Three Steps to a Winning Culture
When you think about enhancing the culture in your workplace or on your team, what is the one thing that sticks out as a challenge? It’s not easy to get everyone on the same page, let alone help them stay on the same page. Over the years, we’ve had the opportunity to work with strong leaders who have built winning cultures. We’ve seen one thing happen over and over, one thing that has set these teams and organizations apart, one thing that has led to win after win after win.
We want to share that one thing with you - and that’s relentlessly communicating how you’re going to behave, speak, and treat people. In other words, the secret ingredient that’s been shared with us is to communicate your culture relentlessly. Communicate how you see your behavior today and how it will be in the future and do both as brutally honest as possible.
Here are the three steps as they have been demonstrated to us:
1. Step One: Decide what you want your culture to look like. What is your mission? Your vision? Your values? Until you determine your values, your winning culture may remain unattainable. Handled well, values can become agreements on how everyone is going to act and behave. Agreements like these are powerful as they allow team members the room to run, improve, and provide results. Don’t overcomplicate this step. Winners have taught us to have simple, clear, and short memorable statements. At the end of the day, building a culture is simple: decide who you want to be and go be it without giving in. We find that even our tagline, Develop Leaders. Transform Culture. Win., helps us to keep our culture on track.
2. Step Two: Communicate your culture.
Pretend that you’re filling an Olympic size swimming pool with a garden hose. Your organization or your team is the large pool. Your culture is the unending flow from the garden hose. Know that a winning culture doesn’t happen overnight. One big meeting with a cool PowerPoint is not enough when it comes to culture. Relentlessly saying the same thing in different ways as you live out what you say is how winning cultures are created. The message is constant and never-ending, so are your actions. While this isn’t easy, it’s really not that difficult, and very few organizations choose to live this way. Those few are the consistent winners, the ones with the happiest employees/athletes that make the biggest difference.
3. Step Three: Repeat.
When communicating your culture, words like “we” and “let’s” find their way into your conversations. When making decisions about the future, you’ll find yourself comparing your choices to your ideal culture to make the best possible choice. When you’re hiring a new team member or drafting a new athlete, you’ll balance their attributes against your culture to decide if they will fit in. All the while repeating a continuous message of how the organization acts and behaves.
Please share any questions or comments you may have as you enhance your winning culture.
