Intentional Culture: The Key to Organizational Success

So what I'm interested in is organizations being intentional and creating the kind of culture that's going to drive your organizations forward. So we've all probably worked at some sort of dysfunctional culture at some point in time, but I'm talking about the kind of culture that will drive job applicants. People are going to want to come work at your organization where your employees are going to act like owners and be a part of driving your business results and your tenure is going to increase with those employees. [00:03:56]

If you think culture is all about having a ping pong table or balloons or things like that, that is not the kind of culture we're talking about. There's certainly nothing wrong with a ping pong table or balloons, but I'm talking about the kind of culture that can drive your bottom line and improve your business results. When we think about great corporate cultures, I think some of the organizations that I often hear about are Chick-fil-A, which is number one in financial performance in the casual restaurant category. [00:09:32]

Well, actually in the most healthy organizations, culture's, everyone's job, but it is also, it's definitely a requirement for leaders. Again, and I'll use the same phrase acting like owners. That's what we want all of our employees to do, but our leaders are the ones who set the tone and making sure that culture is a top priority. And so one of the things we did, you can add it to your job description, and we did that at Southwest I every year had my job review with the CEO and how I led the culture was part of my job description. [00:15:38]

So the best in class organizations spend time at every touchpoint through hiring, onboarding, training, recognition, all the way to performance evaluations. And they spend time talking about their values in every phase. So all cultures actually start before we hire in how we're presenting our employer brand and what kind of employees we're trying to bring into the organization. And the next way we do it is we make sure we're hiring tough so that we can manage easy. [00:21:26]

Yes, we've all, and I like to describe this as freedom in a framework because a lot of leaders feel that they're going to lose control if they give their employees power, but boy, they're going to miss out on so much individual contribution and empowerment. So if you look at freedom in a framework, all of us have a certain framework that refers to our jobs. But boy, if we were able to give the freedom to our employees to actually use the personality and the skills we actually hire them for, that would be incredible. [00:28:34]

Culture doesn't have to cost a lot to be effective, so I'd love to give some free ideas about that because our spirit is willing, but our budget is weak. I get that. So how are we going to go about doing that? And one of some of the free things I would tell people to do would be to put storytelling front and center, because repeating those stories will help employees see the unlimited boundaries that they can go to to help solve problems for the customers, and it gives them so much personal empowerment. [00:34:04]

I would tell that leader to live your values and to bring your values to life every day as a leader. And so start being a collector of stories as a leader. Because if, again, we've talked about this already, if your values are stagnant, they're not going anywhere. But start as a leader. Start collecting stories, and when you see someone putting your company's values into action, tell other people about that. Become a champion and a storyteller of your employees and how they're living their values. [00:38:28]

And then also based on my volunteer activity with Ronald McDonald House through the years, I'm now the global chair of Ronald McDonald House Charities, which is now definitely a global organization and in countries across the world. You have developed this talk or this content around what you call the five Lies of corporate culture. And I want us to talk through those in just a minute. But first, before we do that, stepping back into your former career culture and development of culture and protecting culture has been a common thread throughout your career. [00:02:54]

And I think anybody who's ever flown Southwest Airlines has seen that in the flight attendants because they have a basic framework. They're going to make their on-call announcement, they're on board the aircraft, but they can use their own personality. And what happens, they enjoy their job more and you're much more likely to listen to them. So for those leaders who are so formulaic in the way they want their product delivered, they're going to really miss 'em. Delightful surprises and that connection that goes along with the customer. [00:30:22]

And one of the things we did at every one of our onboarding sessions, when you're bringing in new employees, we would make sure one of the leaders spent time with those employees. That's a great way to reconnect and it really causes you to feel the culture all over again when you're out there sharing it with new employees. So in an onboarding session, the leader who'd been there for 30 years went into the class and talked about what their experiences were and also reconnected with those employees. [00:17:57]

And then the longevity connected to that, obviously you basically in a positive way recycle culture and reinforce culture because the longer people are there, obviously the more entrenched they are in the culture and that trickles down through the rest of the organization. I want us to jump into these five lies that you've identified that relate to corporate culture. And as I have heard you talk about these and as I've reviewed these for our conversation, they are always relevant and I think they're relevant for every organization. [00:13:23]

And so we came up with our six employee values, and instead of putting 'em on the wall, we put 'em on a cube so that we could put 'em on everyone's desk. And to your point too, we attached a question to each one of the values because the value statement is somewhat stagnant, but when you attach a question to it, and I think you mentioned that it forces me to personally engage. So one, our staff values is make it better, make it better, make it better where you work, make it better based on what you see. [00:25:30]