In the last two years of his life, I had the chance to work with Edgar Schein, one of the founders of the field of organizational culture. What stays with me most is how practical his view was. Culture lives in what people do and what they assume, far below what a company says about itself.
I think about that every time I walk into a company lobby and read the values on the wall. Integrity. Teamwork. Excellence. Then I spend a day with the leadership team and watch which behaviors get rewarded, which get ignored and which get quietly punished. That second list is the culture.
Why values stay on the wall
Values usually get written in a good offsite with good intentions. They are true, they are inspiring and they are too abstract to act on. "Teamwork" can mean almost anything, so it ends up meaning almost nothing.
Then the systems keep running the way they always have. The person who hits the number while running over their peers still gets promoted. Everyone notices.
Write each value as behaviors
For each value, write three or four behaviors someone could see in a normal week. "Teamwork" might become: we raise disagreements in the room, we share credit by name, we ask for help before we miss a deadline. Now a manager can coach to it, a new hire can learn it and a team can hold each other to it.
Leaders go first
When I teach how culture changes, the order matters. First, create safety and connection, so people can be honest about how things work today. Then leaders go first, explaining the vision and living the new behavior before they ask anyone else to. Then align the systems and structures. Only after that do the new ways of doing things take hold.
Most culture efforts stall at the second step. Leaders announce the values and wait for everyone else to change. People watch what leaders do, and they adjust to that.
Point every system at the same behaviors
Values become culture when the everyday systems reinforce them:
- Hiring. Interview for the behaviors, with real questions about past situations.
- Promotion. Promote people who deliver results and live the values. Promoting someone who delivers by breaking them undoes years of work.
- Coaching. Give feedback against the behaviors, in the moment.
- Recognition. Tell the story of someone living a value, by name, in front of the team.
Know where you stand first
Most leadership teams believe the culture is closer to the values than it is. An organizational culture assessment uses anonymous surveys at every level and confidential interviews to show how people experience the culture today, so you start from the truth. To see where your leadership team stands right now, take the free five-minute Everest Discovery.
Frequently asked questions
Why don't company values change behavior?
They are usually written too abstractly to act on, and the company's systems for hiring, promotion and recognition keep rewarding the old behaviors. People follow what gets rewarded.
How do you make values actionable?
Write each value as three or four behaviors people can see in a normal week, have leaders model them first, and point hiring, promotion, coaching and recognition at those same behaviors.
How do we know if our culture matches our values?
Ask the people who live it. An organizational culture assessment uses anonymous surveys and confidential interviews to show how the culture works today compared with what your strategy needs.
Related service: Organizational Culture Assessment
