Culture Is An Attitude, Not A Perk

As seen on Forbes

By Kathleen Lucente

A good company culture is like any investment. It takes the right amount of capital and a lucid vision to cultivate the culture you want and, ultimately, to reap the business benefits it sows over time.

By most accounts, culture is a manifestation of what a company does well; how its employees treat each other, clients or customers and the company itself; how successes are celebrated and how milestones are achieved. Building an authentic one takes time, smart recruiting, top-down transparency and no small amount of pride in how the company functions.

Most variations of company culture are just that: variations. While there are common threads — internal communications being greatest among them — that pervade most good company cultures, what works for one company may not necessarily work for another. Instead, what we find are different iterations of what a good company culture should look like based on the kind of company that builds it.

This notion was no more obvious than at the Culturati Summit, an annual conference I attend that draws business leaders to discuss best practices and share success stories about exceptional company cultures. While their suggestions aren’t interchangeable, one idea was abundantly clear: Culture is perfected in good times but forged in the bad.

A willingness to be vulnerable in front of one’s own employees — whether to share a recent quarter’s struggling financials, announce a round of layoffs or a recent firing or reveal that a well-liked executive is stepping down — is just as important during troubled times as it is during successful ones.

For instance, I heard a speaker at Culturati say her company provides basic finance training during onboarding so every employee can read the company’s profit and loss statement. But what good is that if you only share such statements during times of profitability?

The point is that consistent communication and transparency prevail every time. Employees love a company that has a leadership team willing to admit failures, probably even more so than one that only shares successes. In many cases, vulnerability engenders loyalty and builds a culture of trust. That trust erodes quickly when you’re suddenly unwilling to discuss the previous quarter’s financials at your all-hands meeting.

Culture should scale and evolve as the company does. The ones that don’t either become hollow shells of what they used to be or, worse, what an executive wants it to be even when it lacks authenticity. Too often, executives inherently associate a company’s culture with its new, trendy office space, the cool event it sponsors every year or the awesome perks and benefits it provides its staff.

Culture, in reality, is much more implicit. It’s the attitude and approach created by the founders and C-suite and entrusted to the rest of the company’s employees. Culture is what happens when the boss isn’t around.

Of course, there are certain tangible fundamentals that executives can implement to reinforce a company’s culture. The more opportunities employees, especially new ones, have to hear directly from the people who built and cultivated that culture, the more likely they are to buy into it and become its stewards.

For instance, I’ve seen company values displayed prominently in collaborative spaces or common areas to remind employees of the foundation on which culture was built. I’ve seen executives set aside time specifically to chat with employees with whom they otherwise wouldn’t be able to speak, such as “office hours” or a meal with new hires. These tools can be especially effective for new employees, who will begin to feel an immediate sense of ownership. Regular forums or town halls can also be useful vehicles that give executives a platform from which to communicate their vision, values and mission to the entire company at once. This fosters a collective responsibility to maintain and grow the culture. The point is, the more frequently executives can speak directly to employees, the more likely they are to take those ideas and build on them.

If a company has built such a culture, it will inevitably be tested. Very few companies experience perpetual growth, constant 52-week highs and unlimited expansion without contraction. No, the true test of a company’s mettle comes in the dark times, during those revenue losses, recent ousters or an uncertain merger.

The culture’s — not to mention the company’s — success or failure hinges on the CEO’s ability to communicate to employees and, just as importantly, on the collection of building blocks put in place long before a company is tested by uncertainty.

The pinnacle of company culture is performance and pride. Performance, of course, can be measured. Pride is priceless and can act as a company’s most valuable recruitment tool. So those great hires you made in the early days? They are now the stewards who ensure the high standards under which they were hired are perpetuated and sustained as the company scales, creating an indelible sense of pride and inclusion that will last long after they’re gone.