Influences on culture

The culture within a business is analogous to a garden. A garden of some description grows wherever there is a plot of land. It can be formally planned, specifically designed and carefully managed, or it can be entirely ignored. Either way, plants will grow, and an ecosystem will develop.

Culture in your business works the same way. Design and strictly control a culture, and you will end up with one outcome; ignore it entirely, and you'll end up with another. In either case, your business will develop a culture, but you might not necessarily like how it turns out.

Formal and planned cultures

Designing a culture from scratch is a proactive step towards ensuring a certain approach in the business's founding principles. This definition can be very valuable when paired with a company mission and an ethical business focus. Like all formal arrangements, though, it can be somewhat limiting - do you hire even the very first people according to a strict values-fit, or is the previous experience, reliant expertise and industry insight more important? If it's the latter, there was little point in strictly defining the values.

A strict definition of values is an exercise in curation. It's as much about what you leave out as what you put in. Making these firm decisions early on clearly defines the business, but there is a need to get it right the first time, which sits at odds with the kind of agile, rapid evolution approach that helps ambitious businesses succeed.

Formal cultures, like formal gardens, require considerable ongoing maintenance to preserve success. Unless every hiring, promotion, and strategic decision is made with the values set in mind, the culture can deviate from the plan (think of new species taking root in the formal gardens) and change the ecosystem.

But preserving culture - even with the constant effort this requires - ends up creating something artificial and insincere. Formal gardens are beautiful examples of hubris. Formally preserved team cultures are similarly curious. Maintaining one culture means excluding differences of opinion, thinking style and approach. A rigid culture struggles to be inclusive, innovative or creative, and it cannot adapt to changing business environments.

No curation of culture

Ignoring culture within the business entirely means that a culture will evolve naturally. Don't confuse naturally with wholesomely however, or even with organically. A business without a way of doing things or a set of beliefs will be at the mercy of dominant personalities and develop ingrained habits of maximisation around individual goals (usually commercial goals). This is a culture of opportunism - much like an untended garden can become choked with opportunistic weeds.

The lack of culture oversight can create a survival of the fittest ethos. Customers aren't necessarily considered or are not a priority. If a commission structure exists, then a culture can arise around gaming that structure. If a business manufactures things then a culture could spring up around careful slow work (at the expense of commercial targets) or of cutting corners (at the expense of quality) to free up spare time for staff.

This isn't to say that left unsupervised workers would create selfish and self-serving cultures. Any kind of culture could arise - a rare orchid could bloom - but the chances are at least as good that an unwanted set of behaviours could predominate.

Achieving Balance

The world's most successful teams commit to a shared set of ideals, a clear and shared mental model of what success looks like in a particular domain. This shared mental model can be hard to create and requires discipline to establish and make second nature amongst a whole team or company.

Values-first thinking is one way to achieve this. What are the single most important fundamentals to the business? Principles that could only apply to your specific business? The values that guide every decision no matter how far removed from standard choices. Think of five or so definitive pillars that describe your business's "why" and "how".

Forming these values is the formal planning part of garden maintenance. Layout out of structural foundations - separating zones within the space or defining an overall theme. These values, like the formal stone work, features, pathways or flower beds in a garden, form the structural integrity of the space. They define the overall concept. It is hard work to create them, requiring a formality of approach.

Around these core values come behaviours. Ideal behaviours are shared widely, hired for, and rewarded at pay review time. These behaviours are the lived values, and it is through demonstrating these behaviours that my career at your business thrives. Back to the garden - these are the types of plants I primarily want to grow - not the specific species, so much as the genus or family.

As with a formal garden, lots of effort needs to go into reinforcing the values and behaviours at key opportunities. Staff must know the values and are noticed (and rewarded) for the behaviours. Don't miss any chance to show gratitude for a behaviour from the list and demonstrate your own commitment to the values by embedding them into job descriptions, interviews, reviews and external Comms. Name meeting rooms after them. Make the values like Hogwarts houses.

Flexibility is vital. Businesses change as they grow. Back to the garden for a moment - imagine you have established a semi-planned garden in a 4m x 4m space. The next-door plot becomes available - how does the garden evolve now that it is bigger? How do we make both spaces consistent? What about the magnificent plants in the new space? Do we eliminate them to accommodate our original plan, or do we recognise their value to the new garden and rethink a few foundational precepts - evolve our garden - to make the most of this new opportunity?

What values should and shouldn't do

Values should evolve as your business grows. Values are living things, and what you capture on your website when you first create them is simply a snapshot in time. If you ignore them entirely, those values will be supplanted as work evolves and humans in the business find ways to optimise how stuff gets done.

By reinforcing them you can ensure they remain part of every conversation the business has; every interaction with a customer, applicant or supplier.

But if you cling too rigidly to them, you risk excluding ways of work and thinking that could radically reshape and re-energise your ability to compete. Innovation can be stifled if everyone thinks the same way.

Set foundational principles and back them with the ways hiring and reward are offered. Regularly review what is working. Look for your people and hires to enhance, rather than exactly fit the culture, and your business will bloom.