Culture Building

The following four statements are beyond tweetable quotes and simple thoughts. They are deep truths about culture. A proper understanding of each statement will help drive you, your team and your organization to success. They also are – very tweetable.‍

Every organization is perfectly designed to get the results it gets.
– Richard Fagerlin

Looking at this quote, the one word that stands out for most leaders is RESULTS. However, if you want to impact your team or organization you must change focus from results to DESIGN. Both the good and the bad results you get are not on accident. You are perfectly designed to get the results you are getting.

If you want to change your culture, change the things that make it up. Your organization is designed to do exactly what it does.

GOOD: Evaluate your good results and determine how you got there. What of this design should you fight to keep? What do you need to replicate? What do you need to protect?

NOT SO GOOD: Evaluate the not so good results and determine how you are designed to get these results. What of the design needs changed or eliminated? What needs improved? Determine if you truly have a design failure or an execution failure. Don’t be too quick to change design. Evaluate first, make minor changes or tweaks and be committed to determining which design tweak makes a result change.‍

Disciplined people, in disciplined thought, taking disciplined action, create greatness.
– Jim Collins

Good things rarely happen by accident. Those who are willing to take a purposeful, thoughtful and disciplined approach to life will achieve greatness. Focus on your highest point of contribution.

You might ask yourself, “If everything else stayed the same, what one change or area of focus would have the greatest impact right now?” Identify this one thing and commit to the disciplined pursuit of making it happen.

Discipline isn’t just about doing hard things or doing things the hard way. Discipline is about clarity, focus and intentionality. Discipline may come in the form of taking action and it may come in the form of being patient.

‍Culture is the sum of what you permit and what you promote.” CULTURE
– Richard Fagerlin

I don’t know who said this but it is true. Culture isn’t created by leaders or policies or visions or mission statements or general good will. Culture is a result of what leaders (and their teams) do.

What we do can be summed up in the things we permit (allow, support, create) and what we promote (encourage, expect, design). If you are not happy with the result of your current culture, you must examine what you are permitting and promoting and make changes to your if/then formula.

Culture isn’t something that you change, it is a result of everything that you do and it proves that what you put in is what you get out. If you want something different as an output you are going to have to change your inputs.

‍Don’t be upset with the results you are not getting from the work you are not doing.
– Richard Fagerlin

Culture is the beating heart and living soul of your team or your organization. You must nurture it and be intentional with it. If you haven’t defined what good looks like in terms of your ideal culture, how will you know if you are doing the right things to get there? Be a student of your team and of your organization. Determine the formal and informal things that account for your success and are responsible for your poor results. If you aren’t the one to focus on your culture then who will? If not now, then when?

Lead Well, Lead Often, LEAD STRONG!

Several times over the past two weeks, I have facilitated sessions where we asked people to ponder their personal vision as a leader. This is something we do on a regular basis within most of our leadership development sessions. But what struck me this time, was the response to a question I had never asked before.

I asked the group to raise their hand if the last 30 minutes was the first 30 minutes any of them had spent creating a personal vision for their role as a leader. Every hand went up. The next week when facilitating a similar session with a different group of people, I asked the question and again, every hand went up.

Why is it that many leaders have countless hours of crafting a company vision but little to no crafting their personal vision for their role as a leader?

I think that this exercise is critical to being clear on your personal why. What drives you? Why do you do what you do? What impact do you intentionally want to make? All of these are important questions and if you don’t dedicate time to them, you won’t gain the clarity necessary to have the conviction required to live an on-purpose life.

Boiled down, my personal vision is “To make an impact on the world one relationship at a time.” For me this implies that the world needs impacted, it implies that I am going to do it beyond the borders of immediate touch or influence, and it implies that impact or change doesn’t happen in large-scale movements, it happens in the context of relationships. This is meaningful to me, and there are subsets of values and actions that I must live to in order to make an impact on the world.

Steve Jobs said he wanted to put a “Ding in the universe.” Richard Branson’s personal mission is “To have fun in my journey through life and learn from my mistakes.” My good friend Adam Carroll is on a mission to help himself and others “Build a bigger life, not a bigger lifestyle.” Your personal vision should speak to your mission in life and why you get up and battle each day.

Don’t copy mine and don’t use these others as the answer key. Make your vision – your vision. Perhaps answering the following questions will help you find your vision. I’d love to hear your vision. Send it to me by email, respond to this post or tell me in person when we connect. Proverbs 29:18 “Where there is no vision, the people will perish.”

Don’t perish, Lead Well, Lead Often and LEAD STRONG.

Questions to consider when crafting your vision:

1. What is my role in my organization?
2. What do I do that is special, unique or important?
3. If I were not in this organization, what impact would that have?
4. What are the actions, characteristics and behaviors I want to be known for?
5. In 10 years, what do I want people to say about the impact I have made on my organization and on them personally?
6. What is my highest point of contribution to the organization (if you only did 2 or 3 things that made the greatest impact, what are these things)?

I recently spoke at the largest gathering of Human Resource professionals in the world. There were over 15,000 people from 80+ countries. Speakers from Marcus Buckingham and Coach Mike Krzyzewski (Coach K – from Duke) to current HR practitioners and consultants and authors like me were there. It’s a gathering of minds and one of my favorite conferences of the year.

Each year I leave with excitement and enthusiasm for those leading the people side of the business. This year, I noticed, however, how much time and energy is still spent talking about generations in the workplace. I want to grab a megaphone and jump in each session and scream…

“It’s not about the generations – it’s about the people.”

The generation mix is a real deal and this year (officially) there are more millennials in the workforce than any other generation. Multiple generations working together create issues and challenges – this is for sure. Managing the generation mix is indeed hard and presents unique challenges to managers and employees.

In my opinion this topic is tired, worn out, and should be put to bed. I looked at my files and the first keynote I gave on the topic of generations was in 1999. The message since then has not changed. Here is the entire message in a nutshell…

Younger people enter the workforce. They look, act and behave differently than their elder counterparts. Their needs are different, and they want them met. They want more from their personal life and don’t want to end up like their parents and grandparents who give too much to their work for little reward. Older generations get frustrated because they had to pay their dues and wait patiently for things that younger workers seem to get right away. We all act like there is some great generational divide but in the end, the punchline is that we all want the same thing. There you go, everything you need to know about generations.

Now, can we get to the real heart of the matter? It’s not about Millenials, Generation X or Baby Boomers. It’s about people. That’s it. I believe that many leaders (human resource professionals in particular) like to hide behind labels and excuses rather than addressing the real problem. It’s much easier to talk about issues like diversity and engagement or to complain about generational gaps than it is to drive a culture that makes each of these things irrelevant.

Would you be brave and would you be bold? Would you be willing to get to the root of this issue and meet people where they want to be met? I hope that soon we will be able to change the conversation from simple labels and over simplified buzz words and start talking about things that truly make a difference. Stop pointing out our differences and start valuing the gifts and strengths in everyone.

Next week I will provide 10 practical ways to make generations in the workplace irrelevant.

Lead well, Lead often and LEAD STRONG!