New Eras Need a New Culture - Part 1

New Eras Need a New Culture – Part 1 - The Speed of Change

As the speed of change accelerates, we’re always faced with a choice:

• What do we keep, and what do we let go of?
• What is essential, and what is not?
• Where do we invest time, and what do we leave to chance? 

Here’s what usually happens. Our vision narrows, and we begin to see only what matters (or what we think matters). When this happens, the tendency for most people is to focus less and less on the process and more and more on the outcome. This is especially true with leaders. We become hyper results focused. Survival instincts take over and we start pedaling faster.

Along the way we start making assumptions that just aren’t true. We assume that those on our team see what we see, know what we know, believe what we believe, and want what we want. We assume that if everyone just pedals faster, we can get there. The short-term result usually comes, but the process is exhausting. People are worn out, teams are stressed out, and another target, just like the last one, looms just around the corner. We want our team to function like an elite military unit – drop in, complete the task, and get out - all with precision, accuracy, and speed. The reality, though, is that they rarely do. Why? The answer is surprisingly simple.  

We haven’t built the behaviors of growth in our team.

Performance Matters

Before we dig into the details of how to build the behaviors of growth in your team let’s make one thing clear.

Performance matters

This applies to every type of organization - small businesses, corporations, non-profits, or governmental agencies. Without consistent and high performance, you will eventually cease to exist – regardless of how good your products are, how passionate you are, and how hard you work. So, the core issue is not whether performance matters. The core issue is how to create sustainable high performance in a rapidly changing world.  

Most leaders think that performance is the goal. As long as people complete their tasks and hit their goals, these leaders are happy, and they don’t expect more. These leaders primarily ask their people 2 questions, “Did you complete your tasks? Did you hit your goals?” Maybe it worked in a previous era when life was more predictable, and competition was less intense. In a rapidly changing world, though, that understanding of performance cannot and will not create the sustainable success you need. In a rapidly changing world, you need people who have mastered the processes that create the results. Hitting the numbers is not as important as mastering how you achieve the numbers because changing times requires applying the processes of performance in different ways. You need a team that can see, anticipate, and respond in ways that drive growth, whatever their role. That’s the only way to guarantee sustainable higher performance. Developing these behaviors in your team requires a work culture that inspires growth, not just completing tasks and hitting goals.

Culture Creates the Performance

Every organization has a culture – whether it is formally defined or not. Culture is the set of beliefs and norms that exist within an organization that causes people to think and act as they do. These thoughts and actions create the results that the organization achieves. So every work culture is composed of these three things: beliefs, actions, results. We refer to this as the BAR formula:

             Beliefs drive Actions & Actions create Results

The big thing to know about culture is that what matters to the people on your team is what you DO, not what you preach and post.  If you preach and post about the importance of teamwork but you reward people on individual performance, the clear message is – “Teamwork is optional. Individual performance is what matters.” If you preach teamwork but there are no models to build teamwork, people will think that teamwork is optional. If you stress development but you have no clear process to develop the people in their role, the message is clear “doing your tasks is what matters. Development is your own responsibility.”

Another way to think about culture is “the rules of the game.” Every organization has a spoken and unspoken set of “the rules of the game.” If you use an athletic analogy, the “rules of the game” are how you play the game of work in your organization. Which actions move the ball down the field? Which actions drive success? Which actions create a “penalty?” These spoken and unspoken “rules of the game” create the culture.

The “rules of the game” also define what people are comfortable doing and not comfortable doing in your organization. Are they comfortable having honest conversations, and looking at the root cause or problems? Are they comfortable making innovations and adapting as the marketplace and workplace change? Are they comfortable bringing solutions to you instead of waiting on you to bring solutions to them? More than anything else, your organization’s “rules of the game” determine the type of culture that you create.

In the next blog we will explore the most common organizational culture over the past 75 years – The Performance Culture.