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Brandon, Suzi and Molly discuss an article by the Harvard Business Review titled “6 Rules for Building and Scaling Company Culture.” They discuss what they agree with and add commentary based on their experience in developing company cultures.
Resources:
“6 Rules for Building and Scaling Company Culture” by Anthony K. Tjan, Harvard Business Review
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Brandon: Hey everybody! This is Brandon Laws and I’m here with Suzi and Molly. Before we jump into the discussion, I just want to say that if you could go to iTunes and give us a beautiful review on the “It’s About People” podcast we would very much appreciate it, so that other listeners can also—
Molly: Experience the love!
Brandon: Experience the love as Molly just said, that’s a great idea. So let’s jump into the discussion for the day. We’re going to talk about a Harvard Business Review article that Molly and Suzi found. It’s called “Six Rules for Building and Scaling Company Culture.” Here at Xenium we actually talk about culture quite a bit, we have a training on it and we talk about it in a lot of our content.
I wanted to run through some of the bullet points in this and then open it up for discussion about some of these things. So the first thing in this article, let’s start with Purpose. I think we can all agree that when you’re starting a company and you’re sort of going through a rebrand and trying to figure out who you are as a company, a purpose can mean everything. It’s not only starting with the founders of the company to figure out what our purpose for running this business and what do we do with our profits and all of these things, but it’s something that employees can align themselves with.
So let’s talk about purpose for a little bit. What do you guys think, and how does it resonate with you?
Molly: I like that word so much better than “mission statement,” in some ways. “Mission statement,” unfortunately, for many of us has become something that’s posted on the wall but doesn’t live in the culture, doesn’t live in the employees, and “purpose” is the reason I get up every morning and go to work. I like the choice of that word, and I’m seeing that crop up more and more as we talk about culture.
Suzi: I think that people inherently want to find their place in the world. They want to do something that’s meaningful and that they’re passionate about, and I think purpose is
part of that, being clear about your purpose. I think purpose is important from the organizational standpoint and, like you said Brandon, a lot of times founders, when they’re starting a company, they are very clear. That’s what’s motivated them to start the business in the first place. But I also think that there’s a place for teams and individuals coming up with their own purpose, and identifying how that aligns with the greater organizational purpose. Because again, that gives teams and individuals something to focus on, and it also provides additional meaning for them, in their work, versus focusing on the tasks at hand.
Molly: That’s very true.
Brandon: So, to pull the string further, this article talks about how once you find your purpose, building out a brand and common language—how important is that part of it? With the purpose by itself, you could easily lose track of that purpose if you don’t have a common language and standards around that purpose and that brand, and what that
means. So I think that the common language and standards around the brand itself are just so important for the employees to all rally around.
I read a book a few years ago called Tribes that really talked about this. All tribes have some sort of jargon that they use, and they all rally behind the same common purpose, but without that common language it wouldn’t really be what it is.
Molly: You guys will remember that we went through that exercise a couple years ago, the three of us were pretty heavily involved here at Xenium, to revise and refresh our, I guess you’d call it a mission statement, it’s had several different names. The part that we wanted to hang onto was exactly what you were referring to, Brandon, which is not having something so complex that an employee could not recite it basically from memory, it doesn’t have to be word for word. I think we’ve really got it dialed in now to short catchphrases that are meaningful, that resonate. And this is from a group that loves language, so it was a huge debate about what could get cut and what had to stay. It was really hard to get down to those few phrases! But it’s now something that’s used in all reviews, that’s used in our kudos to each other—for nominating a future employee of the month, we reference that. It’s living and breathing every single day, you see people referring to it. And the intent behind that, also, in most companies is that if people are not aligned with purpose, you have common language that you can kind of use to call each other to task, unfortunately, if it isn’t working. So it’s the good things and then it’s also the reminder of Oh yeah, that’s right—that’s what we’re about. Both are really important.
Suzi: In some of the work that we do for clients, we work on identifying what that purpose is, traditionally, like you said, it might have been referred to as the mission.
Molly: Or core values.
Suzi: Essentially what it boils down to is why. Why do we do what we do? Why do I drag myself out of bed every morning and go into work? Why? What’s the reason and purpose behind that? And then the second piece of it is, as you mentioned Molly, what are our shared core values that guide how we do our work? So that’s more around the how. How are we interacting with each other? How are we doing the work that we do? How are we interacting with our clients and customers? What are those common goals that we all share, things that are important to us in terms of how we do what we do? And going that step further and branding it, marketing it, and having common language is huge for attracting those people who have the shared values. That’s how you build and sustain your desired culture.
So I think there are all these pieces involved, and it doesn’t need to be any huge, formal process. It could be as simple as a group of stakeholders in the organization from different areas getting together and brainstorming and coming up with these ideas.
Brandon: That’s actually what this article talked about, embracing your frontline cultural ambassadors. That’s exactly what you’re talking about, a group of people that love and care about the company and its purpose so much that it spreads it throughout the organization. I think it’s that consistency, once you develop that brand and that language that you’re using and your cultural ambassadors are using that language all the time, it’s hard for the rest of the employees not to pay attention to that and start using it as well.
Molly: You’ve got rule number three here in the article that is “lead by example” and it’s specific to leaders, but I actually skipped right over that and went down to number four which is “embrace your frontline cultural ambassadors.” The article refers to your cultural cheerleaders, because in my mind I’ve seen, so often unfortunately, an organization where the leaders, the strategic leadership team, the executive leadership team, corporate, the owner, HR, is tasked with that cultural leadership and it goes no further and I’ll tell 
you, it dies on the vine. If you don’t have folks that are frontline at all levels that believe in and embody and lead by example without necessarily being a formal leader, not having a leadership title, I think it’s a done deal. You’re not going to be successful.
Brandon: I talk about the employer brand quite a bit, not just because I’m a marketer, but also because I’m on the culture committee and I think that for a successful employer brand, it can’t be that top-down, where they’re dictating what the culture and what the purpose and all that is. The employer brand, to me, is when you have all of the employees, marketing, HR, sales—they’re all coming together and rallying around the common purpose and they’re using that language together. And they’re the ones that develop the culture, they’re the ones that keep people there, that want to be part of that purpose, and they also attract people that like that employer brand as well and want to get behind that purpose.
Molly: I agree. I think that you can definitely, as a leadership team, start the conversation in terms of asking What is our purpose? How are we going to use that? And that’s a lot of the work that Suzi does with our clients to dig in and formulate that. But again, it has to be embraced by all levels of the organization. Unless that comes through conversation, not dictation—I’ve definitely seen that happen where it’s all This is our new corporate model and you will embrace it and everyone will memorize it! That doesn’t become a living, breathing force within the community.
Suzi: The interesting thing that I’ve found, and I think it’s a valuable part of this culture development process, is that when you’re defining what the shared values are or you’re looking at what’s the vision for our desired culture, there are always things that are currently in place, in terms of shared values and desired behaviors that are already in place, that are perceived as strengths that you want to make sure to include. But in every company, there are always these gaps, too. So it’s really a good opportunity to look at where those gaps are. And as we’re developing our values, our purpose, and where our guiding actions are going to be, how do those reflect our desired culture, our aspirations around our values that aren’t currently being met? So I’ve found that to be interesting and consistent with every company that I’ve worked with.
Molly: I think the flip side of that is addressing those gaps when they come up, that’s rule number five. You can create this lovely purpose statement, core values, whatever you want to call it, but if we’re not living by it and if we’re not holding people accountable to it—and that doesn’t have to be manager to employee saying, “Hey, our customer service is one of our core values,” or what have you, “and you’re falling down.” What I think is particularly powerful is peer-to-peer. Me coming to a peer of mine and saying, “I’m seeing a gap here. This is part of our agreed upon purpose, mission statement, core values.” It’s that self-awareness, the recognition that these principles or these values are so crucial to the culture that if they’re out of alignment, a conversation needs to occur. And then employees feel secure having it.
Suzi: Yeah, I think it’s taking personal responsibility and then it’s supporting and helping others.
Molly: Exactly. Because we all have gaps and holes in those conversations.
Brandon: Thanks for joining us here today! We’re going to definitely wrap this up, but we’re going to put a link up this article. Again, this is the Harvard Business Review, titled “Six Rules for Building and Scaling a Company Culture.” Thanks for joining us today, I appreciate it!