7 Compelling Questions to Help You Find Out If You Suffer from Cultural Debt
A while back, as I was shopping in a high-end home and apparel store that built its brand around innovation and individualism, I overheard a manager criticizing her protégé. She said, “I asked you to bring me ideas on how to drive sales in bedding, and these ideas have nothing to do with bedding. You’re wasting my time.”
I was a little shocked (beyond the fact the manager was airing her criticisms very publicly). Rather than discuss how these ideas potentially fit with the store’s view of itself and its customers, the manager stayed rigidly focused on bedding for bedding’s sake and shut the protégé down. She didn’t even consider how the protégé’s concepts might be adapted to bedding sales.
Perhaps the manager had forgotten that this store’s brand persona represented all its products.
Perhaps her leaders had never articulated this concept or trained her how to embody it, coach for it, and train others to live it.
Or worse, maybe they hired her without evaluating the manager’s values and cultural fit.
We think of culture as the way your teams, departments, and organization express their values, attitudes, and beliefs. Of course, it shows up in your approach to everything.
But . . .
Your culture goes into debt when individuals undermine or policies contradict the so-called values of your organization, department, and team.
Whether your people do this deliberately or innocently, cultural “debt” is a four-letter word.
So, how does your organization define its culture? Does what you say add up to what you do? How well do your leaders and contributors embody your cultural values? Are they living your cultural values, or are they killing it by running up your cultural debt?
Here are 7 questions you and your leaders can ask to determine if your organization is suffering from cultural debt:
What are your employees saying about your organization—publicly, in one-on-ones, and anonymously?
What’s your turnover rate, and where are the hot spots? What’s really going on over there, and why? How are those hot spots interacting with other departments, and what are the implications or ramifications?
How do YOU define the culture of your organization? Can you describe your culture in one word? One phrase? One sentence? What is it?
Do you hire people based on their skills or work products, rather than testing for cultural fit? How’s that been working for you (and them)?
Do you lead people based on your personal values or based on the spoken and unspoken cultural expectations of the organization?
How are you measuring engagement, excitement, and pride in people’s work? What results are you showing? What results are you missing?
How are you testing for cultural fit when you bring new team candidates forward in your hiring practices?
By the way, if your organization has defined its culture but hasn’t established benchmarks for how to live it, you’re creating cultural debt.
There are several ways to shift away from this debt and recoup your losses:
Bring culture into everyday conversation. Get honest and colorful. Ground your conversation in experiences and stories, not just high-level discussions about values and beliefs.
Articulate how culture links (or doesn’t link) to strategy, and communicate it to all levels of the organization. Equip them with the talking points (and resources) they need to link strategy and culture.
Train leaders to incorporate cultural values, traditions, and beliefs into coaching conversations. Do it yourself.
Reward cultural consistency through positive feedback loops, structured rewards programs, and other frameworks that reflect your culture.
Learn how to hire for fit. It’s actually easier—and more fun—than it sounds.