Discover Your Culture

TL;DR: Understanding your vision and values is the first step toward creating a strong culture. Writing out your basic principles and drafting a vision statement might be helpful, but only as a process of discovery, not fabrication
I started every all-hands meeting, quarterly review, and so on at my last two firms with the identical slide of our mission statement and fundamental principles. I'd spend the first few minutes of each of those meetings repeating what the team had already heard dozens, if not hundreds of timеs

It was hilariously repetitious

Howevеr, repetition is critical because your culture will build from a firm base if your staff loves and breathes your vision and values. This isn't to claim that a slide will do the work of instilling the culture in the team's hearts and minds; that's the difficult part. However, every member of your team should be able to recite your vision statement and key principles verbatim. They should be able to sense the same vision and ideals in their daily job. Words and stories have power, and your vision statement and core values guide behaviours and how employees think about their jobs. These two notions, your vision and core values, serve as the cornerstones on which you may construct a great culture. A healthy, resilient, and productive organisation has a strong culture

This essay is not intended to persuade you that culture is vital. This article is also not a how-to guide for developing your vision and values. You already have a vision and ideals if you have a group of humans working on a project. You've already established a culture. It's only that you haven't written it down



For a young firm, it's critical to discover and then codify your vision and values. You can only mould your team around your vision and values after you've defined and articulated them

Definitions

Let's begin by defining certain terms. Patrick Lencioni and his book "The Advantage" have had a big influence on my vision and basic principles. My definitions of the two terms are drawn primarily from the first part of his book

VISION: Why are you here?

PRIMARY VALUES: How you act

I like these definitions because I believe they effectively define your culture when put together. They are not all-inclusive, but they are the source of many of the concepts we associate with culture. Everything else appears to be a manifestation in a certain setting if you know why you exist and how you behave. For example, perhaps your team's yearly ski vacation is a cultural landmark. That isn't your culture in and of itself. Many teams participate in similar activities. I've gone on annual ski trips with each of my last three teams, and they were all completely different because they adopted the culture's identity. A group of gaming software developers was getting a little boisterous. Food and mellow recreational activities were the emphasis of a hospitality crew. The Prime Movers team gathers around the fire for a six-hour marathon discussion on the cosmos. The reasons for these companies' existence are reflected in these trips (entertainment, hospitality, breakthrough science)

An anthropological point of view
Whether you already have a vision statement and core values pinned to your wall or are just getting started, I strongly advise you to approach this as a journey of discovery rather than construction

As I previously stated, every team is built around a shared vision. That is what brings people together, regardless of how mundane their vision may be. Similarly, every community of humans establishes natural standards for behaviour, including what is praised and what is not

Do you think they'd write out your vision statement and core values on your wall if you gave a team of anthropologists access to your company, allowing them to attend every meeting, listen to every phone call, read every document, and so on, and then tasked them with writing a study on the underlying cultural pillars of your "tribe"? Would they be able to tell the difference between those two cultural pillars based on how you speak, why you do things, how you treat each other, and how you treat your stakeholders?

If your company's vision and core values aren't obvious in your team's everyday conduct and how you prioritise the company's focus and strategy, you're left with a great piece of aspirational wall art and a shadow culture that you don't completely understand and thus can't mould

Because your culture should represent who you truly are, codifying your vision and values should be a process of discovery. Hopefully, you'll enjoy what you uncover, but if not, you'll be able to figure out what has to be changed

After gone through the vision and values exercise several times, my advise to new teams is to wait 6 to 12 months before writing anything down. Don't be concerned! You already have a vision and are constantly shaping your values. Allow time for your team to naturally reflect your culture through action. Allow time for your team to gather information. You can then sit around a table and analyse how you act and what your true vision is

A vision and values audit is a highly valuable activity for current teams. We ended up modifying the vision statement and most of the key principles when I went through one

What is the significance of this? Your credibility and ability to lead will be harmed if you have false visions and values. Having fake cultural pillars is like building a house on a foundation of lies from the employee's perspective. When you talk about your vision, you don't want your staff to roll their eyes and murmur "yeah right" under their breath, and when you talk about your principles, you don't want them to chuckle

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So, how can you make sure that your staff understands your vision statement and key values?

Why are you here?

Your vision is the first cultural pillar

Every founding tale has a "WHY" that ties a business discovery with a powerful enough motive to drive you to spend years of your life to developing a firm. It's the first principle that permits founders to motivate others to follow in their footsteps. It's ambitious, preferably straightforward, and once you've created a true vision statement, it's unlikely to change. Changing your company's reason for being is the same as changing your reason for being
Your tribe's genesis narrative is summed up in one line or statement in your vision statement. A vision statement is not the same as a mission statement. Typically, mission statements are much lengthier and include your WHY, HOW, and even WHAT (more on those three later)

"Organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful," for example, is Google's vision statement. It makes no mention of Search, Android, or anything else it performs on a daily basis. It does, however, link all of its products, from YouTube to Waze. The statement's universality allows Google to perpetually extend its offerings while also allowing (or at least allowing) each employee to build an aspirational connection to why they are investing their valuable time to that project. Whatever your feelings about Google, you can see how their vision influences their business decisions

One activity I've found effective for this is to gather a group of your early employees and just ask them to tell you about their reasons for joining the company. Certain patterns will emerge in each person's storey. The foundation storey is significant, but listening to how the narrative evolved around each individual reveals a larger reality about how the vision is evolving. When you ultimately come up with your vision statement, it encapsulates the foundation storey in language that has been successful in connecting to people and ingraining itself in their hearts

Your demeanour

The core values are the second pillar

Core principles aren't just words on a page. They should be visible expressions of your regular actions. Even on an hourly basis. Every employee should be able to recall a time during the day when one of your core values was demonstrated in action. Lines in the sand represent your essential principles. They include reasons for turning down an acquisition deal, letting go of a star employee, sunsetting a product line, declining a lucrative contract, and so on. It is your moral code that distinguishes you. In his book "The Advantage," Patrick Lencioni has a superb chapter on values that has tremendously inspired how I have moulded values in my previous two organisations

Let's begin with some definitions that I found particularly useful:

VALUES REQUIRING PERMISSION TO PLAY: Integrity, inventiveness, transparency, accountability, and kindness are not essential values for any professional organisation; they are best practises. You must do certain things if you want to create a team that flourishes and lasts. You must act in a certain way if you want to be a successful professional. It is not core to you if you have a core value that many other organisations share. It's vital to your industry, country, or business as a whole

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