Mike Hohnen

Coaching for personal growth, change and development

Culture

Great cultures are created with principles not rules

By

Source: Netflix -https://www.slideshare.net/reed2001/culture-1798664

‘Another, customer complaint!’ thought the manager. ‘And what a stupid one at that. Some of our people just don’t get it. We will have to create a new rule for this kind of situation.’ And so he does. Up goes the memo on the information board, where it joins quite a few other new rule memos.

But rules only work when we can clearly define the situation and set clear boundaries. However, what we are looking for in our customer experience is personalisation. We want employees who are flexible in their approach and who can think on their feet. And with as few boundaries as possible… If there is one thing a customer hates, it is hard boundaries. ‘Sorry, sir that is not my section. Please ask your waiter.’

When we analyse why we create rules, it is not because we have a problem with the top performers. The top performers use their own good judgment to solve situations, which are typically also the situations that lead to praise and four-star reviews on social media. It’s the bottom 30% of the crew who need rules.

The more rules we create, the less room there is for good judgment.

The solution to the customer complaint is not to create another rule. It’s performance management, but not in the form of making a note for the yearly appraisal meeting, but here and now feedback and coaching. And, ultimately, if we have team members who don’t get it, they should not be on the team.

We can never create enough good rules to cover every situation. And even if we could, that would still not be the solution. Because top performers hate rules. What drives their engagement is autonomy, being able to use their own good judgement from situation to situation. And if you take that away, they will find somewhere else to work, a business where good judgement and personal initiative are appreciated.

But how will new employees know what good judgement looks like in our context?

This is where principles come in. Principles are the fabric of a great service culture. Principles frame what we believe around here. Principles are the foundation for our decision. Nordstrom, the US retail giant, has a very simple approach:

“Use your best judgment in all situations. There will be no additional rules.”

Southwest Airlines tell its employees: “You may do anything you are not uncomfortable doing in order to solve a passenger’s problem.”

Obviously, some people have better judgment than others. But that means that performance management is not about enforcing the rules but about helping people make better decision – and ultimately weeding out those who just don’t get it.

Get rid of the rule book and start thinking more about what  should be the guiding principles.

This spring we ran a series of blog posts around development, developing yourself and others. We have collected and edited those blog posts into a simple e-book that you can download below if you would like to explore this subject further.

Culture is the foundation of your employee experience.

By

The holy grail of Service Design is the much-talked customer experience, but as I have tried to argue in the past few blog posts, if you just paste the elements of Service Design thinking over a terrible employee experience, you are just spray-painting your rusty car in the hope that no one will really notice. Once you hit a bump, the mudguard will still come off.

Culture evolves over time. Sometimes, it just gets better and better but very often it just slowly deteriorates.

If you have ever been part of a start-up or a hotel or restaurant opening, you know what I am talking about. We started out with fantastic intentions and this one-for-all and all-for-one spirit and…

Well then something just happened.

What happened is nothing.

Nothing… in the sense that nobody actively did anything to maintain the culture. Just think of any type of strong culture that you are part of or have been part of.  What keeps the culture alive are rituals, conversations and most importantly, someone who calls it when we step outside of boundaries of the culture.

But in our very busy day-to-day lives, we are typically always working on the systems and the behaviour, creating new processes, initiating training programs, all of the tangible stuff. We forget that we need to maintain and reinforce the culture, and maybe that is the most important job of all.

“Our culture is how we work together as employees to serve our members and grow. Our culture has been instrumental to our success and we keep improving it; our culture helps us attract and retain stunning colleagues; our culture makes working here more satisfying”
– Netflix

What does it take to maintain or even correct the current culture?

Culture does not emerge out of thin air. Culture is the sum of our action, behaviours and conversations.

What we do and how we do it is our culture.

So we are already working on it but possibly not fully aware of how what we do influences the culture.

Don’t confuse action with movement

Great cultures are characterized by their bias-to-action, including taking corrective actions when it is needed. What is typical about rotten cultures is that nobody takes action when it is obviously called for; they do nothing and slowly the culture starts to disintegrate or become toxic. The classic dilemma here is always the brilliant jerks. Bad cultures tolerate them. By tolerating the jerks, leadership shows what their true values are.

In my experience, bad managers are not so often bad because of what they do, it is what they don’t do that makes them bad. There is no action when it is called for.

Do as I say, not as I do!

Some managers think that is a great joke. But it is a terrible thing to say. If you are a manager, you are always under observation. People observe you in order to try and understand their future. They are searching for clues as to what is going to happen and what is important. They don’t pay attention to what you say, they watch your behaviour. Who do you talk to? What meetings do you attend? What projects are you interested in? How you do what you do makes up the clues they use to navigate by.

Many organisations try to regulate behaviour through rules. As time goes, they grow and add more people. Obviously from time to time, somebody does something that is not acceptable and they add a new rule for everybody.  The weaker the culture, the more rules they add. In a strong culture, there is very little need for rules because it is easy for people to work out for themselves what is the right thing to do. And if someone makes a wrong judgement then we have a chat about it to help them see why this is not part of how we do things around here.

Change the conversation and you change the culture.

We become what we talk about. Our conversations make up the glue of our relationships but they also weave the fabric of our culture. If we are always trying to work out who to blame or whose fault something is then we become a drama culture. On the other hand, if we are always asking “What can we do about this?”, we create a culture that focuses on opportunities and possibilities. In the end, there is a world of difference in productivity and engagement.

But it’s not just the subject of our conversations that shape the culture, it is also the quality and the frequency. Solid cultures typically have strong, candid and frequent conversations with each other. Robust feedback is considered essential to healthy relationships. Wishy-washy performance reviews once a year are not part of the fabric of strong cultures

In toxic cultures, people don’t talk to each other about what really matters. They are constantly trying to protect themselves and play cover up. And endless dance in the drama triangle.

No matter how many fantastic new service strategy programs you initiate, they will fail if they are built on a dysfunctional culture. Culture beats strategy every time.

If you are not familiar with the intricacies of the Service Profit Chain, check out my course here

Why the Service Profit Chain is more important now than ever before

Why Culture Beats Process

By

Culture2
I am researching for a workshop that I will be conducting next week on culture and performance. One of my favorite subjects.

The evidence is very clear: Everywhere we find exceptional customer service, we invariably also find an amazing culture. Culture and performance are inseparable.

It’s not surprising though, if you think about it, your complete customer experience is a direct reflection of your culture. Makes perfect sense.

During my research, I came across this beautiful quote from Brian Chesky, Co-founder, CEO of Airbnb. This is part of a longer letter that he had written to his team, which was later published in Medium:

So how do we build culture?
By upholding our core values in everything we do. Culture is a thousand things, a thousand times. It’s living the core values when you hire; when you write an email; when you are working on a project; when you are walking in the hall. We have the power, by living the values, to build the culture. We also have the power, by breaking the values, to fuck up the culture. Each one of us has this opportunity, this burden.

Why is culture so important to a business?

Here is a simple way to frame it. The stronger the culture, the less corporate process a company needs. When the culture is strong, you can trust everyone to do the right thing. People can be independent and autonomous. They can be entrepreneurial. And if we have a company that is entrepreneurial in spirit, we will be able to take our next “(wo)man on the moon” leap.

Ever notice how families or tribes don’t require much process? That is because there is such a strong trust and culture that it supersedes any process. In organizations (or even in a society) where culture is weak, you need an abundance of heavy, precise rules and processes.

Read the full article here

Great service is all about engagement in the front line.

But engagement is inseparable from empowerment.

Empowerment is culture.