Organizational culture is like our physical health; if we don’t know what kind of shape it’s in, it’s probably not good. Consider this your first physical. Like your health, it’s paramount to understand that it’s not just about how you work out your body (promotive) or how much you work out. It’s also about keeping things out of your body (preventative) that negate the impact of your culture building initiatives. This is the purpose of this article, to draw our attention to the importance of more than just building culture, but preventing its demise.
But first, let’s go over what culture is once more to provide a little bit of context. SHRM explains culture more succinctly than I ever could, saying,
“An organization’s culture defines the proper way to behave within the organization. This culture consists of shared beliefs and values established by leaders and then communicated and reinforced through various methods, ultimately shaping employee perceptions, behaviors and understanding.” [1]
I’d like to draw your attention to one specific part of that analysis: “it consists of shared beliefs and values”, we’ll get to the other stuff. Having a strong culture means a strong emphasis on the company’s shared beliefs and values. Emphasizing these values is the process of promoting culture (building culture).
We take care of things we value in three primary phases. One, we identify what we want. Two, we start to build what we want within the boundaries of our ability and resources. Three, we preserve whatever it is that we created. This is different from our approach to these phases, which happens in two ways: promotive and preventatively.
Curating culture needs to be approached with both promotive and preventive measures. Simply put, building a strong culture and establishing healthy behavioral norms is not the same as preventing damage to a strong culture, no matter how promotive we were in the building phase. This framework applies to almost any concept, for example let’s look through the COVID lens. Sometimes, it just isn’t enough to eat well, get sleep, and workout daily, because none of that stops you from getting sick. It may minimize the impact if you do get sick, but to maximize health, there are some things that we need to not do to increase our chances of staying healthy. The same thing applies to culture in the workplace.
Often a lack of prevention allows for people who don’t embody company values the capability of undermining the shared values of the whole, primarily, because if we look closely at the definition provided by SHRM, behavioral norms are not always indicative of the values that underlie them. In essence, behaviors are not values, but behaviors are an organization’s only hope of identifying values. Knowing these values that behaviors indicate are essential for matching individual values, with organizational values. A match between individual values and organizational values is called a person-organization fit.
A good person-organization fit occurs when an employee’s values and motivations align with the organization’s. It’s a question of whether or not a person will add value to, or undermine, the organization’s overall unity and character by not standing for the same things that it stands for. A good person-organization fit is related to job satisfaction, organizational commitment, job performance, and lower turnover rates.[2]
A robust, promotive culture will create norms for how we should act that emerge from the organization’s defined values. However, just because someone acts how they know they should, doesn’t mean that they embody the company’s values. As a result, individuals may behave in line with the organization’s values on a very select basis, using behavior that satisfies the company’s values’ demands to advance their own. This is the first way that culture might need curing–the insincere.
Consider two employees, Jack and Jill, walking with their CEO, Blake. Blake is vetting the two for a promotion. While on the walk, Blake explains the importance of culture to them, particularly the values and beliefs of selflessness and compassion to help everyone, not just when it’s convenient, but always– something that he and the company are both famous for exemplifying.
Just as he says this, an older woman falls on the sidewalk ahead of them. Jill and Jack both rush over to help the older woman. However, Jill is motivated by the values that Blake explained; she embodies them. On the other hand, Jack knew how he would look to Blake if he ran over to help the woman before Jill.
This is what is meant by culture being both promotive and preventive. Blake’s exemplary leadership and embodiment of cultural values (promotive) does not stop people from “infiltrating” culture and creating problems.
When I lived in Fort Myers, Florida, I knew a slew of people who worked for an unnamed, quite distinguished, and cutting edge company that other companies look to as a pioneer and role model. The thing was, I found that what team/department that the employee worked under was a night-and-day difference concerning their satisfaction with the company as a whole. Some people I talked to said that their values and leaders were so welcoming and inviting.
Unfortunately, others told me that they had bosses that were the exact opposite of what their co-workers experienced. They had managers who didn’t represent the values, “on the wall,” so to speak, and these leaders had actually attracted others to work under them who did not embody company culture either. The leaders who didn’t align with company values “kissed up and kicked down”, by behaving one way (especially around their bosses), but actually valuing something else.
It’s incredible to me how one bad apple slipping through the cracks and landing in a leadership position can not only push out candidates that should have aligned with the organization’s values but also attract employees that align with their incompatible values. Essentially this creates pockets of counterculture within the organization–even one with as strong a reputation as the company mentioned. This speaks volumes to the importance of creating culture entailing both promotive and preventive approaches. Building culture is prevention.
The Jack and Jill example draws attention to how behavior doesn’t always align with values, and how this may look to an employer, in this case, Blake. The organizational example explains what can result if we don’t acknowledge the potential difference between two people who seemingly act the same. Moving on.
But what can we, as leaders, do to stop this from happening, especially without going on a witch hunt or creating any sort of norm based on the distrust of an employee’s underlying values?
Two answers: One, shifting our perceptions towards characters and values, and two, we can draw more awareness to our biases, which make it hard for us to see things as they actually are, rather than how we want them to be.
Shifting Perception
Two simple tricks come to my mind that shift perceptions towards individuals’ character and values; both surround consistent behavior when there is a reason to act otherwise. The reason– when behavior is our best measure of what lies beneath, consistent behavior is more indicative of a value.
Behavior in the Face of Conflict and Adversity
What you’re full of tends to spill out when you’re glass gets bumped. Values-based behaviors are consistent. During tough, comfortable, and tedious times, values produce predictable behaviors, which is a good thing. Someone who has the values that cultivate a healthy work environment will take responsibility, reappropriate praise, and support the team above setting their stats.
There are two main ways that people’s glass gets bumped. The first is a conflict between individual and organizational values. When a bad person-organization fit is a problem, there will be moments that the organizational values somewhat trample the individuals’ values. Someone who doesn’t value the same thing as the organization, typically, won’t take this well. Watch what happens when someone has to take a back seat to organizational values. Do they get impatient, moody, or even blame others? Or, do they gladly sacrifice self for the sake of the whole.
The second glass-bump is adversity. John Maxwell writes about how he asks a coworker about another employee’s character and gets an interesting response. The response was that the co-worker couldn’t comment on that employee’s character because he hasn’t seen the employee in any adverse circumstances. It’s easy to put others first and donate at church when everything is peachy. When the glass gets bumped, how fast and what monsters emerge speak volumes about anyone.
Observing Integrity in Action
The second shift in perception is to notice how people act when nobody is looking. When nobody in a position to help or hurt them is around, how do they act? Do they treat the janitor with the same respect that they do their CEO (remember kissing up and kicking down)? How do they respond when the server gets the order wrong a second time? These are simple tricks to help keep an eye on red flag behavior that might erode the strength of your business’s culture.
Shifting Bias
The second way to exercise preventative measures is avoiding bias towards talent above cultural values. Culture isn’t just a buzzword, as I hope you’re starting to see. It also directly relates to performance, and here’s the kicker– more so than mere talent. There is a mountain of evidence suggesting that top-performing teams and organizations are not the teams with solely the most talent, but ones that don’t, and won’t, compromise their group culture in place of any amount of skill.
One such example is from an interview by Adam Grant with the old head coach and Butler’s current head coach, Brad Stevens and LaVall Jordan. In the interview, Stevens talks about how in Butler’s recruiting process, they follow something called “The Butler Way,” emphasizing strong culture by recruiting humility and team-oriented values above talent alone.[3]
It seems paradoxical, but building an effective organization that reaps the benefits of good person-organization fit is sometimes a process of not being starry-eyed by great talent, but learning first to ask how they fit with the culture.
Prioritizing a culture that compliments the values of the whole, creates a work environment that allows the gestalt assertion of “the whole being greater than the sum of its parts” to apply to organizational performance through the trust that is built when common values and norms are shared. Preventative approaches to culture refine promotive practices to building culture, pushing you one step closer to a culture of innovation based on inclusion and community.
Application: What are your tendencies when you are on the team with, or manage, a really talented employee that just doesn’t value or believe in the same things the team does? What happened to the environment? How did the team perform?
[1] Shrm. “Understanding and Developing Organizational Culture.” SHRM. July 29, 2020. https://www.shrm.org/resourcesandtools/tools-and-samples/toolkits/pages/understandinganddevelopingorganizationalculture.aspx.
[2] Scandura, Terri A. Essentials of Organizational Behavior: An Evidence-based Approach. Sage Publications, 2019.
[3] Adam Grant, Interview with Lavall Jordan and Brad Stevens,The Problem With All-Starts, Work Life, podcast audio,
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-problem-with-all-stars/id1346314086?i=1000406337775