Someone asked me the other day what the “culture” of a company referred to. Immediately I felt like giving them St. Augustine’s definition of time: “As long as you don’t ask me what it is, I know; as soon as you ask me, I don’t.”
For me, culture is a number of things. First of all, it includes why the organization exists in the first place. Most people would say that for many companies, this is obvious: to make money.
But they would be wrong. In fact, almost no companies in the world have the mission: “to make money.” Some do, but they are few and far between and do not tend to last very long. Why? Because making money is boring, uninspiring and ultimately meaningless in and of itself.
No one gets up on Monday morning just for a paycheck; and if they do, they feel miserable for doing it. Most companies, on the contrary, have a purpose: a service, something of value that they provide to the marketplace to make some subset of the planet’s population happier, better, faster, thinner, etc.
The amount of money a company makes is just one of the criteria you can use to measure how well they fulfill their purpose in the marketplace. “To democratize air travel; To challenge the Status Quo; To glorify God; To spread happiness; To create more organizations that are great to work for” are all examples of company purposes. Can you guess which companies have each of these purposes?
When a company knows its purpose and lives it faithfully, it affects its culture. Equally, when an organization does not know its purpose or has lost or forgotten it, and thus does not live it, that also affects its culture.
Core values also comprise a large part of a company’s culture. Core values describe how an organization behaves. Companies can paste “integrity” all over their reception or break room walls, but core values have little to do with office decor. They have to do with actual behavior and decision making.
Again, when the leadership of an organization goes through the time and trouble of clearly articulating their core values in an honest and transparent way and lives them faithfully, that has an enormous positive impact on culture. Conversely, when an organization claims values they do not embody with their behavior, that just undermines all its credibility and seriousness.
I am sure that there are plenty of other factors that influence the culture of an organization, but the last one that came to mind as I write this is the quality of the bond that binds the members of the organization together.
If the thing that is ultimately holding everyone to their jobs and to each other is not a meaningful and compelling purpose and clear values; if the only thing I have in common with the person in the next cube is that we both feel underpaid and unappreciated; if the only thing I represent to my coworkers is another obstacle to jump over in their quest for the next promotion, then that speaks volumes about the poverty of the culture of that organization. Unfortunately, this is how most people describe their jobs.
Culture is hard to define. It is even harder to build well and intentionally. But it is not impossible. If you can answer these questions you will be well on your way:
Why do we exist and why should anyone care?
How do we behave and what are we willing (and not willing) to tolerate from each other?
