Author: Mike Urgo
If you haven’t read Episode 16: Establishing A Culture, I highly recommend checking it out prior to reading this article. And, no, pizza parties are not the key to success.
I think it’s important to identify where your culture is at, prior to deciding next steps. The best way to measure your culture is by talking to your people.
Are your people happy?
Do they feel comfortable giving you and your leadership team honest feedback?
Are you open to hearing that feedback?
Asking these questions can be scary and intimidating. The last thing you want to hear is that your people aren’t happy with the culture you have established, or that people are not happy in general. It’s important when receiving feedback to be open to hearing it and qualify the feedback when it’s received. It’s extremely rare to hear from everyone that things are perfect, so if that’s what you are hearing, it should raise some red flags.
I find it best when receiving feedback from a large group of people to try and remove the extremes. This can help account for the employees who are underperforming who won’t have very nice things to say, or the employees who just love to complain about anything and everything. It also helps remove the ass-kissers who will tell you that everything is awesome regardless of how they feel. Those people will typically bash things behind your back as well.
I have noted in my list of future articles to write about some tactics on soliciting feedback.
For this article, let’s assume that the culture you have established following Episode 16 is well received.
Now what?
How do you keep the momentum going and maintain the culture you have established?
The first step is to establish onboarding and succession plans. There’s no team that is going to remain static, new people are going to come into your group and people are going to grow into new opportunities. To maintain the culture you have established, you have to ensure that people are properly brought in and can grow appropriately. When I bring in new people to my team, it’s important for them to hear from three different levels about the culture and expectations. First, they should hear the message from me, then from my leadership team, then from their new peers. Each message should be consistent.
When onboarding into a new team, hearing that the leader’s message and the message from the folk’s underneath is consistent, it establishes that there are no cracks in the foundation. For that to happen, there needs to be a constant pipeline of bought in talent. Cracks in the foundation of a culture can quickly grow when a key leader leaves. It’s important to have identified and groomed their replacement so that there’s a consistency in leadership.
I have worked for organizations where leadership has held down people underneath them, because they felt it made them irreplaceable. In some cases, this is true, but it also means as a leader, if it’s hard to replace you, it’s difficult to advocate for you to move further. If you can cultivate the talent below you and teach them to do what you do, you can prove that you are now ready for the next step, because there is someone there to take your place.
Being able to onboard new people into your culture and have an established succession plan is imperative when it comes to maintaining a high performing culture. In addition to those plans, it’s also advantageous for you and your team to remain empathetic and inclusive. It can be intimidating for people to join a team that is running like a well-oiled machine, and it can take them some time to adjust. As new team members are brought onboard, or as someone who has been promoted starts a new role, it’s a good idea to level-set appropriate expectations with that employee and the team.
More often than not, because you have a great culture, people are going to want to do their best and look for results right away. It’s important to set realistic goals and expectations with them and let them know how much you appreciate their enthusiasm. But remind them that this is a new role and that mistakes are OK, if they are learned from. New employees or newly promoted employees can sometimes negatively impact their growth out of fear or from trying too hard. In sports, sometimes you will hear people talking about “letting the game come to you”. This just means they should remain patient and work within the parameters given to you to achieve success.
Finally, when it comes to maintaining a great culture, the last big piece of advice I have is to embrace evolution. So many times, I think people believe that they have found a secret sauce that works for a period, but then production starts to level off or even fall. That’s because a great culture can blind leaders when it comes to recognizing when it’s time to make a change. Remember to listen to your people and your peers, which is easier when embracing evolution is part of your culture.
It's a great idea as a leader to empower your people to read the news, keep an eye on trends and feel comfortable sharing what they are seeing with you and your leadership team. This will keep you and your team on the cutting edge of any changes necessary and ensure your team won’t become stale.
There are plenty of smaller nuances to maintaining a great culture that can be industry specific or specific to the type of job or team you’re running. But, if you can at a high-level focus on the onboarding experience and commit to succession planning, the people in your organization will feel less disrupted when personnel changes happen. Then you can focus on ensuring you and your leadership team remain empathetic and inclusive while always looking to evolve in your industry.
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