You are a people manager.  You guide the strategy of your company (or department) and you realize how important culture is to taking your company to the next level.  So how do you take a deliberate approach to creating and cultivating your company culture? You take charge of it like a Captain of course.  Below I’ll share some insight I learned from when I used to lead organizational development & employee engagement initiatives in a previous life.

First, there are two key elements to building a great company culture. The first is creating an engaging environment where your employees want to come to work everyday. The second is creating the conditions where your employees are challenged, accountable, and have all the tools at their disposal to communicate and collaborate with each other.

1) Vision, Mission, & Values

As a leader, you must recognize that it all starts here.  This isn’t just the written text you see at the water cooler or on the front page of your company’s intranet site.  This is the stated direction that your company has set and represents the DNA of your company.  Own it.  It is your job to ensure these are words you embody everyday so your team will start to do the same.

2) Environment

Take a deliberate approach to designing the work environment your workforce is immersed in.  For example, if you want to create a culture of openness, then have people work in open spaces together. Central areas like work cafes or lounge areas where people can meet out in the open is also key.

3) Language & Stories

“We become what we talk about” so stories, slogans, and mantras are crucial, but as a leader you have to believe what you talk about.  If there is an example of an employee exhibiting the behavior of a core company value, it is your job to polarize the story so other people have a reference point.  The stories told in and outside your company not only support your culture, but they become the voice of your organizational culture.

4) Discipline

A key characteristic of driving any company culture is discipline. Without it, organizational habits desired by your company will never crystallize.  This comes from recruiting great talent with the right values, but also reinforcing discipline as a habit by being a performance driven culture.

5) Image

Does your company have a professional image it needs to maintain? Or is an important value of your company something like “fun” where it is important for everyone to portray a more relaxed look and feel? Which ever it is, it is important to have guidelines that are reinforced through your company’s communication channels.  This comes to dress code, the colors used on the walls, templates, etc.  Hold everyone accountable to standards defined by company management and make sure your team has a vested interest in image since it’s a large part of the message.

6) Open Finances

Alignment to the company strategy is the number one aspect of work that engages all us is our emotional connection with the company.  It is best to tell this strategy story in terms of numbers.  We need to feel that what we do everyday has some sort of effect on the company’s success.  Providing your employees messaging about where the company is going in the marketplace and how they are doing financially, has twice the effect over compensation as an employee engagement factor.  I know this because I proved it out statically in a global company with well over 10,000 employees.  Don’t be afraid to go deep in this area too.  Communicate productivity and waste goals to reinforce elements of the financials that may bear strategic or short-term opportunity.

7) Handle Ideas with White Gloves

One of the worst feelings someone can feel is that no one is listening to them or values their ideas.  The ideas in your employees heads are extremely valuable and if the correct ones are implemented and nurtured, it can have a transformational affect on your company.  As a leader, meet with your team frequently and talk about their ideas.  Listen, take notes, and implement what makes sense, or tell someone where their idea is at in the queue & encourage them that it is a great idea (if it is!). Most problems in the company, especially at the tactical level will be identified from your employees.  They are your central nervous system.  Since they will be the ones implementing them, better sure to have them suggest, analyze, and execute solutions on their own.  Give them autonomy.  They know what’s best from being closest to the problems.

8) Feedback, Feedback, Feedback…

This one reinforces point eight even more.  Ensure you have mechanisms in place for cultivating feedback from your employees.  These can be email boxes or suggestion forums on your company intranet. Fostering a culture of feedback not only will help get oxygen to areas of your organization that have been neglected, but it will engage and delight your employees.

9) It’s about Careers, not jobs

Just as strategy alignment is a more engaging factor than compensation, so is career development.  We all need to get the sense that we are going somewhere, moving forward, and growing.  It’s in our DNA to behave this way.  Ensure you organization has career development plans for every position in your company and review those paths against your company strategy at least twice a year.  This review process should be in sync with your performance management process since they go hand in hand.  Involve your teams in coming up with these plans.  The outcomes will be better if you do.

10) Reward & Recognition

Once you know what behaviors your company desires from each position in the company, ensure the right mechanics are there to support them.  This can be rewards, recognition, promotions, and bonuses. Recognition is by far more critical than the reward itself.  Most of us won’t ask for recognition, which makes it a hard personal need to fulfill.  Just remember that recognition must immediately follow the positive action, it must be public, and  most importantly, it must be sincere.

Conclusion

All in all, it is your job as a leader to be cognizant about the way the culture should be, taking a read on the current climate & behaviors of the organization, and closing gaps between the two that may exist.  Employees will watch what you do and not what you say.  So be deliberate about the organization habits that you want to see manifested and over time you will find your company take on the culture it set out to be.