Building a Performance Operations Culture: Raise Your Culture Index

Define & Craft Intentional Organizational Culture

Culture continues to be that mythical concept in much of the business world. Culture can be hard to comprehend when you’ve never experienced a clear and strong culture, appreciated an organization’s culture, or truly felt the energy and power of what culture really is. For some, they have seen a bland or negative culture for so long, it doesn't seem important, because they haven't that shining example. If your organization is trying to build something unique and capable of so much more, but you are still trying to crack the secret of culture, consider raising your culture index for your leadership style and your organization. The ROI from great culture driving business results can be substantial, yet it's so foggy on how to define, measure, and build it. Great culture can be felt, it's an energy that buzzes distinctly, and produces an amazing environment, and can produce incredible results.

How do you build a strong culture as a leader?

First, define why you need it and what a “great” or “strong” culture really means to you and your organization. If you can’t define it, it’s tough to communicate what it is and build it. You hear about unique cultures at places like Netflix, Google, or Tesla, for good or bad, depending on what your idea of culture is and what good looks like.

Craft Your Culture: Articulate & Define It

Why: Culture exists whether intentional or not

Why not create and steer it, promoting your ideals, not allowing a culture to grow that is counter-productive to your core values and mission

What: Culture Definition & Determination  

Culture Determination

• Aligned Passion & Mission - Know Your Organizational Why

• Communication

• Focus

• Operational Ways of Working

• Mindset

It’s about aligning the core company competency, community, and care, with how you work together and serve your customer. Yes, customers see your culture and often feel it through how you serve them, and associates living your culture, translates to customers feeling the culture.

How:

By creating strong alignment of what’s important with the right people who care. Aligning people with purpose. But going deeper, how do we achieve this? By breaking up the core areas to build a framework of successful culture.

I saw a quote that said something like, “if you look at a teams leader you will see a snapshot of what the team will look like.” I didn’t record the source of that quote and haven't found it yet, but it made me think about being the example as a leader, after all, we as leaders should be the model showing our team the way.

Here are a few of the raw concepts and areas to consider in shaping your organization's Performance Operations Culture -

Values

• Business Ethics aligned with purpose

• Character Over Competence

• Doing things the right way the first time (FTQ = First Time Quality)

• If you don’t have the fundamental framework of doing things with excellence and character, then why are we even here?

• Make your work important enough to care

• Taking care of each other - Associates #1, Customers #2

• Ethical behavior and mindset is the root of being a good human, and in turn will have the truth shine through and your customer and team will see the truth eventually

Personal Validation

• Recognize what people have going on at home and in their lives is more important than work

• Find fundamental trust in people - trust but verify

• Treat people like people, not machines or property

• Align their personal and professional goals with their journey within your organization, just like a true customer partnership

Empathy 

• An empathetic leader can command respect and drive results

• Being realistic with goals and expectations

• Aligned to personal purpose is a way of empathetic leadership

• Caring for your team is fundamental

• You have to care about them as people, before they will respect you as a leader. If you don’t care about them, why should they truly care about a future with your team or org? Doing the job is different than actually giving your all and being invested…we have heard enough about that topic in 2022.

Authenticity 

• Drives trust, transparency, and healthy level of feeling secure

• Your flaws are your power, show you're real and allow your team to be real

• Your ability to show you’re a human, make mistakes, even some vulnerability, grows respect, empowers your team, and helps them know there is safety in 99% of mistakes if intentions are good

• Your team knowing they can’t break the operation by making an error and that everything can be fixed is a big vote of confidence to run freely and grow

• No one enjoys running scared with unhealthy fear

 Resignations & Terminations

• How you handle team member resignations shows a lot about your culture and what’s important.

• Not everyone is a fit for every business. If someone leaves, it may or may not be due to your leadership or something you can control, but the way you handle those leaving will have an impact on your organization in the market and will steer how your existing team views you and the company.

• Treat people with the same respect you would if you fired your grandmother (maybe not to that extreme, but hopefully that makes the point)

 Purpose

• Stakeholder/Customer Prioritization

• Customer obsession

• Excellence and quality

• Deliver a product or service that your customer will rave about and your own associates and family will or would use

Context from Franklin Covey

 Standards

• Performance

• Driving results

• Striving for excellence by serving others

• Development of yourself and others

• No patience for mediocrity

• Negativity is a cancer, positive outlook and attitude is essential

 Behaviors 

• Fundamentals

• The boring and hard stuff

• Productivity

• Optimization

• Communicate fully, clearly, and ahead of time

Perseverance

• Your team’s success relies on your ability to knock down barriers, navigate the organization’s goals, customer objectives, and align them with your team’s development

• Your grit and resilience as a leader will show through in your team

Technology

• Tech doesn’t run the company or get a paycheck, don’t forget who is running it, what the priority is

• Tech doesn’t exist to give you something to serve or work in or around, it serves as a platform or way to get work done and drive value. Tech works for you

• Adoption, usage, and complexity to use should not be major challenges

Measure It: The Culture Index

• Associate/colleague NPS

• Client NPS

• Referral Volume

• Retention

• Market Brand Power

• Promotions/Team Member

This is culture from the top down in an organization: “It’s an obligation for me to share with other entrepreneurs about what I have learned.” “My favorite day of the week is Monday…because that is the day me and my team go over all of the inbound messages we get from the people who have read my book and how it changed their lives.”

⁃ Sam Zell courtesy of Founders, David Senra (may be paraphrased a bit)

Resources: Performance Operations Culture & Culture Index

“It reflects both the written and unwritten rules that people in an organization follow. Your organization's culture is the sum of all that you and your colleagues think, say, and do as you work together.”

https://resources.franklincovey.com/blog/building-a-winning-culture-lead-with-purpose

Bamboo HR: What Is Company Culture? (Plus 10 Expert Tips for Improvement)

A16z Podcast: “Culture as a Code”, Ben Horowitz thoughts on culture

For more about what it takes to be a high value contributor take a look at my article on Medium.

OpCo: The People Ops Blueprint — Operations | People | Culture | Opportunity

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