Regardless of the size of the organisation, joining a new team, or merging teams, can result in the prickly situation of navigating culture change.
We often work with organisations that are merging or acquiring other businesses and we are often brought in when things are not meshing quite as well as they should be. Actually that’s putting it nicely. Realistically we are often brought in once people have thrown their toys out of the cot.
We also find that misunderstandings happen when new people join a company, and they have been used to a different culture, so they have a different set of beliefs around communication, behaviours etc. And this can lead to all sorts of communication issues.
And at the very least, when a new person joins a new team, they are usually spending around 6 months actually trying to navigate the culture, which takes a lot of cognitive energy that could be better invested in actually doing the job. So even if nothing is going horribly awry – we still have lost productivity that no one is tracking.
So what is the root cause of this issue?
When a culture hasn’t merged successfully, we are generally brought in to fix what leaders describe as an “us vs them” situation. At that point I always like to delve deeper into what are the underlying cultures of “us” and “them”.
This is where leaders stumble to articulate the two cultures they are trying to merge.
And that is the root cause of the issue – if the leaders can’t clearly describe each culture, is it any wonder why the people aren’t adhering to something which hasn’t ever been clearly articulated to them?
Now I’m certainly no domestic goddess, but does it sound a little like trying to bake a cake without knowing what ingredients you have available?
Never fear – there is a reasonably simple solution…
So often when go back a step and we ask people to define organisational culture in general, many people say it’s the unwritten rules about how we do things around here.
At which point I usually ask “and how is the fact that it that ‘unwritten’ working out for you?”
By now you are hopefully seeing that expecting people to get the unwritten message is a whole lot harder than clearly articulating each culture in the first place. And you’d be spot on!
We call it getting your “culture on a page”.
The neuroscience of why it makes sense to get your culture on a page…
From a neuroscience perspective, the brain really hates unnecessary ambiguity and will spend a lot of cognitive energy trying to make sense of it.
Think about when you first started in any organisation… You probably spent the first six months trying to work out the culture. Wouldn’t it have been easier if someone just handed you a one pager with a quick snapshot of the expected behaviours, activities and mindset norms that sum up how we roll around here?
This valuable cognitive energy could be better spent actually doing the job, instead of walking on eggshells, or worse still, not caring if your behaviours, activities and mindset aren’t congruent with the current culture and creating a heap of collateral damage in the process which will then take up everyone’s cognitive energy that could be better spent doing the work.
So what are the results when you get your culture on a page?
We’ve been working with many organisations to help them to get their culture on a page and the feedback is very positive from everyone…
- The new starters appreciate knowing what they are signing up for. High performers want to work with other high performers, so having the culture clearly articulated in the interview process and early stages is very attractive for them.
- All leaders have the culture on page which could also form Key Culture Indicators that people are being assessed on. It’s makes it much quicker to have a discussion around people’s behaviours, if you have something very clear to point to, if they aren’t quite hitting the mark.
So what goes in your culture on a page?
Well, there is quite a lot of choice here. (We currently have 8 half day workshops worth of neuroscience-based ideas to help create your high performance culture. Or as we also like to call it – your Key BAM Indicators. BAM stands for Behaviours, Activities and Mindset Indicators.)
It will it depend on your organisation and team. We generally suggest that in addition to doing this at an organisational level, you should do this at a team level as well. Pretty sure your technology team will have slightly different views on this to your sales and marketing team!
Another example is an excellent private school I’m working with, where I can assure you that the culture on a page for the senior school commercial studies team looked very different culture to that of the junior school art department.
As a minimum, it’s important to articulate your BAMs around psychological safety and accountability. And you can’t just mention these words, you need to ensure you clearly unpack what these mean every day.
In fact, if you mention the word accountability in your culture on a page – you already have ambiguity.
Unpack your process for disagreement and running with decisions you don’t agree with?
If you have people working in different locations, articulate your BAMs for this.
Articulate your BAMs for people taking responsibility to maintain their energy and psychological capital.
Meeting culture (and how to avoid unnecessary meetings) is also handy to include.
Ideally this process will be a collaborative approach.
We have programs to help you with the entire process – from floating the idea and getting buy-in, to developing it, finalising it, and then using it every day and setting a program for you to review and tweak.
Why should we do this now?
The best time to do it would have been years ago, but the next best time is now.
The world is getting more and more ambiguous and quite frankly polarised. Anything we can do to remove ambiguity and help people to settle in sooner and easier can free up valuable cognitive energy which can be spent actually doing the job and getting results.
And when you live and breathe the BAMs every day, work just feels easier instead of feeling unnecessarily hard.
Difficult conversations become a thing of the past. Now they are just conversations as expectations and processes have been set to get great outcomes in a way that feels easier.
Oh and just to be clear, your culture is never “done”
It should be something that you have a cadence for reviewing.
The language should be used every day to reward people for living up to it to ensure the BAMs are always front of mind.
So whether or not you are likely to go through the process of merging cultures, organisations and teams will always benefit from having a clearly articulated culture to remove ambiguity and save everyone some valuable cognitive energy – we have plenty of other great things to do with our cognitive energy already.
By creating a clear culture where people get to do their best work in a way that feels easier, will improve staff retention and more revenue can come in more quickly. It will also save on salary costs by needing less people, and these people are spending less time in unproductive interactions and meetings.
Strategy without a great culture is a total waste of resources.
Invest in your culture.
Of course, if you’d like to find out more about how to create, articulate and implement a sustainable high performance culture in your organisation, why not book a Performance Call or sign up for our next 20/20 session or one of our open workshops here