Using Culture as a Problem Solver
As a leader of an organization, we really want three things. We want to grow, we want to create a fulfilling environment, and we want to have some impact. When you're having an issue with any one of those things, how do you dissect where that problem is coming from and what you do about it? If you think you've got a culture problem, do you solve that by creating an employee in the month program, or having an all hands meeting? If you are stagnating in your level of growth, is that about a new product or a whole new strategy?
I want to share a tool with you, within something I call the three V's of culture, to help you use culture to start to solve any problem you're having within your organization. So let's take a look at the three V's of culture:
Values
Vision
Vulnerability
I know if you have those three things you have a powerful, resilient culture. Let's quickly talk about those three things and learn how to use this framework to dissect problems you have in your organization.
Number one is values. Values are a small set of non-negotiable behaviors that drive your culture. It's not things you aspire to be or ways you aspire to behave. It's taking who you are, boiling up what's most important, and making them non-negotiable behaviors.
Number two is vulnerability. Vulnerability means you're creating a safe place where you can trust and be trusted within your organization, where people are not afraid to say those things that are difficult to say, and they're open to hearing the difficult things that they may need to hear.
Number three is vision. Vision is about a crystal clear picture, a compelling, empowering, motivating picture of where you're going as an organization 2, 3, 10, 15 years down the road.
So let's use this framework to dissect some problems.
First, if you have distrust and fear within your organization, that probably means that even if your values are okay and you've got a crystal clear vision, that distrust and fear means you've got to work on vulnerability within your organization. You've got to do some things to build trust as a leadership team, it's got to start with you, and start with the level of vulnerability and safety on the leadership team. So if you've got distrust and fear within your organization, work on vulnerability within your organization and I promise you, if you can get truly vulnerable as a leadership team, that will cascade down to the rest of the organization.
If you are stagnating as an organization - if growth isn't happening for you, either in dollars and cents or people growth - then you may have values and vulnerability, but what you've really got to work on is vision. You may say you’ve got a crystal clear vision, but if you're stagnating, you've got to work on that vision. You either have to make it clearer, make it the right vision if it's the wrong one, or you've got to do a better job of communicating and inspiring the organization around that vision.
Third, you might have a clear vision, you might have safety and vulnerability, but if there's still confusion, an inconsistency within your organization - either internally or from your customer/client base as to what they should be expecting from you and how you behave towards them - that means you've got a problem with values. A problem with values may mean you don't have a set of values - again, values are a small set of non-negotiable behaviors that anchor your culture - or you may have them, but they may be the wrong ones, or you may have them but you may not be doing what you need to do to communicate those consistently, to live those consistently, and hire and fire based on those values.
Using this framework of the three V’s, value, vision, and vulnerability, to create a powerful resilient culture could help solve the problems of distrust and fear, stagnation, or confusion and inconsistency.