How to Build Culture

TL; DR

• The best way to have the organizational culture you want is to build it intentionally through your systems and practices.

• You should design your hiring and onboarding systems to reflect your culture.

• Values are demonstrated most powerfully when it is costly to stick with them.

My last post, "Own Your Culture" made the case that culture gets built whether you

intend it or not — and that values, not strategies, are its foundation. This post is about

the practical work: how you actually embed culture into your organization so it outlasts

any single decision or speech.

A friend of mine led a publishing company that ran into serious financial difficulty. It was

clear that costs had to be cut substantially. He called the staff together to break the

news. “Though most companies would lay off staff in this situation, I value all of you and

don’t want to lose anyone. We can remain a full team by having everyone take a ten

percent pay cut. I know that's painful. But it keeps us all together. And I want you to

know that I and the other members of the executive team are each taking fifty percent

cuts."

He did that because his organization valued its people deeply — and believed that both

rewards and sacrifice should be shared collectively. It was a powerful cultural statement,

demonstrated under pressure. Nearly everyone stayed through the difficult period, and

the organization recovered.

Hire for Culture

I was at an entrepreneurs' conference where a group of founders were trading hiring

tactics. We discussed sourcing, skills assessments, interview structures. Then one of

them said, "My problem is that I sometimes hire people with the right skills who turn out

to be lousy fits. Too bad there's no way to hire for culture"

I nearly jumped out of my seat. You can and should hire for culture.

We made that an explicit part of our process at my company. We had multiple staff

interview each candidate, with one assigned to assess cultural fit. Others had

responsibility for that dimension too, but one person owned it entirely. All interviewers

used an interview guide with open-ended questions built around core values. To assess

accountability, we might ask a candidate to describe a situation where they were

working on a team and things went badly. What happened? We listened carefully for

blame versus responsibility. How a person narrates a team failure speaks volumes

about how they think about accountability.

To explore ethical behavior, we didn't ask whether the candidate was ethical. (Who

wouldn't say Yes?) Instead, I would pose a genuinely difficult ethical situation, a gray

area where the right answer wasn't clear and reasonable people might disagree. (For

example: ”A colleague critical to a client project assures her boss that she will stay with

it through the end but shares with you in confidence that she is just about to quit. Do

you break the confidence?”) I wanted to see how they reasoned through hard situations.

Did they recognize the complexity? Did they think about consulting others? Did they

reach for the easy answer, or work through it?

More generally, asking what candidates liked and disliked about the culture of every

place they've worked sheds light on fit in a non-threatening way. Careful reference

checks and behavioral questions throughout the interview also are important. Don't just

ask what people have done. Ask how and why.

Communicate It from the Start

Most leaders wait until a new hire has been on the job for weeks before culture

becomes explicit. By then the employee has already formed their impressions of who

you are. Culture should be visible on day one.

We made sure of that. On a new hire's first day, they would find flowers and a card at

their desk signed by their entire team. Lunch was hosted in the conference room with

the new hire as guest of honor, and preassigned questions drew out their passions,

pastimes, and priorities. Their supervisor discussed their professional development and

growth path — as well as expectations tied to our core values — in their very first

conversation.

Demonstrate It When It’s Hard

Culture gets truly tested not in hiring or onboarding but in the operational decisions you

make every day — especially the ones that cost you something. My publisher friend

knew this. So did I.

One year, after a complex project with a client involving many change orders, our

accountants identified that the client had paid us approximately $110,000 for work we

hadn't delivered. I went back to her and told her she had a credit. She disagreed, but

when I showed her the math, she said that because it was on last year’s budget their

systems couldn't process it and I should forget about it. I couldn't. We agreed instead to

deliver additional work of equivalent value at no charge. It cost us real money and staff

time. The client hadn't asked for it. But our core value of Profit Through Accountability

didn't leave us the option of profiting at the expense of the client.

When I brought the team together to discuss it, everyone accepted it immediately.

That's how you know a culture is truly embedded — when your team hears a

costly decision and simply sees it as who you are.

A second example: I was having lunch with a client and asked how he liked a study he'd

purchased from us. He said it was well done but not quite what he'd expected. He

hadn't been able to use it. I offered a refund. He refused, saying the error was his and

we'd delivered exactly what we'd promised. I offered instead to provide another study of

equivalent value. He accepted. If it’s a value and you want to maintain your integrity, you figure out how to follow it.

What’s On Your Menu?

Culture eats strategy for breakfast. As a leader, you cook the breakfast. By the time

lunch and dinner roll around, your staff is in the kitchen. If you do the work of inculcating

your culture through hiring, onboarding, and practicing it in challenging situations, your

people will know what to put on the menu.

Try This Week:

• Write three interview questions you can use for any position that will test for cultural fit within your organization.

• Review your onboarding system and identify one element you can change or add to explicitly introduce a key organizational value.

• Identify one story of your behavior as a leader that you can tell to staff members or prospective hires that exemplifies an element of your organization’s culture.