It's Your Culture, Not Your Policy!

There is a horrible notion going around that you can establish the culture you want if you can just get the policies right. If you have the right dress code, everyone will be both happy and appropriate; if you have the right telework policy, everyone will be both happy and productive; if you…-- you get the idea. There is another horrible notion going around that you can attract, hire, and retain the best people if you can just figure out how to comply with all of the applicable laws and diversity initiatives dreamed up over the last couple of years. If you get the ratio du jour of colors, shapes, and plumbing, then you will have an environment of egalitarian inventiveness and creativity like nothing seen short of Star Trek.  Both of these horrible notions are, at their center, a mix of conflation and misunderstanding of what it means to deliberately craft a culture and build a team.

The bulk of culture comes from modeling and mirroring, not proclamation and policy, which is why so much of culture is a mystery in places where it is a problem. Managers and others are confused by the behaviors that they observe in employees, and it is in no small part because they are blind to their own behaviors – behaviors which are being copied. There are the carrots and sticks that don’t seem to be working, or are even creating bigger problems, because the incentive doesn’t match the intent. Make it individually profitable to perform a certain number of actions during a shift, and employees will find a way to more and more of them by trimming off things that have less consequence.

So, what’s the fix?

There isn’t an easy fix, per se, but there is a certain step: be the type of person you want to work with. Sure, some policy changes can happen to nudge things in the right direction through compliance (e.g. elevating the dress code), but your first-best step is always to be someone worth modeling in your organization. This may mean a somewhat harsh personal critique if you routinely find poor behaviors from otherwise good employees because, quite simply, they are likely copying you (or another leader), but it is doable. 

Once you are the type of person you would work with, and consistently so, then you need to hire for the traits that are important to the culture you want to build. Yes, you need certain baselines of skills, but don’t hold those over the personalities and behaviors that matter. Never forget that you can efficiently and effectively train nearly any skill imaginable, but changing a personality that has taken a literal lifetime to develop is another story. If in doubt, hire the right personality and most of the right skills; invest in onboarding and training so you don’t lose in turnover.

Be the model of your organization, fix your culture and your people will dress appropriately. Narrow the dress code and you’ll just get reluctant compliance balanced by lower morale.

Note: This post first appeared as a LinkedIn blog by Dr. Mann on March 2, 2017.