A potential client walks into your company. Quickly, what is it that their senses pick up first? What do they see? What is it that they hear? Beyond the obvious, what do your customers smell, taste and sense about the culture of your company? An indelible customer evaluation takes place with every encounter they have with your employees. Though largely ignored by most companies, the perception of one’s culture is based on acute sensory perception … what are you doing to develop the right culture in your company?
Recently, I had one of my team members pick up a package for me at the office of a local service provider. When he returned, his first words were, “what was that place you sent me to?” What do you mean I asked? “Everybody was so up, friendly and willing to help me … even the air felt different!” What he felt was the impact of culture. When you proactively implement a culture-drive philosophy that permeates every aspect of your business, those exposed to it immediately sense it, but can’t discern it – what we are left with is a general feeling of comfort and all they know is that they’re in the right place.
Culture can also be a galvanizing factor. Go back to the 1992 Dream Team, the one that featured Michael Jordan, Larry Bird, Magic Johnson and 7 other Hall of Famers. Remember how that team ran through every opponent by an average winning victory of 40 points? Remember how they were celebrated all over Europe and treated like rock stars? Well, there’s an inside story. That same year the Chicago Bulls drafted a European player. The Bulls management signed the player, Tony Kucok, of Croatia, before they renewed the contract of one of their current stars, Scottie Pippen. When the Dream Team played Croatia, Pippen and Jordan took turns making sure that Kucok had the worst game of his life. The culture that existed on the Bulls team held Kucok to only two points and made him re-think his decision to come to the U.S. to play for the Bulls. His desire to join a winning team won out and interestingly, when Kucok joined the Bulls, Pippen and Jordan welcomed him into the culture and he became a star.
In both examples the culture described was not by default. Both situations are representative of cultures that were “designed.” Do you have a proactive culture that spurs growth and productivity or a fragmented “default” culture that causes:
- High employee turnover
- Decreased profitability
- Ineffective internal and external communication
- Bottlenecked workflows
- Poor customer feedback
- Do customers feel that your employees attitudes make them
feel that they are doing them a favor?
Have you sat down and figured out what you want your culture to be? Do you have a system & methodology to get you there? Or is your “default” culture left to it’s own devices and growing like weeds in an otherwise pristine garden? Starting today, you must challenge the way your culture developed on its own. You must create an environment where people want to come to work and want to give them their all. When you do this a responsive culture is created, that secures your competitive positioning and builds a sustainable vehicle that outperforms the economy.
How the process begins …
We recently surveyed 53 hospitals to learn how they fair in the area of culture. While the information was plentiful and provided important assessments against key metrics, two major areas stood out.
1.) In almost every case there was tragedy that started the move toward better culture. Sometimes the tragedy was nature driven and sometimes financial.
And …
2.) To sustain the culture path, there seemed to be four areas that needed to be included:
- Personal Development skill set development
- Personal Vision Building
- Internal Communication
- Patient Experience Creation Training
As we examined corporate culture we identified the foundational principle to effective culture was the involvement of the employees body, mind and to a higher degree, their heart. The question becomes, “what are you doing every day to win over the hearts of your employees?” Stay tuned … this series will answer these questions and many more.
