CHAPTER 15

Aligning with Culture

A final condition for the success of work-life supports is culture—this includes the culture outside and inside an organization. Everything I’ve covered so far affects and is affected by culture, which is the broader context outside an organization as well as the disposition within a company. Culture is important to the discussion of work-life supports because it can be an enabler, an obstacle, or both. Work-life supports can be effective in any organizational system. They must, however, be aligned with key features of the company and matched to where it wants to go.

Culture can be defined as the norms, beliefs, values, unwritten rules, and practices of a group (or a country, region, ethnic group, or organization). It is a disposition or an inherent quality of mood of the group. It is the natural inclination or tendency to think or act in a particular way. For an organization, culture is “the way things get done around here” and it shapes how an organization operates and how its employees behave. It is possible to see these patterns by observing what people do when they believe no one is looking. Culture will affect the choices people make and the decisions that guide their actions. Organizational culture is affected by a company’s industry, competitive market, mission, business drivers, history, leadership, policies, measurement practices, HR practices, technology, and reward practices. These factors shape and are shaped by culture in a reciprocal relationship.

CULTURE OUTSIDE AN ORGANIZATION

First, let’s briefly consider culture outside an organization. It is essentially the context within which an organization operates, and it is multifaceted. It describes the typical patterns of a country, an industry, an ethnic group, or even a family. Organizations function within this broader context. Because this external framework is part of a larger whole, companies have limited control over the culture within which they operate. Michelle, chief administration officer from a manufacturing company, puts it this way, “There are underlying cultural mores that go well beyond a company. I can do my damndest to have what I would call progressive, family-friendly policies, but the company still operates in a culture outside of ourselves and I can’t change that.”

A good friend, Bill, who has traveled extensively and has lived in several different countries across the world, used to say that all cultures have the same priorities. The only difference is the hierarchy of the priorities. For example, every culture would place family, work, religion, and group loyalty within their top ten values. However, the order in which group members place these priorities makes a significant difference in their actions. If a group prioritizes religion above life, its members may be more likely to fly suicide missions. If a group prioritizes family over career, its members may be more likely to miss the board meeting in favor of a daughter’s concert. If the company values group loyalty over individual achievement, its employees may be less likely to speak up and disagree in a meeting. With decisions large and small, national culture, organizational culture, and personal values all have an impact on the actions we choose.

Culture outside an organization has a bearing on work-life supports because the organization and all its employees are part of this broader cultural experience. As a result, individual choice is a bit of an oxymoron since no choice occurs in a vacuum. “Personal choices are not always as personal as they appear. We are all influenced by social conventions, peer pressure, and familial expectations,” says Sheryl Sandberg.1 Organizations, and the conditions they create for employees’ personal choices are part of a broader context. Richard Sheridan, CEO and cofounder of Menlo Innovations and author of Joy, Inc., shares his perspectives on the importance of work-life supports and an organization’s connections to the terroir 2 – the unique context, region or geography – in which it plants itself.

External Culture + Work-Life Supports: An Interview with Richard Sheridan, CEO and cofounder of Menlo Innovations and author of Joy, Inc.

Richard Sheridan is the CEO and cofounder of Menlo Innovations, which has won the Alfred P. Sloan Award for Business Excellence in Workplace Flexibility for six straight years and five revenue awards from Inc. Magazine. He frequently speaks at business conferences and to major corporations such as Mercedes-Benz, Nike, and 3M. He lives in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

To what extent do you believe culture is a mirror of a leader?

RS: When I think about culture, I think about alignment. When considering the alignment of a company’s culture, I pick three data points. First, what is the world’s outside perception of your company and your business and your approach? Some people might call that your brand but I think that’s too narrowly focused on marketing. A truly authentic brand is one that encompasses so much more than your tag line and buzz phrases about your products. The question is “How would someone, who has never been to your company but knows about you, describe your organization?” The second data point is the inside reality. What does your own team believe about your organization and your business? What’s it like on the inside? The third data point is the heart of the visionary leader(s) in the company. What do the leaders talk about, believe, and how do they behave? How do they treat team members? What do they tolerate as far as how the team treats itself? If you graphed those three points and tried to connect them with a straight line, you would probably have the typical organization in which those dots don’t connect, but if you could get those all in alignment, that’s where you get a culture that is incredibly powerful. You have a culture where all the stories align: inside, outside, up and down.

How do you think about navigating the organization in the broader culture that surrounds you? How do you go about affecting the world’s perception of the company?

RS: I go back to a strong human tradition: storytelling. Think about how a society or a civilization or a community propelled itself forward over centuries of time. It was through storytelling with totems, songs, and at campfires. The culture itself has a storytelling component to it. This is the importance of alignment. You should be able to tell exactly the same story to your company and the world and your team. If those are in alignment, the team can tell stories without you there, the world can tell stories, and it’s all in alignment. This is a strong reinforcing system of alignment. It is also a system of accountability. For example, when I tell a story in my book or at a speaking engagement or on a tour, what would happen if I were lying? Imagine the cynicism and sarcasm that would result back at Menlo … so the storytelling component is incredibly important.

What are your perspectives on giving back to the community and how the organization connects to the broader community?

RS: Business must be integrated into the community as one whole. No business can stand alone. Every piece is part of the whole. It’s like the saying, ‘If a clod of dirt falls into the ocean, France is the lesser.’ It’s like this for a company. For example, the Burgundy region of France has a certain terroir to it. It literally refers to the earth of that place. If you plant a grape in that region, it will grow in a certain way based on the earth that exists there and the culture of that earth and how farmers have been taught to grow crops in that region, and to produce fine wines. Every community has a terroir to it – Boston, Detroit, New York City, Silicon Valley, Ann Arbor, Washington DC. When you plant your business in a community, you are part of the terroir of that community. You are planted in the earth of that community and must take responsibility for that. This all sounds pretty lofty. I don’t think any of this is a zero-sum game. There are gains everywhere to be had when you create a system that allows your people to integrate their life and their work, when you create a system of storytelling, and when your business integrates with the community. All of this pays dividends in so many different directions you can’t even count them all.

Tell me more about your perspectives on work-life flexibility.

RS: The first thing to talk about is sustainability. You can’t have a flexibly available workforce unless that workforce itself is sustainable in the long term. As a society we spend a lot of time talking about sustainability of energy sources and climate and species and ecosystems and urban areas. But we need to start talking about the sustainability of humans. When we get to a certain point of tiredness and burning out people, we can’t ask any more of them. You don’t get the flexibility until you get the sustainability. For us, that’s a core piece, to have a flexible team you have to first have a sustainable team. The question becomes–because that aspect of our culture is very important to us–how do we ensure a sustainable human pace to the work. We need to achieve flexibility in regards to the work we do for our clients. As much as my clients might love my culture, those customers have deadlines and requirements and things we have to do. Flexibility isn’t the goal, it’s the tool to get to sustainability. We need a sustainable workforce. Everything we created at Menlo is to create the flexibility so we get the sustainability. We pair people. We switch the pairs every five days so we’re not building towers of knowledge. We have a flexible work space so we can bring more people to the project when we need more people so we can get more done. We’ve built this whole system to have the most flexible workforce possible so we can have the most sustainable workforce possible.3

DEFINING CULTURE INSIDE AN ORGANIZATION

Within an organization, clearly defining culture—current and desired—is the first step in managing it. A clear definition unites employees and leaders to pursue common goals, sets clear expectations, and provides a framework for accountability.

How does an organization define its desired culture? When we work with companies on the topic, we frequently assess it by asking people to list the attributes of the organizational patterns. This is straightforward, but then we continue the discussion by asking about what the culture is not. This type of is/is not analysis helps with definition because often when we try to define a concept, what it is not is as important as what it is. For example, an automotive organization was defining one norm in its culture as “process driven,” which meant it was structured, documented, and efficient. However on the “is not” side of the equation, the employees clarified that “process driven” did not mean it was non-innovative, bureaucratic, or rigid. In another example, the organization defined a norm of “customer focused,” which meant delivering value and solutions to customers. It did not mean giving customers exactly what they wanted, if what they wanted was not in their best interest. It did not mean committing to unrealistic schedules. The company also identified a norm of being “achievement oriented.”This meaning was connected to growth, clarity of goals, and hard work. “Achievement oriented” did not mean focusing on ends at the expense of means, achieving short-term goals at the expense of the long term, or burning people out in order to accomplish the goals.

From a work-life support standpoint, multiple organizations may value “work-life balance.” In one company, this may mean that employees are encouraged not to work over weekends. In another company, the same cultural value may mean that employees are not required to come into the office, but are encouraged to work weekends at home to complete their work. The cultural aspiration of “work-life balance” is the same, but the companies have different ideas pertaining to how they accomplish it, which are visible in the way the attribute is put into practice. This is the value of understanding the “is not” side of the description as well as the “is” side of the description.

Another way to define organizational culture is to identify a person in the organization who is believed to embody the culture of the organization. Without necessarily sharing the person’s name, it is possible to make a list of ways to describe her personality and characteristics. These are, by association, ways to describe the organization’s culture. Another way to define culture is by having a group create a collage using images.

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Figure 15-1 Defining Culture collage

When the team members select and post images of their desired culture, they capture why each image is indicative of the culture. This list of attributes will be descriptive of the desired culture. There are multiple methodologies to assess and define culture; these are merely examples.

Brand is also connected with culture. Culture is the “inside out” and brand is the “outside in” view of a similar set of attributes. Instead of thinking of brand and culture as separate factors for an organization, it is valuable to consider them together. First, describe the brand—the experience of the organization from the customer or consumer viewpoint. Then, describe the culture—the experience of the organization from an internal viewpoint. The attributes for each should be similar and in alignment.

Culture is a strategic advantage because it is the most difficult factor for competitors to replicate. Competitors may be able to copy products, mimic marketing strategies, or even hire away good people (steal talent), but because of the complexity of culture, it is almost impossible to reproduce.

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Figure 15-2 Brand and Culture

JOINING A CULTURE

When employees choose to join an organization, they are essentially choosing a culture and seeking a match. When our daughter was entering kindergarten, we worked diligently to select the best school system. We weren’t simply choosing a teacher or a classroom. While those were important, they would only last a year. What would outlast the individual teacher or single year experience was the overall school system, including its philosophy, leadership, faculty, student assessment processes, facilities, and more. Employees who choose wisely are thinking in this same way. While a job or a particular work team leader may be attractive today, the typical employee is also looking for an organization within which he can grow, learn, and develop his career. Xavier Unkovic, global president for Mars Drinks, Inc., says:

Mars has a unique DNA. If a company wants to be a Great Place to Work, it must be unique. We seek to attract people who are a match to our culture. We want them to join, not just because we’re a well-known company or we have great brands, but because of our unique DNA. It goes beyond the product you produce. It’s about the culture you create.4

Culture is the broader determining factor of the overall career experience that an employee will have.

SYMBIOTIC RELATIONSHIPS

Work-life supports tend to be a product of an organization’s overall culture. The extent to which a company values employees and the extent to which the company communicates this to employees through the provisioning of work-life supports is instructive. Work-life supports are also mechanisms for culture change. They send messages about how workers are trusted and valued. They shape the culture. When workers are provided with tuition reimbursement and the opportunity to attend a class during working hours, it sends a message. When an employee is allowed to take longer-than-usual lunch breaks on Wednesdays in order to visit her aunt at the hospital nearby, it also sends a message. Additionally, the extent to which employees feel they can take advantage of the support available is culturally based. There is a symbiotic relationship between culture and work-life supports. They drive and reflect each other.

CULTURAL IMMUNE SYSTEMS

A culture is a living system comprised of people and practices. As with any system, it has an immune response. It is easiest to discern this immune response when people who are foreign to its constitution enter the culture. A company with which I consulted was seeking to renew its culture. It perceived that it had become stagnant and was not open enough to innovative ideas, risk taking, or new business ventures. As a solution to the problem, senior leaders brought in a handful of additional leaders who were countercultural. One leader in particular is an example. Whereas the pattern of behavior within this company was generally cautious and risk averse, she was aggressive and risk taking. Whereas the norm was friendliness and conflict avoidance, she was confrontational and tended to incite conflict. Whereas the organization had allowed less-than-stellar performance to be maintained, she was a stickler for results.

The culture and the people within the organization struggled. Similar to an immune response, they tended to isolate this newer leader. She wasn’t invited to meetings. Because they feared her, employees tended to agree with her publicly and then disagree and talk behind her back later. For a while she was successful in spite of the immune response. She had the sponsorship of senior leaders and was catalyzing change as they’d intended. She fired some people. She started some new ventures. She achieved positive financial results. However, she wasn’t happy, and the organization fatigued her. After a few years, she left in search of a company with a better match to her disposition and her approach to leadership. The organization’s culture had resisted her style.

WORK-LIFE SUPPORTS WITHIN A CULTURE

Cultural immune systems and the leaders and practices cultures will accept or reject have a bearing on the work-life supports that are available to employees. Some cultures may embrace work-life supports to a greater extent than others, providing more benefits, having more policies, and allowing more practices that support work-life integration. No matter what types of work-life supports the company provides, culture is at the heart of these decisions.

Isaiah, head of real estate, facilities, finance, and information technology from a global technology company, says, “People are free to work in remote locations, work at hours that are flexible to accommodate their personal situation, and free to pursue their own interests within the context of their work. This is engrained and accepted in their culture.” Ross, chief operating officer at a leading oil and gas organization, describes his company in terms of its values. He says that his company’s culture of integrity and respect for employees is the foundation for its work-life practices.

Allen, director of finance and administration, with a finance company, shares a story of an employee who had knee replacement surgery. After his initial recovery period, when he wanted to work but couldn’t be at the office in person, he regularly phoned in from bed for meetings. The culture was accustomed to having meetings via phone, so his time recuperating was easily facilitated by this approach, which was already the norm. These are all examples in which the organization’s culture is context for work-life supports.

When implementing work-life supports, one element of culture that can be problematic is a preference for face-to-face interactions. Frank, an executive in charge of engineering, real estate, facilities, and quality, discusses the cultural reality within his manufacturing organization: if an employee is out of sight, she may be out of mind. Some cultures prefer face-to-face interaction and are less apt to include team members who are not physically present.

Sometimes, even when a culture officially offers work flexibility, employees do not feel free to take advantage of it. Herein lies perhaps one of the greatest challenges to the success of work-life supports. This reality is frequently due to leader behaviors, as we discussed in an earlier chapter, but it is also frequently due to the organization’s culture. Brent, vice president of optimization, from a manufacturing organization, cites “cultural hurdles” as reasons that there are fewer people who take advantage of flexible working arrangements. Rita, chief diversity officer for a global consumer brand, shares that she knows team members who will commonly leave a jacket on the back of their chair in order to send a message that they are in the office. She knows a gentleman who would regularly wear two jackets on days he wanted to attend his Habitat for Humanity board meetings. He would wear one and leave the other on his chair so that it appeared that he was still in the office when he was gone for the meeting.

LEVERAGE POINTS FOR CHANGING CULTURE

How do leaders influence culture? How do they create cultures in which work-life supports can flourish? Dr. Dan Denison, author of Leading Culture Change in Global Organizations: Aligning Culture and Strategy,5 has originated a model for culture change. In his approach, organizations must find a balance of external and internal focus. They must also find a balance of flexibility and stability. The relationship of these dynamics results in twelve leverage points that will drive culture change and result in better organizational performance:

  • Mission consists of strategic direction and intent, goals and objectives, and vision.
  • Consistency consists of coordination and integration, agreement, and core values.
  • Involvement consists of capability development, team orientation, and empowerment.
  • Adaptability consists of creating change, customer focus, and organizational learning.

Through his research, Dan has proven that appropriate focus on these variables results in corporate growth and performance, profitability, quality, employee satisfaction, innovation, and customer satisfaction.

Gallup reports another perspective on the variables that affect culture. Its researchers studied 3,477 managers from companies in the oil and gas, banking and finance, property development, tourism, automotive, and telecommunications sectors. They found that clear expectations, role definition, trust in the environment, and employee growth and development most significantly impacted culture.6 These are leverage points for the priorities through which companies develop their cultures.

Often, cultural shifts are evident from the vantage point of mergers, acquisitions, or new leadership. When I started my career, I worked for a company—we’ll call it BestCo—that was one of Fortune’s “100 Best” for many years. It was successful and profitable. Its mission was to serve both customers and employees. BestCo offered development programs, a generous benefits package, employee choice in projects and career paths, flexible working options, and abundant recognition.

After I left, BestCo was purchased by a much larger organization, KingCo, and everything changed. The mission shifted to focus exclusively on customers. The processes became more hard driving. Educational benefits and some medical benefits were retracted. Educational development was still available for employees but the company only offered learning opportunities related to technical skills. Team skills, interaction skills, and diversity classes were suspended. KingCo fired significant numbers of leaders and employees from BestCo in order for new talent to enter and manage differently.

Remaining BestCo employees feared they would soon be asked to leave. In one meeting, a leader of KingCo, Rex, asked that all employees of BestCo raise their hands. A quick-thinking leader of BestCo, Jake, spoke up and said, “We’re all employees of KingCo now.” No one raised his hand and the meeting went on with a sigh of relief. Today, Jake is one of the few leaders who remains as part of KingCo. This is an example of how cultures can change and how the leverage points for culture such as mission, expectations, leadership, policies, and work-life supports are part of that experience.

THE IMPORTANCE OF EXPECTATIONS

Like so many features of work-life supports, culture is also affected by alignment between what people expect and what they experience. People are more satisfied when there is a match—alignment—between their expectations and the reality of their experiences. Years ago, an experiment was conducted in a call center. At the time, call centers were known as the sweatshops of white-collar work. The job wasn’t fun. In fact, it could be grueling to talk with angry customers and be tethered to the phone for hours at a time. The call center in the experiment was facing 80 percent turnover and spending inordinate amounts on recruitment and training at the same time employees were unsatisfied and burning out. As a result of an assessment of their challenges, the company changed its recruiting and hiring practices. Instead of selling candidates on the job, they were honest about the challenges of the job—the attitudes of the customers, the fact that the employees were largely tethered to their desks, and the often thankless character of the work itself. An interesting thing happened. The company’s retention levels actually increased. The difference was that expectations and reality matched. Workers took the job knowing what they were getting into. The reality of the job hadn’t changed, but employees’ expectations of the job had. Now, the expectations of the job matched the experience of the job, and this made all the difference.

Sociologically, people are more satisfied when their expectations are met. People are less satisfied when they expect something great and they’re disappointed. The situation itself can be exactly the same. The difference is whether the situation is matching or falling below the expectations—coming up short.

In some ways, companies that have cultures that are well known and well respected have a greater challenge than companies without such renown. The challenge of the companies with positively perceived cultures is in meeting the expectations of those who are joining the organization. Depending on how high the pedestal, it may be difficult or impossible to meet the expectation. Companies with cultures that are expected to be perfect are set up to fail in some ways because they can’t possibly measure up.

Every company has flaws. Honesty in the hiring and selection process is critical. When organizations are authentic with people regarding what to expect, and whether they can meet those expectations, workers will be more satisfied overall. As it relates to work-life supports, leaders must give employees a realistic sense of the culture as well as a realistic sense of the job. They must give employees an accurate expectation about the work-life supports that are available and those that aren’t. Armed with realistic expectations, employees can make choices on whether to join a company or whether to shift to that next job within the company.

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Figure 15-3 Expectation / Satisfaction Gap

The Power of Culture for Work-Life Supports: An Interview with Dr. Dan Denison

Dan Denison, PhD, founder of Denison Consulting, and professor at the University of Michigan, has created a model for organizational culture. He has demonstrated a link between organizational culture and business performance—elements such as innovation, customer satisfaction, employee satisfaction, growth, profitability, and ROI. These are affected through four main channels of an organization’s culture: creating a sense of direction and mission; ensuring both flexibility and adaptability; fostering employee participation; and providing consistency through core values. He comments here on the relationship between culture and work-life supports.

What is the relationship between culture and work-life supports?

DD: Well, what goes around comes around, and you definitely see lots of cases where the culture of an organization determines whether employees are valued for their whole selves or just their billable hours. The character of an organization determines the way employees will be supported—or not supported. Once you support employees, you’ve turned something loose that has a lot of positive impacts. Focusing on supporting employees has significant influence on the broader organization.

In what ways does the culture support or not support work and life?

DD: The ways that an organization provides work-life supports makes a powerful statement about what the organization values. It tends to snowball and you can’t treat it in isolation. A culture is a combination of many factors and many aspects of the system. Does an organization require employees to punch a clock? Or to work over the holidays? What are the systems to provide support? You have to think about where the greatest leverage will be. That is, what aspects of the culture will provide the greatest return for the organization and the employee? What is the point where you can intervene that has the biggest and best impact? You can look at both sides of that cycle. What are the places that culture influences the support you provide, and once you define that support, what influence do those have on culture?

Say more about those leverage points.

DD: Well, the culture has to perform across many different variables. If you’re going to compete in a triathlon, you can’t excel at swimming only, because you’ll lose in the biking and the running. Or, think of it this way, what part of an airplane is the most important in flight? The answer? None of them independently. They have to work together in order to fly. The ability to coordinate and focus is essential to performance. It is in this way that a culture needs to attend to all its variables. When the different parts of an organization aren’t in alignment, the organization doesn’t get leverage, synergy, or momentum. It really limits the impact the organization can have and the results it can achieve.

What is an example of this?

DD: The best example is consulting firms. The leaders recognize that half their talent base is made up of men and half their talent base is made up of women. If they don’t appeal to the whole person through work-life supports, they can’t compete. They have to have a system and a culture that is in alignment and allows them to compete for talent. Otherwise, they will only be drawing on part of the workforce.

What about leadership?

DD: Leadership is also a key leverage point. Leaders need to calibrate their perspective to the bigger picture of the organization. Their approach as leaders needs to be calibrated and aligned to the organization. Leaders need to focus on what comes next.

In other contexts you’ve referred to the importance of focusing on the “whole person.” Can you say more about that?

DD: You have to think of how much of the organization appeals to the individual. Sometimes organizations are narrow in their focus. For example, in the case of a contract salesperson, they only care about how much he sells, but a long-term play means you pay attention to the broader piece of an individual’s life and you support and integrate that. We used to joke that sometimes in life, the opportunity to focus on work provides us with the chance to set aside the complexity of the rest of our lives for a few minutes. The other side of the coin is that even family relationships are not 100 percent inclusive, you have a life outside your role in the family. The whole person has multiple dimensions that we need to support overall through the organization’s culture.7

WORTH THE EFFORT

Attending to culture is worth the effort. John Kotter and James Heskett, both from Harvard, studied 207 companies in twenty-two industries over eleven years. They compared key variables in companies that managed and nurtured their cultures compared with those that didn’t. They found that when companies nurtured their cultures, revenue grew 682 percent (compared with 166 percent in unmanaged cultures), stock price rose 901 percent (compared to 74 percent), job growth increased 282 percent (compared with 36 percent), and net income grew 756 percent (compared with 1 percent).8

IN SUM

Culture—both inside and outside the organization—is critical to work-life supports and whether they will take root. An organization that knows where it wants to go with its culture in the future and can accurately assess its culture in the present can close the gap. By considering the leverage points for change and ensuring that expectations are clear, an organization takes control and can use culture to its advantage. Work-life supports grow out of the culture and in turn contribute to it. They require attention, careful planning, and implementation. The next chapter will address factors related to implementation.

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