follow
suit.

Once youve captured the conversation, youll want to break down the enablers into day-to-day
activities and experiments. This will allow you to gather evidence as to whether you have the
appropriate enablers in place to encourage positive behaviors and outcomes. As leaders, you will
not only oversee many of these experiments but youll participate in them, too. For example, you
might run an experiment where you enable teams with the autonomy and flexibility to make
certain decisions on a project without leadership involvement. By getting out of the way and
enabling teams to make decisions, you may create behaviors that foster trust, honesty, and
collaboration. Youll be able to see if the experiment results in the outcome of happier and
engaged employees.

This is what the two versions of your Culture Map will look like. They will serve as an important
reference tool as you assess if youve made progress toward your desired culture, and help you
steer clear of the undesired culture.
Courtesy of Strategyzer

Courtesy of Strategyzer

Company culture can feel like a beast, which is why many leaders avoid having these tough
conversations. But there are small ways to get started. Here are three things you can do together
in order to begin the conversation in:
 10+ minutes. Do a quick assessment to map your current culture. Have everyone think
hard about enablers and blockers. Quickly capturing your current culture will allow you
to carry over any existing enablers and positive behaviors that can also work in your
desired culture.
60+ minutes. In a slightly longer session you can facilitate a shared understanding of
your current culture with people contributing their perspectives. Collaboration is key.
How has your Culture Map changed with others sharing their input?
180+ minutes. In this long session, you can move to defining your desired culture and
kick off a conversation about how the company can move from the current culture to its
desired culture. Individuals, teams, and leadership can collaborate to discuss and capture
the desired enablers and behaviors that everyone can begin to experiment with and
implement internally.

Companies should be as intentional about culture as they are about strategy and business model
innovation. We believe that a tool is incredibly important for discussing and capturing
organizational culture. Each one will be unique to the challenge the organization has to face,
whether thats tackling growth, crisis, or disruption. You cant create a culture that will do any of
that without the right tools.