We talk a lot about corporate culture on this podcast. In fact, we did an episode earlier in the season about culture as a benefit, and we just did an episode about employee experiences, which was essentially about corporate culture.

But let's take it up to 30,000 feet and talk about why a healthy corporate culture is so critical to a company's long-term success.

On this episode of the Stop Hating Mondays Podcast, we're discussing corporate culture. You know, that often forgotten thing that affects every person who works.

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TRANSCRIPT

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Caanan

We talk a lot about corporate culture on this podcast. In fact, we did an episode earlier in the season about culture as a benefit, and we just did an episode about employee experiences, which was essentially about corporate culture.

But let's take it up to 30,000 feet and talk about why a healthy corporate culture is so critical to a company's long-term success.

This is Caanan. I'm here with Kent and on this episode of the Stop Hating Mondays Podcast, we're discussing corporate culture.

You know, that often forgotten thing that affects every person who works.

Caanan

I want to keep this first question really, really straightforward, so here goes.

What are some of the reasons focusing on culture is so important?

Kent

Yeah, it's interesting.

Looking back on this entire season of podcasts, a lot of it comes down to this. I mean, it's all kind of culture. And it's not surprising because it's culture that often gets forgotten.

Yeah, and it's sad. It just shows how overworked everybody is and this thing that?

People think is having attention paid to it – culture – is really not. And, you know, in our experience, people so often think we're diagnosing and addressing something that must be a singular, isolated problem.

And then what's revealed is… tracks back to a culture problem.

No one person or workgroup did something wrong. What you're seeing as a symptom isn't due to a person or a workgroup. it's due to a culture that's cultivating this kind of behavior or environment that you're now noticing as some kind of a leader and you want to correct.

So I just want to get back to basics and say culture is something that happens even when you're not focusing on it.

And that's a huge.

Caanan

It's like in the last episode we were talking about employee experiences and how if you're actively working to create positive employee experiences that's wonderful, but being… not focusing on a positive employee experiences does not have a neutral outcome.

Kent

Exactly.

Caanan

It has a bad outcome. And the exact same thing is true for culture, not caring for culture does not create a neutral corporate culture, it creates a bad corporate culture.

Kent

Yeah, I think like the best relationship advice that's out there, that to so many people seems tired and eye-roll-y… You know when you see those interviews with the old married couples in their 80s, and they'll say, “we talk all the time or communicate.”

And the same applies here. Communication. Because culture is happening even when you're not focusing on it, so you have to control and intentionally create it.

And if you're not, the best people are going to leave.

So as a wise old married person would say, communicate, communicate, communicate.

Caanan

I'm going to paraphrase a question we got from a client recently and I'll warn you, it's so broad, it's practically unanswerable.

But I'm sure you've got some good advice here.

“What's the worst thing we can do as employers in this day and age?”

I told you it was broad.

Kent

I like these questions because these are questions from real clients.

Oftentimes they come up in the midst of a consulting project and it shows, you know, questions show that someone cares. That someone is asking the question and I would answer that by saying: Being tone deaf. Being tone deaf is completely unforgivable.

I'm going to go back to something we've talked about in previous podcasts, and I'm going to go back to something that we talked about in a podcast in this season.

You have to show an awareness of the current, larger culture. By that I mean that change is afoot in the world and in our home country, the United States. Employees care about having an element of positive social change. Change, diversity, and inclusion. And if you're ignoring that, or tone deaf to those realities, it's absolutely unforgivable.

I will say to that in each particular organization you know a vibe is created within this larger culture, you see vibes grow because of the culture you've created, so you've got to be able to tap into what is giving your workgroups that particular vibe and be aware of it and foster what is making a company a place where people want to work and a workgroup a place that's working.

Pay attention to the leaders that are creating workgroups that are highly productive, highly satisfied, and try to duplicate that.

Paying a lot of attention to that – here's the word again from this season – the culture that's being created.

Caanan

It's interesting because some of the companies we've worked with and the companies I think with the most troubling cultures, can tend to act like they're operating in a vacuum. Like there's the company culture and then the rest of the world. And what they fail to recognize is your employees are navigating two cultures. They're navigating your culture and they're navigating the larger culture at the same time. And they don't shut their brains off when they come to work. They don't step outside of their existing reality when they come to work. So, to your tone deaf point, you need to also be aware of what your employees are experiencing large scale and stop acting like somehow their lives are siloed when they walk into work.

Kent

And you know it's sort of funny. I'm going to use a company as an example 'cause it's just so unforgivable that… yeah, I have no problem doing this. Better Mortgage. That the CEO terminated – I think I remember how many but a lot of – people on a on a zoom call.

The very act has come up from a lot of the companies that we work with and from a lot of the individuals we work with who are very aware how – in the middle of severe global turbulence, a racial justice movement, a decency movement, and a pandemic – to terminate people via zoom, people will go out of their way to say, “I want no part of a company like that.”

Yeah, so to your point, people want to live in a world where they feel like they're doing something to make it a better place, and they take those beliefs into where they work. And gone are the days where you can easily compartmentalize. I said in a previous podcast: Intollerable is the word of 2020, 2021, 2022.

Working at a place or doing anything that doesn't align with your personal desire for social equity – for advancements in that area – is intolerable and people know it.

Caanan

All right, so we've been talking a lot about the questions we get from corporate clients and about the enterprise and small business cultures, but I don't want to forget about all the entrepreneurs out there.

How does the idea of corporate culture pertain to the individual or the very, very small business.

Kent

In the case of these entrepreneurs, it's about your brand and the way you relate to the world.

So, even if you're an individual as a freelancer – and this applies to you as an individual, as a person, even outside of the work you're doing – or an individual who wants to do an entrepreneurial venture, maybe a small business, it becomes even more about your brand. What are you communicating about your brand as a person? As a small business? As a micro business? What are you telling the public at large and therefore your little culture possibly of 1, 2, 5, 8 people, about what you stand for?