It takes about five minutes googling “culture” to realize that the concept is much more complicated than it’s colloquial references would suggest. It’s tough to discuss how to build culture when we don’t know what it is. Therein lies the purpose of this article, what is culture, so that we can learn how to use it and build it, especially during a pandemic?

In a few words, organizational culture is normative rules and behaviors. Normative, in philosophy, means that there is a way things should or should not be. Normative statements express a proper way for people to think and behave and an improper way. Now, in the organization’s context, these norms aren’t universal for all organizations, which means that what is proper in your company may not be appropriate in another.

What is acceptable in your company is defined by your company’s values and the behaviors that stem from adherence of those values. If your company values a high team orientation, demonstrating behavior and values that contradict that, are likely considered problematic.

Just like your organization’s values don’t pertain to all organizations, a subcultures’ values don’t always apply to other subcultures in your organization. This is distinct from “counterculture,” which I will discuss in the next article. For example, your business’s accounting department is going to have very different values than your salesforce. One group will likely value attention to detail while the other values assertiveness. Organizational culture, however, permeates throughout the organization, and is necessarily more ubiquitous than subculture.

Organizational culture is a thread that runs through all of these nuances. Specifically, organizational culture is consistent. It is something that binds the organization together on a fundamental level. Even though subcultures will exist, they can be differentiated by values emanating from their processes, rather than distinct overarching belief values.

It’s like when you’re walking with someone, and you come to a car that you have to go around. Oftentimes, people believe that the fastest way is left when their partner or friend(s) think the quickest way is right. Subculture is how one might go around the car, while organizational culture is the overall guiding compass based on overarching values leading to the organizational destination. These overarching values are known as core values.

Core values are the overarching beliefs and values that you, and the people in your company share. The conversation breaks into two paths here. The first path is about how to decide on values that establish organizational culture and secondly, how to implement core values into your company.

Path 1: Establishing Core Values

To decide upon any core values, we first need to address the fact that there is no inherently “right” or “wrong” set of values. One size does not fit all here, and there are infinite ways to ponder what would be right. What needs to be understood is that “strong” culture isn’t about the actual value per se. It’s about something else.

There are two ways that culture qualifies as being healthy or weak; (a) “The level of agreement among employees” and (b) “intensity toward these values” ^[1]. First leaders must create the culture by living out those core values, and then systematically work on getting the employees of an organization to adopt and exude these values with strong intensity.

This is quite important because it frees companies from the belief that there are superior “core values” that create a healthy culture. The truth is it’s not about what you believe is valuable (as I stated). What it is about is how many people believe it, and how deeply. This is why I am careful to avoid using the words “good” or bad”. A strong culture is intentional, not accidental.

Because no values are right or wrong, it’s simply about organizational fit, and tying those values to your organization’s (a) identity and (b) outcomes. The things you need to ask yourself as you form or reform core values are as follows.

Complete the action items that follow on a separate piece of paper.

The first thing is to write on your piece of paper 15 things that define how you want to be, and how you want others to perceive you. What words come to mind that describe the organizational identity you wish to embody? Examples could include honesty, integrity, passionate, innovative, hard- working and creative.

Secondly, what are the outcomes that you want to reap from embodying those things listed above? In other words, what business outcomes do you hope to achieve through having an identity or value of honesty, or innovativeness? Again, list 15 different outcomes that you wish to see happen as a result of that identity.

From those 15 values of identity, you’ll probably notice that some are less instrumental in working towards your outcomes. The last task is to eliminate the least essential values you have until you’re at ten or less, getting as close as you can to five core values. It’s important to narrow the core values to something management and implementable. Having too many core values puts organizations at risk of failing to create intentional culture that follow those values, and puts leaders at risk of looking like the values are pro forma, which likely would create distrust and disengagement from your workforce. Having values your organization doesn’t live by may be worse for your culture, then not having them at all.

Boom, hopefully, we’re at a point where we not only know what culture is (mostly), but we know what ours is(again, mostly) and now we can move on to how we actually go about getting others to (a) agree and (b) agree strongly.

Now, I want you to go back through this exercise, with the lens of COVID. Understanding the limitations during COVID, what outcomes and identities have become less feasible? There may be a few shifts at this juncture, but I anticipate the majority of constraints to emerge in the implementing stage.

Path 2: Implementing Values into Culture

Here is where things become tricky, especially during amidst the global pandemic of COVID-19. However, there is one thing that researchers agree on almost unanimously, and that is that culture starts with leaders and their behavior modeled for the staff to see. So, how do we grow leadership that foster strong culture? Step one is that all leaders must have shared awareness and commitment to these values.

If I sit down with a front-line manager, department head, or C-level staff of your company. What will happen when I ask you all to write down the top five things: (a) the company values and (b) that you seek in employees’ values? Will I get the same (or at least similar) answers?

If I won’t, see above and get to work. If amongst various levels of leadership, you get consistent answers, the next consideration is how to disseminate this information about values throughout your company, and more importantly, how do you convey how this information impacts employees’ behaviors? Awareness of values, and implementation of them are two very different concepts.

The assumption from this point forward is that we have a list, and all our leadership is aware of it. Now, how in the heck do you move this awareness from a leader to a follower effectively?

Component one is that responsibility is on a leader, even if the actual act of creating it is equally the employee’s responsibility. Take a minute and watch this short clip. https://youtu.be/VPN4c3T8m-o. That is from a Netflix series Bad Blood and this specific scene is about a mobster flashback to his father giving him this talk. Despite the moral objections raised at a leadership article that draws from fictitious mobsters to teach about building culture, a few very important concepts are shown here.

Two things are reinforced. One, that leadership is responsible. The whole reason that there is a leadership structure in business is to have someone we’re accountable to, and in return for this power, they are responsible to us. It’s the leader’s job to make the company’s values known and create an environment hospitable to these values. Two, that sometimes, no matter what or how good the leader does, when the “tomato plant” dies, a good leader takes responsibility. This is important to keep in mind, as building culture will inevitably provide leaders with more than a few plants that don’t make it. As you work through this implementation process, consider what processes you are putting in place to hold your leaders responsible and accountable for the demonstration of the organization’s core values throughout their cadres.

Now, for the practical parts of this process.

There are generally four ways to pass down culture to employees, stories, rituals, symbols, and language.

Stories are anecdotes that help convey meaning to employees and, at the same time, communicate acceptable behavior. If I tell an employee, “hey, we value honesty”. That is very different from telling a story about how an employee at the company could benefit from not being honest, and he decided to be honest anyway, which led to a specific outcome.

Natural admiration that occurs towards leaders propagates this idea. When stories are told about a leader and how much he embodies the value, it communicates the core value and what it looks like in action.

Language is inclusive jargon. It is about creating speech that gives one a feeling of belonging when they understand. When you create speech that inherently glorifies company values, our reality can shift to value these things. When I worked in the tree service, we often called standing with a rake in your hand without working, “Glombing it”. It signified the value of not being lazy and created an inclusive and light hearted way to keep people in line with values.

Rituals are about setting time aside to hold an event in which something relevant to the company is celebrated. Rituals are everywhere. Ceremonies, dinners, celebrations, and more informal rituals are all examples of things that reinforce values and celebrate them.

Lastly, there are symbols. Symbols are tangible ways that employees can see the values. A logo, the office design, company water bottle, a statue, and posters on the wall are all symbols.

With this fundamental understanding that these four communication forms enable expression of core values, implementation is the next step. For this, programming is a great way to start. Programming is getting intentional about implementing a few of these processes together in the same scenario. For example, a ritual could be held in which a core value is expressly stated and then discussed, which could involve symbols, language, and storytelling. My favorite exercise with programming is celebration. Pick out a person, one month or week and celebrate a story that exemplifies how their behavior is worthy of celebration. As with all things in today’s, day and age, we also have to discuss this in the context of COVID.

COVID Challenges

If you have already been on the “culture” train for a while, or you just got aboard, COVID is shifting all workplace cultures, and we all must re-evaluate our cultural priorities in a post-COVID era. Despite the potentially gloomy outlook on how COVID has affected most of us, this article serves as a starter guide to fighting for a strong and uplifting culture. Even the list you created above may have been affected negatively, but steps and processes listed above still serve as a guiding light for culture.

That means that for each item on the list you created, or the plan you already have, there will likely be a new and improved “COVID version”. For example, rituals around personal interaction are a tall order right now. There’s no right answer, so the burden is on us to create and innovate our way to new rituals around a virtual work environment. As discussed above, programming, even virtually is a great place to start, celebrating and incorporating core values, into a new work environment.

Key takeaways from this article are around what culture is, how to decide upon your own culture, and how to implement these values, even in a virtual world. Know that culture is about setting norms for behavior through set core values. We’ve learned a quick way to identify at least 5 primary core values that lead to outcomes. Lastly, we’ve discussed how to implement language, rituals, stories and symbols into the work environment through things such as programming. Taking this process will be crucial to building culture no matter what stage of development your company is in.

^[1] Scandura, Terri A. 2018. Essentials of Organizational Behavior: An Evidence-Based Approach. Second ed. N.p.: Sage Publishing.