Culture is what is rewarded
Culture is what is rewarded
Behavior beats buzzwords every time
Don't be fooled by posters or PowerPoint presentations. Your company culture isn't a handful of buzzy phrases dreamed up by HR. Culture is what is rewarded and celebrated by members of a group.
From our company Slack:
Major shoutout to {redacted} for product guidance all along and helping in coordination with cross-functional teams.
Shoutout to {redacted} for quickly ramping up and creating a test plan for the project, which came to us super last minute!
A huge shoutout to {redacted} for being on top of our progress even during her PTO and being in a different time-zone.
Forget the blog posts on camraderie, diversity, mutual respect, blah, blah, blah. Those are aspirations. True culture is informed by whatever specific behaviors are validated by leaders and peers. The highlights above point to a culture that values collaboration, speed, and sacrifice. (I'm not here to judge these specific principles, though I will if asked nicely.)
The point is this: to understand culture you must understand behavior. To evolve culture you must shift incentives, not just language.
And, as a bonus, when incentives are founded on meaningful values, that makes culture its own reward.
Awesome! Very important closing that aspiration/reward loop. These examples are nice "thank yous" but is that enough or do they need to put, or attach "money" where their thank yous are?