The Snowball Effect of Ignoring the Small Things
Over time, if you ignore the small things, they will eventually snowball into a big problem for you.
It’s all of those little things that you just walk past — the people arriving late to meetings, people not following through on their commitments, taking shortcuts, processes not being followed, customer standards not being upheld.
All of those little things that you choose to ignore can become big problems over time.
When Culture Starts to Slip
So, what do you need to do if you feel like your culture is slowly slipping away from what you want it to be?
Come back.
The obvious thing is to reconnect with your company values.
If you do have company values, it’s about taking those company values out, looking through them, and making sure they are proper, meaningful values.
What Makes Company Values Meaningful?
Now, what I mean by ‘proper, meaningful values’ is that you are prepared to take a financial hit. You’re prepared to hire and fire off the back of those values.
So if you interview somebody who can bring immediate financial benefit to your business, but they are not a culture fit — you know deep down inside they’re a bit of an ash hole or they’re just not the right fit — and you hire them anyway, you have just compromised on one of your values.
If you are prepared to compromise on your values time and time again, they are not meaningful. They’re not real. You are much better off getting rid of them.
When Values Are Just a Piece of Paper
Often I will walk into a business and I will ask the business owner to show me their values. Then they have to go and rummage through the business values drawer — which is next to the business plan drawer — and they’ll pull out a piece of paper.
They are very embarrassed because they forgot half of those values. They aren’t being used properly and therefore they are just pointless.
Discovering Your True Values
If you don’t have company values, then what you need to do is go through an exercise of discovering your company values.
The thing here is, they have to be meaningful.
Often, people use this as some sort of aspirational exercise. I’m not talking about coming up with a whole bunch of cool things that you want to be. I’m talking about establishing what is important and what already exists in the business, in terms of behaviours and standards.
It’s about trying to discover that and pull that out and get really, really clear.
The Risk of Values Misalignment
Often, business owners get wound up with team members because those team members don’t have the same values fit.
If you don’t have proper values, then you can’t stand in front of your team and communicate your values.
If you don’t have documented values, how do you recruit for values fit? You can’t.
If you don’t have documented values that are important to you, you can’t sit down with your team members regularly and appraise them against performance in the role and values fit.
Culture Drives Business Success
Culture is important.
You show me a business with a culture that is being reinforced from the top, that everyone really believes in — and I will show you a successful business.
If you let this stuff slide, it will become a problem. You will genuinely walk into your business one day, and it will feel like it’s somebody else’s. You will bring people into your business and not realise that they’re not the right cultural fit.
This is incredibly important work. Doubly important if you are aspirational, if you want to grow your company, and you know you’re going to have to hire loads and loads of additional people.
For more on the risks of hiring without values alignment, see Don’t Be the Bottleneck in Your Business.
Your Action Plan for Reinforcing Company Values
What you need to do is:
1. Revisit Your Values
Go back to your company values if you have them, and make sure they are proper, meaningful values.
2. Discover Your Values
If you don’t have company values, then go through a process to discover what those are.
3. Run a Values Reset
Sit down with your team members — with everyone in your business — and go through the values.
Communicate those values, why they’re important, and give the context behind them. Help everyone be crystal clear as to what those values actually mean to you.
There should be conversations around those values so that everybody has a proper, aligned understanding of what is intended behind each value.
Making Your Values Live and Breathe
The next thing is that those values should not be filed in the drawer.
They can’t just be sent off to the printer to be stuck up on the wall. They need to be ingrained in the business, and there are a bunch of things you can do around this.
Use Values in Performance Reviews
Pull them into your appraisals, reviews, and one-to-ones.
When you’re sitting down with somebody, it’s not just about:
– Are they hitting their KPIs?
– Are they achieving their outcomes?
It’s also about:
– Are they being good team members?
– Are they demonstrating the values consistently?
Lead by Example
The leadership team need to role model good behaviour here.
If you have a senior team that is not 100% on board with these values, then you have a problem.
You can’t have a situation where senior people are perceived to be breaking values and doing things their way. They need to be 100% aligned with those values, and they need to reinforce them.
If they aren’t 100% aligned with those values, then you are going to have to take action on that.
For more insight into how values impact recruitment and team alignment, read How to Improve Your Recruitment Process for Organisational Success.
Driving a Winning Culture Starts With You
Trust me, you want a business that’s going to be successful, and successful businesses have a winning, aligned culture. That is down to you.
Work with your leadership team to make sure you are all on the same page.
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Bring Your Values to Life
Finally, come up with initiatives.
Come up with things that can bring your values to life.
It’s not just about sitting down and talking about whether somebody has scored high or low with a particular value. It’s about coming up with cool exercises to bring those values to life, to encourage conversations, to encourage initiatives where people really engage with those values.
That is your job as the leader.
The Top Three Priorities for a Managing Director
One of the top three things as a Managing Director or as a CEO you need to do is:
- Drive culture
- Make sure the company’s hitting its financial goals
- Have a proper strategy in place that is effective in delivering the results
Number one: culture.
This is a very, very important exercise for you to fully embrace.
Your own culture.
And if you let things slip over time, that is going to come back and bite you.
Don’t let that happen.
See you next time on Mind Your Own Business.
