I believe a great culture makes running an organization delightful.

In this episode, I’ll share with you a system we use with our clients who, almost without exception, have improved their culture scores every year compared to the year before—often for over a decade.

If you’re the kind of leader who:

• Thinks your culture is spot on—couldn’t be better and the accolades keep coming and you’re constantly on top of peers in growth and earnings—which is the outcome that hundreds of studies show happens with improved culture scores—then you’re going to love finding out how to keep it advancing because cultures are ALWAYS vulnerable. You’re only one bad hire away from a pot-stirrer who can quickly stir up a real mess.
• Is disheartened because even though you’ve worked hard to improve the culture, you still feel like people aren’t creating outstanding performance and aren’t taking “ownership” to make every system, every product and every outcome better, then smile and block the next few minutes, because you can’t find a better use of that time than to make the problem go away for good.
• Is somewhere in the middle, with a good culture but still battling problems too often, you’re going to love some practical solutions you can use right away.

…You’re going to love this!

There are some challenges to creating a sustainably advancing culture score and what it takes to make that score.

It’s a real and growing challenge you must face that fewer and fewer people are coming into the workplace with the fundamentals to thrive because you have more and more people coming into the workplace that have various personal issues.

EVERY business leader and owner should be extremely concerned about the trend that people often let their personal life negatively affect the workplace.

Here are three steps that will help you build a culture system to advance the culture every year and avoid some of the impact of employees with “issues.”

Step 1: In contrast to the distinctions that culture is driven by goals, training and incentive pay, realize that nowhere on the planet has there been a success story with that approach.

It’s “conventional wisdom” that is shockingly believed to be true—to the demise of the growth, profits, and sanity of the situation. Know that culture is a system of ways of being.

Step 2: So many organizations are “cultural experts” that create a “hair on fire with gasoline poured on your head” culture because they deal with accountability but don’t know how to tie it all together with strategy, marketing, sales processes, an ever-increasing improvement system, and education systems. You want to see culture as a holistic approach where you are building confidence.

Step 3: Unlike so many “throw candy bars during the sales meetings” childish approaches, culture is in fact about celebration. But it requires celebrating the right behaviors and metrics in the right order and with the right interweaving of visibility and celebration systems—usually at least 3–4 at once, each for a different reason, but all supporting one thing: Constant improvement in both culture scores AND results.

Three steps:

• Forget the “follow the herd” beliefs that don’t work and understand that culture is a system regarding ways of being and ever-increasing leading and lagging indicators done with the right visibility and with the right tools.
• Approach it holistically or not at all. Success in business is about intentional congruence. Just trying to roll out one of these well without the others and see the results: A slight needle movement at best, and NO sustainability.
• Understand cultures will still have highs and lows but the goal is to have higher highs and higher lows. The system should get it all going and improving so that bad economies, a strange occurrence in the workplace, or other disruptors don’t cause it all to stop. Challenging times are when the systems are imperative.

The beauty of a great and advancing culture is that hundreds of studies show it is the leading indicator of future growth AND profitability. Your job SHOULD be easier, right?

Make sure you tune in next time where I’ll show you how your customer service standards can be achieved and exceeded, making your customers say “WOW” and willing to pay you more.