How do you fix cultural flaws as a company grows?

@Belldon, nicely put. I agree, incentive drives behavior. It's true in sales, and it's true outside of sales. If a company rewards and recognizes individual performance over team performance this WILL without a question create a competitive culture with self-serving individuals who learn what it takes to stand out and get ahead, even if that comes at the expense of their colleagues and goes against stated corporate values/mission statements.

If a company truly wants a team environment, then they must reward and recognize the entire team. A good team leader, i.e. manager, knows how to engage and motivate all team players to perform as a unified team. Most good managers accomplish this by:

1) recognizing the individual strengths of each team member and assigning them to roles/tasks that leverage those strengths,
2) clearly articulating how each individual's contributions come together to achieve the goal as a a team,
3) holding each team member accountable by providing timely, constructive feedback to keep them focused on the goal, and
4) rewarding and recognizing team members for their performance and support of the team,
5) recognizing the team as a whole for achieving the goal, not just one "star" player.

Hi Caty,

You must stay up nights coming up with these questions. A great example of a business dealing with this is found in the book Delivering Happiness by Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappo's.

Sure wish I was an affiliate for some people it seems I'm frequently recommending their stuff. Sigh . . .

I believe a culture should have a continuous improvement and back to the basics approach. If the values are cemented in place the leaders have to train their successors, managers, staff and employees how to keep the culture on track utilizing the values of the company.

For example, when I was a manager, I never told an employee their behavior was wrong or I didn't like it...I explained the values of the company and communicated how a particular behavior or attitude conflicts with what is expected.

The issue is too many leaders bring their personal preferences to the workplace and their way of doing things...causing the workplace to be multiple businesses operating with many agendas.

Write down, lead and integrate and drill the values within the culture and unacceptable flaws will not rear its head.

I've worked at Fortune 100 companies the majority of which have not done a good job of practicing value and cultural integration.

In my own business we practice value and cultural integration every day...the questions is posted on our portal and simply asks "What will I do today to ensure we preserve our culture, company and values?"

A few suggestions: Don't try to 'fix' culture. Instead...
a) find out what works within the culture (i.e., what are the useful elements), and do more of that,
b) define what you want the culture to be, (i.e., different from the one that's not useful),
c) implement many small steps (more of a's and the new b's).

One tip, when defining both a and b, ask. 'what works for our customers?' The customer is simply a way to align differing POV's.

Caty, I'm not sure what you mean by "cultural flaws".

Hello Caty, corporate culture is a funny thing, employers get the culture they deserve. If team success is rewarded, we'll get more team successes. If individual success is rewarded, we'll get more individual successes. However, corporate culture is determined by who we hire. If we want employees to be team players, then we need to hire team players not individual contributors.

By starting off with a family-style culture in the first place. If the corporate culture hasn't been set in stone, make it happen right now. Set standards for morality, service and sense of team and family - you can't go wrong with this formula.

Invest in your employees with their well being in mind. Where would you want to work? Isn't it easier to work in place you actually like? Offer incentives for good performance, DON'T reward bad behavior or cut-throat, political brown-nosers. By delivering on the above mentioned standards, growth will not affect your culture negatively.

At the end of this post is a statement I believe is the most important single thing to understand about cultural development, and I hope you will express your thought about it. But first....

I wish to take just a second to thank Caty for putting this question out there. Culture is, in my view, the single most costly failing of modern business. Dysfunctional teams cost money. A lot of money. The end.

Please also let me thank those of you who have responded to my own comment above. Cultural development and team dynamics are my area of expertise, and I feel something deep when managers recognize its importance in the workplace, and wish to see cultural development brought center-stage.

Bob Gately said something that deserves expansion, "Corporate culture is determined by who we hire."

That is a huge part of the issue; hiring protocol generally does not address culture in any meaningful way, and it absolutely must if we are to be masters of our own culture. And listen, explaining your 'culture' to a candidate and asking if they can buy into it is NOT a meaningful way. The very best technician for any given position might also be the catalyst for cultural poison. Remember that.

The remaining two central ideals of a positive culture are team buy-in and trust.

In the book, "Leadership and self Deception-- Getting Out of the Box" by The Arbinger Institute, a newly hired manager was given treatment that, in a dysfunctional culture, would have been met with offense, bad feelings and negative responses. However in the story it was instead met with a matter-of-fact resolve. The manager in question did not complete a delegated assignment on time. Without any discussion, the chairman reassigned the task to a different manager and moved the meeting on. Later in the hall, the chairman put his hand on the manager's shoulder while walking with him and said simply, "You won't let us down again, right?"

Trust in an organization means this: No matter what a team member puts out there, no matter what he or she does right or wrong, no matter what is posited, the rest of the team trusts implicitly that the team member did whatever it was with the good of the team at heart. No questions or doubts. In that environment, as the book illustrates very well, team members speak to each other with a candor and openness that cannot be achieved in dysfunctional environments, and the candor is not seen as negative at all.

Now, here is the most important single thing to understand about cultural development, and the point I really hope to hear your response to.

Cultural health cannot be measured by metrics. Albert Einstein observed, "Not all things that matter can be measured, and not all things that can be measured matter." Truer words have never been spoken.

Together, let's put the fun back into work
Belldon Colme
belldoncolme@gmail.com

I've worked with some of the best senior managers in the world, and some of the worst, and to me education of the senior management team is an important first step. The, linking of the strategy to the execution via performance measures can then follow once senior managers understand S&OP and MRPII and the really important drivers and measures. having been lucky enough to go through a massive culture change in my own company, Beatrice Confectionery, with an exceptional Managing Director, this has helped me with other senior management teams in some great companies. The trouble is getting them to a) accept it and b) get them all in the room for a day or two.

As we know, corporate culture is laid down and molded from the top.
And how did the "top" get that culture? Well, if we look a bit deeper,
it actually one's "values"... whatever virtues and values you hold,
that will spin off in your dealings and in this case, it's your guide
to molding that corporate culture.

The question now is not really about "fixing" flaws
but about how much of those virtues and values do you "really" value?
Are they written in sand? Or deeply imbedded in stone?

If they are just written in sand when rain comes they're easily wiped off;
however, when they are written in stone, it'd take something "unusual"
for it to even be shaken... hence, flaws would be detected and fixed.

A company with a good culture deals with sincerity and care
and has its employees constantly trying to better their performance.

This is @TheGreatLight.

Small close-knit companies have their greatest culture challenges coming from customers. Communication with a second language speaker often needs an interpreter. Internet orders having issues are best handled on a case by case basis over the phone or skype.

Culture? This sounds like an MBA dissertation gone viral.