CREATING A LEGACY CULTURE

Jay Newman PhD
Foundling Partner, Culture By Choice

Recently we have been talking a great deal about Legacy Cultures. These are cultures built on values and principles and have the ability to survive personalities. The unfortunate fact about most organizations is that they are dependent upon the personalities of the organization’s key leaders. Even if there is excellent alignment between the personalities of those leaders the culture depends on those personalities. Even if the culture is a positive one, sustaining that culture will depend on sustaining the authority of those key leaders. Allow that team to be significantly altered and the culture can be destroyed. We’ve seen it happen and we know that culture destruction can be avoided! One great example of how this can be done is TDIndustries in Dallas, Texas. Current CEO, Harold MacDowell (pictured here), is the third in a series of CEOs that have all lead based on a set of core values. Those values are:

1. Build and Maintain Trusting Relationships
2. Fiercely Protect the Safety of All Partners (a Partner is anyone who is associated with TDIndustries)
3. Lead with a Servant’s Heart
4. Passionately Pursue Excellence
5. Celebrate the Power of Individual Differences.

So how do you do it? How do you create a culture that is not dependent upon the personalities of those key leaders? We’ve discovered that the only way to do it is to create a Legacy Culture. How do you do that? It is fairly simple, but it is not easy. This article will lay out the steps, but I will preface that discussion with this caveat; most organizations cannot do it on their own. The reason they can’t is because they always seem to try to do this work without devoting enough resources to the process. The main mistake is that they assign the task to someone who has other critical responsibilities. Often it will be an HR specialist. The problem with this is that making sure that the organization is fully staffed is critical to organizational success. Culture development looks less important than finding critical staff. However, putting off culture development can make every other organization function more difficult to carry out; especially those functions associated with Human Resources.

Step one in the process of creating a Legacy Culture is to solve the culture development focus problem. Organizations need to make sure that the leader of the process is either relieved of other responsibilities or comes from outside the organization. We are obviously biased towards the outside solution, but we do see an advantage to using someone from outside. By doing this you create a neutrality that an insider can’t achieve. There will be some more difficult conversations that will need to take place. If confidences are to be kept, organization members often feel safer when the person they talk to has no long-range personal interest in the organization.

No matter which approach is used, there are some basic steps to follow. Once you’ve taken care of step one, eliminating your Cultural Focus Problem, you can move on to step two and conduct an analysis of the existing culture. This analysis looks at everything that is done that is critical to the success of the organization. Then you must examine how these things get done in the organization and how organization members feel about the way things get done. This creates the cultural baseline. Once the organization is in agreement that this is the way the culture really is, you can move on to step three. This step is to decide what the organization wants the culture to be. This is accomplished by clarifying what organization members believe the most important values and principles are. We usually look for all values and principles and then come to an organization wide agreement on which of these are held by everyone. These universal values and principles become the core values of the organization. Now we can describe what behaviors are consistent and what behaviors are not consistent with those core values. This leads to the required behaviors and the not to be tolerated behaviors. These expectations are then clearly communicated and the consequences for deviating from the expectations are established.

The last step in the process is implementation and sustainment. During this implementation and sustainment phase, too many organizations think the hard work is done. Nothing could be further from the truth. All the previous steps are just the set up. This is where the real work begins. This is when many people will make the statement, “just wait a little while and everything will go back to normal” or “this too shall pass.” This is when everything needs to be monitored and a great deal of energy will need to be expended to keep the ball rolling up the hill. As soon as you take a break, and let go of the ball, it will roll back down the hill. The culture development process never ends. Its just like our bodies. If we stop exercising and eating healthy foods, we become less healthy, start to deteriorate, and eventually we will no longer be a viable being.

This entire process will take months if not years to complete and it is best to consider the work never done. An organization is very much like a living organism. The greatest amount of an organism’s energy is used, everyday, just to maintain its health and wellbeing. This is true of organizations as well. Whenever an organization thinks it’s work is done on any change initiative, it usually results in returning to the status quo. Without an ongoing effort to sustain the change, most people will go back to how they have always done things. It is much more comfortable and takes little or no energy to do it the old way. Subconsciously, each person is thinking I have a job to do and all these changes are keeping me from doing my job.

So, how do you sustain the effort. It starts at the top. From the CEO, through the other chief officers, on to the VPs, managers, and supervisors. Each leader must start living up to, and holding one another accountable to, these new expectations. No one gets a pass. If you do not live up to the core values and principles, there must be a consequence. Some values will be absolutes and failure to adhere to them may mean separation from the organization. Others will allow for an individual that doesn’t meet the expectations to learn, grow, and correct the behavior. Legacy Cultures make sure everyone knows all this right from the start. And, these values and principles are communicated regularly. It’s not a one and done scenario. Every opportunity to emphasize the organization’s values and principles is used. Members of the organization can never hear them too many times.

When an organization operates based its core values and principles, its culture no longer depends on the personalities of key leaders. People conduct themselves based on these core values and principles for two significant reasons. First, because doing so is in their own best interest and the best interest of all their colleagues and of the entire organization. Second, by operating based on these values and principles, the organization becomes the best it can be for the world that is served. Some will look at these ideas as being soft and unrealistic. We say these ideas produce more capable and caring workers who turn out higher quality products and services. The increased quality impacts the sustainability and profitability of the organization. We’ve seen companies increase their profits by as much as 10 times. And most exciting about these companies is the fact that when the CEO moves on or retires, the company won’t skip a beat. One of the companies we’ve been working with has a culture that just won’t be stopped now. They love their CEO but they’re not afraid of his impending retirement. They know that the company will insist that his replacement adhere to the same values and principles that everyone adheres to today.

This is a Legacy Culture. A culture that so clearly defines what we are and what we are not, that no one is confused. Every member of the organization is on board. In fact, during the hiring process, potential employees are told what is expected and they are assessed to determine if they are a fit to the organization. Each new employee undergoes the same on boarding process and receives the training needed for success. I’m not sure where this quote comes from, but I think this the right attitude to have. “Navy SEALS say, when you’re under pressure you don’t rise to the occasion, you sink to the level of your training. Train Well.” Performance reviews are learning experiences and development of new skills is the continuous goal. Legacy Cultures believe in leaving nothing to chance. They are intentional.

Ultimately, whether an organization pursues a Legacy Culture or not will be determined by the amount of grit possessed by its leaders. If grit is measured by a person’s passion and persistence, as suggested by Angela Duckworth in her book Grit, then those with enough passion to make it their top priority and the persistence to keep up the good fight in the face of overwhelming odds will achieve this level of a culture. But the payout is huge and, in our estimation, fully worth the effort.

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