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#WorkTrends: Managing Down, Up, and Across: Best Practices

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People always create the culture, especially at work. And when Meghan M. Biro and tech and workplace innovator Dr. Janice Presser joined forces on this week’s #WorkTrends, what emerged was a new compact for managing not just teams, but everyone we work with — including ourselves.

We can’t just consider dynamics as one-way, Janice noted. Managing relationships goes in three directions: “Up, sideways, and down,” she said. Employees can and should work on ‘managing their managers,’ but to manage up, managers need to understand what makes employees motivated to work first, explained Janice. “One motivator is power. Not power over people necessarily, but empowerment. And the other is affiliation.” As an employee, do you know what skill (and value) you have to complete a task —  and contribute to the team? More importantly, do you know who you need to report that task to?

No matter the direction, Meghan pointed out, and whether you’re managing a team, a report, or a boss, it can be like walking a tightrope. As Janice noted, the key is understanding exactly who you’re dealing with, and what makes them tick, and we can do that just as well with someone in charge as we can with a colleague or a report.

Not surprisingly, one of the most effective strategies for enabling employees to do well is to “get out the way,” said Janice, which is a matter of trust — a factor that needs to exist across the board. In terms of managers, however, they need to trust that their employees will each do their part to contribute to the bigger picture. After all, everyone lands in a particular career role for a reason. And one smart tactic for helping employees climb the ladder is to let them switch roles until they find their niche. “Just let people swap,” she said. It can do wonders in getting everyone to feel that “corporate love.” The approach doesn’t even have to be fancy, added Meghan: informally managing peer relationships helps “employees figure out who on the team will love doing that part of the work.”

As for managing across, there’s a foolproof way to reduce friction and resentment among your team. Be grateful for those doing their job so you don’t have to. We all have our unique talents. And in the end, love and appreciation will take us all a lot farther.

Listen to the full conversation and see our questions for the upcoming #WorkTrends Twitter Chat. And don’t forget to subscribe, so you don’t miss an episode.

Twitter Chat Questions

Q1: Why do companies struggle with management issues? #WorkTrends
Q2: What strategies can improve how we approach managing? #WorkTrends
Q3: What can leaders do to help organizations improve how we manage? #WorkTrends

Find Dr. Janice Presser on Linkedin and Twitter

 

Photo: Mimi Thian

#WorkTrends: Culture That Counts Right Now

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Now more than ever, the culture of a company matters. From values to purpose to behaviors, culture is what crosses through every level of an organization and connects its people together. This week on #WorkTrends, Meghan M. Biro and Organizational Culture Strategist Josh Levine got into the power — and the importance — of work cultures today.

As companies have transitioned their workplaces to remote, grappling with new policies and tough decisions, it’s the leaders who have the power to transform and unify, said Josh. Leaders turn micro moves into macro shifts — and if they convey true intentions, mission, and expectations, employees will make the connection.

But it’s the managers who do much of the heavy lifting, Meghan noted — and Josh agreed, adding that it’s up to organizations to set their managers up for success. “Organizations need to empower managers to reward and recognize value-driven behaviors, so that people inside can understand values as more than words.”

Meghan and Josh concurred that within a great company culture lie tremendous meaning and opportunity — especially now. In these real (and unreal) times, an authentic culture can sustain an organization for the long haul — through this crisis, and to what comes next. And the bottom line has to be people: a culture’s true value should be helping other humans be better at their jobs, and better to each other. More than anything else, that’s what counts right now.

Listen to the full conversation and see our questions for the upcoming #WorkTrends Twitter Chat. And don’t forget to subscribe, so you don’t miss an episode. 

Twitter Chat Questions

Q1: Why are some organizations struggling with company culture? #WorkTrends
Q2: What strategies can improve company culture now? #WorkTrends
Q3: What can leaders do to help create better company cultures? #WorkTrends

Find Josh Levine on Linkedin and Twitter

How to Hire Based on Values

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A well-defined culture is the key to uniting your company and scaling to new heights, says author and high-growth company culture expert Brett Putter. Then why is hiring for culture fit so difficult?

Putter, who is the founder and CEO of CultureGene, a culture consultancy helping prepare startup and high-growth companies for scale, says your company culture is essentially the way your organization works. That means as you develop your business and it grows, your culture will change with it — making hiring for culture fit a tricky, if not impossible, task.

Hiring for well-defined values, on the other hand, is much more executable, Putter says. It’s also good business, leading to better employee retention, collaboration and productivity.

“When people are values-aligned they share much quicker, and the basis of the sharing is around the culture — almost the invisible way the company works,” he says. “We find that people get up to speed much quicker and we find that the root speed on their ROI is much quicker.”

We recently spoke to Putter about his company’s culture-development process and the power of hiring based on values.

Define Your Values

“If you ask any CEO to accurately define their culture, they can’t,” Putter says. “The reason for that is because it’s this almost-invisible, subconscious thing, for the most part, and it changes all the time.”

In his firm’s culture-development process, organizations start by defining their values, mission and vision — and specifically define values first. “Most companies make a mistake and they find the values, they put them up on a wall and tell their people to live those values,” he says. The problem, he says, is that people always interpret the same values differently, which can lead to significantly different decisions.

Instead, Putter starts by having companies taking their values and defining a handful of expected behaviors connected to those values. “That then allows the individuals in the company to understand how they should behave,” he says. “That then allows you to start interviewing and structuring interview questions against those specific behaviors, which are associated with your values.”

Hire Against Values

Prior to founding CultureGene, Putter was the managing partner at a London-based executive search firm, where he successfully completed executive-level searches for hundreds of companies.

When it comes to hiring for senior roles, Puttner says the candidate should be interviewed against your organization’s values first — before against specific skills and experience. “By and large from the CV you can tell if this person can do the job or not,” he says. “It’s more important to not waste everyone else’s time if they don’t fit the values.

CultureGene trains executives who are hiring to conduct the first few candidate interviews in pairs. One person asks questions and watches the candidate responses, while the second person takes notes and focuses on what he or she is hearing from the candidate. “At the end of that the two people get together and they score this person against the believability of those answers,” he says.

For hiring more junior positions at scale, a company can dedicate one person who will do a last-minute values check — after the hiring manager has identified a successful candidate — to ensure that person is a good fit for the organization.

Demonstrate Values During Onboarding

While CultureGene tailors the onboarding around the way each company works, it places a strong emphasis on demonstrating and communicating company values to new hires.

Putter recommends that the CEO begins the onboarding process if possible. “The CEO opens the onboarding and says, ‘This is who I am, I have an open-door policy, these are our values, this is what’s important to me,’ ” he says. Then, at the end of the week, the same CEO could say, “What questions do you have?” and reiterate the open-door policy that was expressed in the opening day.

Putter also encourages organizations to make an effort to incorporate their values into the onboarding process. For example, if prosperity is one of the company’s values, part of the process from the first day could be to share financials and the overall state of the business with the new hire.

The CultureGene process also requires every direct employee who is going to work with the new hire to write a 30-, 60- and 90-day plan that explains what they need to do to work well with the new employee over those periods and what they want to teach the new employee in that time.

“We demonstrate to the employee that’s joining we care about what you are about to achieve,” he says.

Values Are More Than Some Philosophical B.S.

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“Culture is a consequence of a company’s values.” – Charles Day, Founder of Looking Glass

Welcome back to the Culture Hacker Blog Series. Let’s discuss your organizational values, which I believe are the foundation of your company culture. While values are often dismissed as some philosophical B.S., they may be the single most important cultural mechanism within a company.

In our previous blog, we defined company culture as the mindset and attitude of your employees about what they do, which manifests itself in how they do things—their actions and behaviors. Values – and more importantly, the behaviors associated with them – are how you demonstrate that mindset. They define how staff should interact with the organization, customers, and each other, and they guide decision-making at all levels of the organization. If your values are just words on the break room wall, you’re seriously missing the point, and missing out on a great opportunity to unite your organization under a strong company culture.

Now, while many companies have values, the problem with them is often that:

  • The values are outdated, so they don’t resonate with the younger workers who are dominating companies today.
  • They are not promoted, seen, or utilized, so often employees don’t know they exist.
  • There are too many values, so employees are not sure what is most important.
  • The values are vague: they must have associated behaviors that are observable and measurable.
  • Company leaders do not support the values with their beliefs, words, and actions.

So, what can you do to refresh or rebuild your company values? To begin with, plan on crafting just four values, because you can add more later as people accept and begin to own the first four. I always recommend that companies involve the team in the process so that they take ownership in the updated values. Utilize an online survey or put together some small focus groups to help brainstorm the values. For each value, include two or three observable and measurable behaviors that will bring it to life.

Here is a quick example of a value and some tangible behaviors:

  • Value:
    • Be Creative
  • Behaviors:
    • Be open to new ideas, technology, and people
    • Engage in constructive disagreements that lead to the best outcome

Unless you’ve been living under a rock these last few months, you’ve seen the countless scandals from large-scale organizations. Wells Fargo and Uber are just two of the many companies whose names have been disgraced – and why have these scandals been such a huge deal? Well, to be frank, the companies in question did not live by their values, nor did they incorporate them in any way into the performance expectations of their staff. If you truly want your company culture to change, the values should stay at the forefront of all you do.

So, once your values are defined, incorporate them across the organization into key employee experience mechanisms, including the selection process, orientation and training, performance appraisals, recognition programs, and especially leadership expectations. A recent article by Marissa Levin, Founder and CEO of Successful Culture, recommended that you go so far as to reinforce values in every communication platform, because, as she wrote, “Every employee touchpoint should reinforce the values.”

A final note – and one of critical importance – you must ensure your managers understand the values as well as the behaviors associated with them. After all, managers need to walk the talk and lead by example. Take the time to review the values and behaviors with them, and then give managers time to adopt the newly crafted ideals. I highly recommend making the rollout and ongoing promotion of the values a leadership expectation.

As Roy Disney said, “It’s not hard to make decisions when you know what your values are.” Company values are not just some philosophical B.S. They support the ability to work ethically, grow easily, and make decisions appropriately. Your values are the foundation of your employee experience and of the company’s success.

Photo Credit: Phenom Apps images Flickr via Compfight cc

Four Tips for Measuring Employee Engagement

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Employee engagement is all the buzz, and rightfully so. When employees are engaged, they adopt the vision, values, and purpose of the organization they work for. They become passionate contributors, innovating problem solvers, and stunning colleagues. High-performing employees want to work in places like that. Smart employers want to cultivate that kind of environment.

So What is Employee Engagement, Exactly?

When employees are engaged, they’re satisfied and look forward to going to work. Engaged employees have a sense of meaning and purpose, and they’re proud of the organization, recommending products – and even employment – to their friends and family. They enjoy an environment where they can do their best work, so it’s not surprising that they plan to stay for at least two more years and they give extra effort to help their employer succeed.

While employee engagement is a relatively new concept, making its debut in the 1990s, the idea that employees can make more of an impact at work when they are engaged seems simple. All the same, various studies project that only 30 – 40 percent of U.S. employees are engaged. That means that the majority of employees in the U.S. are showing up to work disengaged. They’re not poised to put in extra effort for success. They don’t like going to work most days. They’re unlikely to recommend the products of, or employment with, their employer. The question every employer must ask itself is, “should employee engagement be central to our strategy for success?” If the answer is yes, then the first step you must take is to measure employee engagement at your organization.

Four Tips for Measuring Employee Engagement

Follow these four steps to generate reliable employee feedback data, the kind you can do action planning around.

  1. Use a Research Firm

The measurement of employee attitudes should always be conducted by a reputable third-party research firm, preferably one that specializes in employee engagement research. While there are many reasons for this, perhaps the most important is the protection of respondent confidentiality. Ultimately a subjective experience, the feeling of anonymity is what makes respondents uninhibited in their survey responses. Even if you know which questions to ask and how to generate actionable reporting, your ability to trust your reports hinges entirely on the validity of response data. If you hope to take action as a result of your reports, hire an outside firm.

  1. Don’t Just Measure Engagement. Measure Satisfaction, Too.

Second, measuring engagement is not enough on its own. Without the measurement of employee satisfaction, it’s impossible to determine why employees may or may not be engaged. For this reason, a well-rounded survey with core focus areas of both satisfaction and engagement is critical to your success.

  1. Have a Plan for Communication Before You Begin

No matter what kind of feedback you collect, outline a communication plan before you begin. Consider the following questions, as you map out your strategy. Will your top executive send out an email/video/note-with-pay-checks to emphasize the importance of employee attitudes? Will you be sharing findings at the upcoming annual meeting? How will the feedback affect employees? Will they be called upon to take further action?

  1. Enjoy the Ride

This process isn’t about being perfect; and it’s definitely not about being perfect before you survey. Over the years, we’ve talked with countless employers who wanted badly to get their hands on employee feedback, but were afraid to ask. Both Aristotle and Mary Poppins said, “well begun is half done.” Follow their advice. Congratulate yourselves on your boldness, as you take this important step of measuring employee engagement and satisfaction.

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5 Most Important Decisions a Leader Can Make

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As a leader, you do have a choice as to how you spend your decision-making time; there are numerous possibilities when it comes to which decisions to make yourself and those that you leave for others.

How do you determine the “my decision” areas?

The criteria I used was payback. Where could I add the greatest value to the organization?

It’s not about what you enjoy doing or where your strengths are; it’s about where OTHERS will realize the maximum benefit if you focus your decision-making time there.

You may be amazing at financial analysis and enjoy dabbling in numbers, but if marketing is a critical element of the organization’ strategic plan, for example, you need to leave financials to someone else and re-vector your decision-making efforts.

Decide on these 5 strategic issues. These must be owned by the leader and no one else.

  1. The strategic game plan for the organization. Leadership value starts with deciding on the organization’s future. And it should be created by the leader and not chosen from a number of options submitted by management. What business you intend to be in and how you intend to differentiate yourself from your competition can only be decided by the leader who is directly accountable to ownership. It’s not something you can delegate to business development folks.
  1. The values that shape culture. Values describe how employees behave with each other “on the inside” and externally with customers. The leader must decide on the values critical to their strategic success and they must make the call on eliminating the traditional values that are no longer appropriate.
  1. The talent that gets recruited. Strategy and values are the determinants of the people you recruit. The leader must have their fingerprints on the “people strategy”. They must decide if it will do the job; it can’t be delegated to human resources. The wrong people in critical roles will drive your strategy to fail. I used to participate in candidate interviews; an excellent way to monitor how your expectations are being met, as well as a great learning experience for the other managers in the room.
  1. The “customer moment” architecture. If the leader isn’t personally involved in defining what the customer transaction with the organization “looks like”, dysfunction results; everyone does their own thing and offers up their own version of serving the customer in an exemplary manner. The leader must decide what the moment looks like at the frontline level where customer perception is controlled. Leaders don’t like to engage at this level of detail, but this micro-managing is essential.
  1. Aligning activities with the game plan. Aligning activities is where most things go wrong. The strategy says one thing but the people in the various functions behave in a manner inconsistent with the chosen direction. The leader must decide on an alignment plan developed by every department in the organization; it’s the only way synergy is guaranteed.

Strategy, values, people, customers and organizational synergy. What could be more important to decide on for a leader?

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Branding On The Inside

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There are many lessons that can be taken from marketing and applied to HR. From the obvious point of how best to advertise a job to ways of spreading messages and training through an organization, marketing has been a source of useful innovation for HR for years.

One of the most powerful tools, and one of the most often misapplied, is branding.

The Surface Of The Brand

On the surface, brands are all about image. Consistent visuals, voice and style are important in getting the brand across. As a result, many attempts at internal branding focus on these features. It’s about matching Post-It notes, posters with the corporate logo, team T-shirts for away days.

The problem is that these are the surface features of a brand. They’re used to convey its real message to customers. But employees, already embedded within the organization, don’t need these things. It can even feel patronizing for someone who has helped shape policy or spent hundreds of hours answering customers’ questions to be treated as if a pen with a logo should mean something to them.

Brands As Values

The power of brands comes from their ability to get people’s buy-in, to get them engaged with an organization. In an era when employee engagement is so essential this is a great thing to tap into. But that means looking more deeply at the brand.

People don’t buy Nike because of the aesthetic quality of that swoosh. For anyone but a designer that’s an obscure detail to explore. What people buy into about Nike are the values it represents. The messages of boldness, courage, and a can-do spirit. Of living life fully and physically.

The swoosh is just a symbol of that.

Deep Branding

If you want employees to engage with the brand, you have to do more to convince them. They see behind the logos and the slogans to the beating heart of your company, the space where they spend their nine to five. To create a sense of excitement around a set of values you have to make sure that the company lives those values.

So if your company claims to value clear, open and honest communication, then that’s something you have to start living by. Senior leaders have to clearly and openly share the thinking behind decisions. Policies and procedures have to be stripped of jargon and clutter so they’re easy to understand. Management practices built around evasion or deception have to be stamped down hard.

If your company lives its brand, lives the values that it espouses, then it will gain a deeper meaning for your employees, beyond merely being the space where they earn their pay checks. It will provide values that they can commit to.

In And Back Out Again

Using deep branding to improve employee engagement is a worthy goal in itself. But it also has an added bonus.

If you live the values that your brand represents then the cracks in your image will never show, because they won’t be there. Nothing undermines an institution like the image of hypocrisy. To take the example of Nike again, the discovery that the company was using sweatshop labor did great harm because it contradicted the values of health and opportunity Nike purported to represent. A government department claiming to support open democracy will come under fire the moment it keeps a secret.

If you live by your brand, it will show in every action your employees take, and there will be no hypocrisy to find. Everything will reinforce that outward image of the brand, delivered by employees who are passionate and committed.

So embrace the power of the brand. Embrace your values.

About the Author: Mark Lukens is a Founding Partner of Method3, a global management consulting firm and Tack3, a mid-market and not-for-profit focused consultancy. Most of Mark’s writing involves theoretical considerations and practical application, academics, change leadership, and other topics at the intersection of business, society, and humanity.

How To Illuminate A Vision Your Organization Will Believe In

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What’s with “vision” these days? It seems most leaders would rather focus on action and execution. Have you noticed that the most popular articles and blog posts have numbers in them? 3 ways to…, 4 steps to…, 5 tips for…

In our research and conversations over the years, Ken Blanchard and I have heard from thousands of people organizations that their number one concern is lack of a shared vision. Yet less than 10% of the organizations we’ve visited are led by managers who have a clear sense of where they are trying to lead people.

Doug Conant, Chair of Avon and former CEO of Campbell Soup, recently told me, “People today are less interested in the vision and more interested in ‘how to.’ They are trying to get a sip of water from the fire hydrant of life, and it’s washing over them. They are trying to push everything away so they can do their work, and they’re looking for ‘how to’ answers like time management tricks.”

Overused And Diluted

Unfortunately, people don’t trust the idea of “vision” these days. It’s meaning has been co-opted by:

  • Vision statements that are no more than meaningless marketing messages.
  • Using vision as an excuse to lay people off.
  • Not connecting the vision to the day-to-day work.
  • Leaders who espouse vision but do not model it or who act in their own self-interest.

What’s Important Is Not Only What It Says, But Also How It’s Created And How It’s Lived.

What it says. Vision is a picture of a desirable future you intend to create and that illuminates your underlying purpose and values.

For a vision to be compelling and provide ongoing guidance, it must illuminate all three elements of a compelling vision: 1) purpose (or mission), 2) values, and 3) a clear picture of a desirable future.

Take the Apollo Moon Project for example. It is often mistakenly used as an example of a vision. When President Kennedy set the goal to put a man on the moon by 1969, the technology to accomplish it had not even been invented and an exciting decade of focused, Herculean efforts resulted in success. But what’s happened with NASA since? It has never recreated these spectacular accomplishments. Why? Because there was no clear purpose to guide decision-making going forward and answer the question “what’s next?”’

How it’s created. Typically a management team goes off and creates a vision they are very excited about and then reveals the vision to the rest of the organization. Later they are surprised when they run into huge issues during implementation and set the vision aside.

It rarely works to just announce what needs to be done and expect people to follow through. Taking the time to involve others in shaping the vision will save a lot of time down the road. Through involvement, people develop deeper understanding and commitment. Unless people really understand the “essence” of the vision, they may make decisions that pull in the wrong direction. And even when they do understand, if they don’t believe it’s important, they will not act strongly and consistently in ways to support it.

How it’s lived. This is one of the biggest ways leaders torpedo their own efforts. The moment you identify your vision, you must start behaving consistently with it. People watch what you do more carefully than they listen to what you say. People follow leaders by choice. Integrity is the bedrock of leadership, and if people don’t believe and trust you, the best you will get is compliance.

Jesse Lyn Stoner will be a guest on the TalentCulture #TChat Show on February 25th.

About the Author: Jesse Lyn Stoner is a consultant, former business executive, and co-author with Ken Blanchard of the bestseller Full Steam Ahead: Unleash the Power of Vision, which has been translated into 22 languages. Dr. Stoner is founder of Seapoint Center for Collaborative Leadership, which hosts her award-winning leadership blog.

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#TChat Preview: The Three Essential Elements Of Compelling Business Vision

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The TalentCulture #TChat Show is back live on Wednesday, February 25, 2015, from 7-8 pm ET (4-5 pm PT). The #TChat radio portion runs the first 30 minutes from 7-7:30 pm ET, followed by the #TChat Twitter chat from 7:30-8 pm ET.

Last week we talked about how 2015 will be the best year for recruiting since 1999.

This week we’re going to talk about the three elements of a clear and compelling business vision.

Developing business vision and strategy is difficult to execute. Most leaders default to actions steps and tactical plans and spend most of their time here. Even if they invest up front to create the vision, sustainable investment is short-lived.

Plus, less than 10% of the organizations visited by this week’s guest, Dr. Jesse Lyn Stoner, are led by managers who have a clear sense of where they are trying to lead people.

What to do? For a business vision to be compelling and provide ongoing guidance, it must illuminate all three elements of a compelling vision: purpose (or mission), values, and a clear picture of a desirable future.

Join TalentCulture #TChat Show co-creators and hosts Meghan M. Biro and Kevin W. Grossman as we learn about about the three elements of a clear and compelling business vision with Dr. Jesse Lyn Stoner, Founder of Seapoint Center for Collaborative Leadership and co-author of the bestseller Full Steam Ahead: Unleash the Power of Vision.

Sneak Peek:

We hope you’ll join the #TChat conversation this week and share your questions, opinions and ideas with our guests and the TalentCulture Community.

#TChat Events: The Three Essential Elements Of Compelling Business Vision

TChatRadio_logo_020813#TChat Radio — Wed, February 25th — 7 pm ET / 4 pm PT Tune in to the #TChat Radio show with our hosts, Meghan M. Biro and Kevin W. Grossman, as they talk with our guest: Dr. Jesse Lyn Stoner.

Tune in LIVE online Wednesday, February 25th!

#TChat Twitter Chat — Wed, February 25th — 7:30 pm ET / 4:30 pm PT Immediately following the radio show, Meghan, Kevin and Jesse will move to the #TChat Twitter stream, where we’ll continue the discussion with the entire TalentCulture community. Everyone with a Twitter account is invited to participate, as we gather for a dynamic live chat, focused on these related questions:

Q1: Why do many leaders default to a tactical approach instead of strategic vision? #TChat (Tweet this Question)

Q2: How are individual contributors solution solvers or problem makers? #TChat (Tweet this Question)

Q3: What elements make for a clear and compelling business vision? #TChat (Tweet this Question)

Until the show, we’ll keep the discussion going on the #TChat Twitter feed, our TalentCulture World of Work Community LinkedIn group, and in our new TalentCulture G+ community. So feel free to drop by anytime and share your questions, ideas and opinions. See you there!!

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Values-Based Leadership And The Future World Of Work

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The world has experienced many significant events in the last 200 
years and noticeably so in the last 25. From the fall of the Berlin wall and the advent of the Internet to 9/11 and the great recession, much has happened that has altered how we see things. As John Mackey states in his book Conscious Capitalism, “these factors have dramatically changed society and created a transformed landscape for business.” He goes on to say, “all of these changes and challenges offer great business opportunities, but they cannot be effectively addressed if we use the same mental models we have operated with in the past.” This being said, there is a substantial amount of evidence illuminating the fact that leaders and subsequently leadership and business may not be evolving with the changing world.

Recent data from global surveys indicates an alarmingly low rate of trust, loyalty, hope, and optimism about the future among workers. These feelings (along with other dimensions measured) about paid work continue to push the critical metric of associate engagement down to levels in the 23% to 30% range in 2013 assessments. At this rate, it is estimated that some $500 billion annually is being lost as a result of such factors as lower productivity and employee frustration. In 2013 alone some 19 million employees, or 13% of the US workforce is estimated to have left their jobs. John Mackey sums it up best in saying that “most companies are still doing business using mind-sets and practices that were appropriate for a very different world.” We believe it is time to change that.

At Luck Companies, we have been in the human business for 90 years extending back to 1923 when our founder Charles Luck Jr. started the company on the philosophy, “If you do right by your people, they will do right by you.” Today, his beliefs are manifested in our company’s value proposition of “Doing good – making a difference in the lives of our associates, is the best path to doing well – exceptional personal and business performance.” Day in and day out we focus not only on what we do, but also on how and why we do it with a culture that prioritizes enterprise- wide alignment to a set of timeless core values and a purpose beyond just making money. Our mission (or purpose), “We will ignite human potential through Values-Based Leadership and positively impact the lives of others around the world,” leverages the fact that all human beings are born with the extraordinary potential to live a life of meaning and contribution, and speaks to Values-Based Leadership as the activator of that potential. We define Values-Based Leadership (VBL) as, “living, working, and leading in alignment with your personal core values, principles, beliefs, and purpose to in turn ignite the extraordinary potential in those around you,” a philosophy and practice similar to other styles such as Authentic, Servant and Truly Human Leadership.

Today, five years into our mission, we have experienced first hand the power of Values-Based Leadership and its capacity. We have witnessed the exponential effect of an ignited or actualized human being and the impact that one life lived meaningfully well can have on so many others both inside and outside our company walls. We have traveled the world to share our work, ideology, and VBL model, and remain humbled by the ongoing feedback about the difference it has made in peoples’ lives globally. And while our mission is clearly the meaning we aspire to make, its manifestation in how and the resulting culture where associates can make a difference while making a living is what we are most proud of. An environment that we believe will serve us well in the future of work.

(About the Author: Having a passion for inspiring people to believe in themselves and become everything they are capable of becoming, Mark is charged with transforming Luck Companies into a global Values Based Leadership (VBL) organization. In his role as Chief Leadership Officer, he serves as a thought leader for the ongoing development of the VBL ideology and model, and is responsible for the integration of VBL within Luck Companies. Mark’s work also extends beyond Luck Companies’ doors and includes sharing the VBL model through mentoring, speaking, teaching, and consulting with organizations of all sizes, across all industries and all geographies.

valuesbasedleader.com 

Mark is an active member of the Mason Center for Social Entrepreneurship and was recently selected as one of the 100 Top Thought Leaders in Trustworthy Business 2014 by Trust Across America and Switch and Shift’s Top 75 Human Business Champions. His genuine interest in helping people flourish is fueled by his deeply held belief in the extraordinary potential of all human beings and peoples’ ability to experience an exceptional quality of life once their potential is actualized.)

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Your Corporate Culture: What's Inside?

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“No company, small or large, can win over the long run without energized employees who believe in the mission and understand how to achieve it.” –-Jack Welch

Jack Welch isn’t alone in this opinion. Many of today’s most successful business leaders agree — culture is a powerful force that can make or break a business.

So, what is this elusive culture thing, anyway?

It is a topic the TalentCulture community obviously takes seriously. (After all, it’s at the core of our identity.) But even among culture specialists, the concept isn’t easy to define. Perhaps it’s best to think of it as an experience — created and shaped by the collective values, beliefs, attitudes and behaviors of your workforce.

You can’t necessarily “see” culture. But evidence of it is often easy to spot. Similarly, culture can’t be manufactured, manipulated or imposed upon employees. But without clarity, consistency and communication, it can rapidly erode.

Looking Closer Look at Corporate Culture

MIT Management Professor, Edgar Schein, presents culture as a series of assumptions people make about an organization. These assumptions occur at three levels — each is more difficult to articulate and change. Schein’s three-tier structure includes:

• Artifacts (Visible)
• Espoused Beliefs and Values (May appear through surveys or other narrative)
• Underlying Assumptions (Unconscious beliefs/values. Not visible; may be taken for granted)Culture 3 LevelsIllustration via Chad Renando

The Business Case for Culture: Zappos

In recent years, Zappos has become known for its deep commitment to culture as a competitive advantage. Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappos, often speaks about the importance of workplace culture, and why it is his company’s chief priority. To understand Tony’s perspective, watch this brief video:

Below are Zappos’ “10 Commandments” — the core values that drive culture, brand and business strategies:

1) Deliver WOW through service
2) Embrace and drive change
3) Create fun and a little weirdness
4) Be adventurous, creative and open-minded
5) Pursue growth and learning
6) Build open and honest relationships with communication
7) Build a positive team and family spirit
8) Do more with less
9) Be passionate and determined
10) Be humble

What do you think of “commandments” like these? How does your organization articulate and reinforce cultural norms across your workforce? How effective are your efforts?

Beyond Zappos: 100 Great Company Cultures

Of course, Zappos is only one of many organizations that invest deeply in culture. Last week, Fortune Magazine offered 100 other examples in its 2014 “Best Companies to Work For” List, developed by Great Place to Work Institute.

Even before the list was revealed, Great Place to Work CEO, China Gorman, shared several key observations about the cultural characteristics that help great companies attract top talent.

And yesterday, China talked with us in greater detail about lessons learned — first in a #TChat Radio interview (hear the replay now), and then in a lively community-wide #TChat discussion on Twitter. (For a full recap of the week’s highlights and resource links, read: “Workplace Greatness: No Guarantees.”)

As the moderator of this week’s Twitter event, I’d like to thank the hundreds of professionals who literally contributed thousands of ideas about what makes organizations “tick.” Your input is always welcome — the more, the better. So let’s keep this conversation going…

Image Credit

Your Corporate Culture: What’s Inside?

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“No company, small or large, can win over the long run without energized employees who believe in the mission and understand how to achieve it.” –-Jack Welch

Jack Welch isn’t alone in this opinion. Many of today’s most successful business leaders agree — culture is a powerful force that can make or break a business.

So, what is this elusive culture thing, anyway?

It is a topic the TalentCulture community obviously takes seriously. (After all, it’s at the core of our identity.) But even among culture specialists, the concept isn’t easy to define. Perhaps it’s best to think of it as an experience — created and shaped by the collective values, beliefs, attitudes and behaviors of your workforce.

You can’t necessarily “see” culture. But evidence of it is often easy to spot. Similarly, culture can’t be manufactured, manipulated or imposed upon employees. But without clarity, consistency and communication, it can rapidly erode.

Looking Closer Look at Corporate Culture

MIT Management Professor, Edgar Schein, presents culture as a series of assumptions people make about an organization. These assumptions occur at three levels — each is more difficult to articulate and change. Schein’s three-tier structure includes:

• Artifacts (Visible)
• Espoused Beliefs and Values (May appear through surveys or other narrative)
• Underlying Assumptions (Unconscious beliefs/values. Not visible; may be taken for granted)Culture 3 LevelsIllustration via Chad Renando

The Business Case for Culture: Zappos

In recent years, Zappos has become known for its deep commitment to culture as a competitive advantage. Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappos, often speaks about the importance of workplace culture, and why it is his company’s chief priority. To understand Tony’s perspective, watch this brief video:

Below are Zappos’ “10 Commandments” — the core values that drive culture, brand and business strategies:

1) Deliver WOW through service
2) Embrace and drive change
3) Create fun and a little weirdness
4) Be adventurous, creative and open-minded
5) Pursue growth and learning
6) Build open and honest relationships with communication
7) Build a positive team and family spirit
8) Do more with less
9) Be passionate and determined
10) Be humble

What do you think of “commandments” like these? How does your organization articulate and reinforce cultural norms across your workforce? How effective are your efforts?

Beyond Zappos: 100 Great Company Cultures

Of course, Zappos is only one of many organizations that invest deeply in culture. Last week, Fortune Magazine offered 100 other examples in its 2014 “Best Companies to Work For” List, developed by Great Place to Work Institute.

Even before the list was revealed, Great Place to Work CEO, China Gorman, shared several key observations about the cultural characteristics that help great companies attract top talent.

And yesterday, China talked with us in greater detail about lessons learned — first in a #TChat Radio interview (hear the replay now), and then in a lively community-wide #TChat discussion on Twitter. (For a full recap of the week’s highlights and resource links, read: “Workplace Greatness: No Guarantees.”)

As the moderator of this week’s Twitter event, I’d like to thank the hundreds of professionals who literally contributed thousands of ideas about what makes organizations “tick.” Your input is always welcome — the more, the better. So let’s keep this conversation going…

Image Credit