Culture is vital for organizational success. For us, culture doesn’t only help us be more productive and successful as an organization but is a vehicle or tool for spiritual formation as well. Our culture helps us to grow in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and man (Luke 2:52).
Six Components of a Great Organizational Culture
Mission, vision, purpose (MVP). Great organizational culture starts with a mission, vision, and purpose (MVP) that guides the organization. A good MVP helps to orient and guide every decision that employees make. Mission, vision, and purpose are key aspects of culture. It provides the organization with a GPS (Guiding purpose statement).
Values. Values are central to an organization’s culture. While the MVP spells out the organization’s focus, direction, and motivation, values define the behaviors and mindsets needed to achieve the MVP.
Practices (and processes). MPVs and values are no good unless they are embodied in the organization’s practices and processes. At KAF, for example, practices such as closed-loop communication, a process for everything that matters, and creating OKRs, help to put into practice the organization’s values. An organization’s practices and processes are how it puts its values into practice or action. If an organization says it values something, it must have practices and processes in place to make sure that value is being put into practice. Great organizations reinforce their values in performance review criteria, promotion, and reward policies. The values are incorporated into the daily operational principles of the organization. Professor Edward Hess wrote a book, titled Grow to Greatness, in which he teaches what he calls the 4 Ps of growing a business: Planning, prioritization, pace, and processes. An organization’s values must be put in practice in the way it goes about these 4 Ps. In the same book, Professor Hess argues that there are only four ways to grow a business. These are improvements, innovations, scaling, and strategic acquisitions. An organization’s MVP and values must guide its practices in these four ways of growing the organization.
People. People are the players in the game of culture. You cannot have the game without the players. To create and sustain a culture, an organization needs people who either already share those values when they join the organization (which is the ideal scenario) or are willing and able to embrace the organization’s values and advocate and shepherd the culture. That’s why some of the best companies in the world are very strict about their hiring processes. Google, for example, used to have a hiring process that took over six months and about 1.5 dozen interviews to hire key staff members. Author, Charles Ellis, says that great companies are “fanatical about recruiting new employees who are not just the most talented but also the best suited to a particular corporate culture.” A key to creating and sustaining culture is hiring people who already embrace that culture from day one. It’s a difficult task to train people to embrace values they don’t agree with.
Stories (Narrative). Every organization has a unique history and, therefore, a unique story. Author John Coleman, says “the ability to unearth that history and craft it into a narrative is a core element of culture creation.” I agree. Stories of the company’s founding, the motivation of the founders, unique elements that shaped the course of the organization early on, even before the organization was founded and throughout the early history of the organization help to shape culture. Storytelling has been used for thousands of years to transmit culture all over the world as people gathered around firesides to tell stories, especially in oral cultures. It’s a fantastic tool for transmitting organizational culture as well. For example, I remember learning about how Steve Jobs calligraphy lessons shaped the aesthetic focus of Apple.
Environments. The way we design our environments says much about our culture and reinforces it. Do we have a minimalist design? Do we design our buildings to encourage collaboration in common areas or keep people isolated in offices? Even things as simple as the dressing code forms part of the environments that influence the culture of the organization. A culture where people wear three-piece suits and carry briefcases to work is different from one in which people where jeans, hoodies, and flip flops to work.
Resources for further learning
- https://hbr.org/2013/05/six-components-of-culture
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