| Most organizations can tell you what their culture is.
Integrity. Respect. Accountability. Excellence. Teamwork. Innovation.
Those words appear on websites, in employee handbooks and on walls throughout the office. But having organizational values and actually living them are two very different things.
Your culture isn’t what you say it is. Your culture is what people consistently experience.
And that experience can have a profound impact on whether people stay, leave, perform, collaborate and even decide to come back.
Culture Can Be More Powerful Than Compensation
I was reminded of this recently through the experience of a senior leader at one of our client organizations.
Two years ago, he left for another opportunity that offered higher compensation and professional growth. It was a good company and his new role gave him exposure to hundreds of other organizations.
Something unexpected happened.
The more companies he experienced, the more he appreciated just how exceptional the culture had been at the organization he’d left.
Two years later, an appropriate senior position became available at his former company. He left the higher-paying opportunity and returned.
Why?
Culture.
Out of hundreds of organizations he’d been exposed to, he concluded that his previous company had one of the best cultures he’d experienced.
Don’t underestimate the value of that. Compensation, opportunity and career development matter, but people spend a significant portion of their lives working. The environment in which they do that work can become an enormous competitive advantage—or disadvantage.
Employees Learn Culture by Watching What Happens
People quickly discover what an organization truly values, and they don’t learn it from the values statement.
They watch what happens when a high performer treats people poorly, someone makes an expensive mistake, an employee challenges a senior leader or results conflict with stated values.
Those situations reveal culture.
You can say accountability matters, but if poor performance is continually tolerated, employees learn that accountability is optional. You can say you value open communication, but if people experience negative consequences for speaking honestly, eventually they’ll stop speaking.
People believe repeated behaviour, not organizational slogans.
When You Acquire a Company, You Acquire Its Culture
This becomes even more important during mergers and acquisitions.
I recently facilitated a retreat for an organization with approximately 2,500 employees that had grown through multiple acquisitions.
An employee survey revealed significant differences in employee satisfaction depending on location.
Why?
The organization hadn’t simply acquired multiple businesses. It had inherited multiple cultures.
We used CRG’s Team Values Indicator as part of our work together because the leadership challenge went far beyond integrating operations.
During a merger or acquisition, tremendous attention is understandably given to financial systems, technology, workflows, policies and branding. Those things matter.
But you can successfully integrate your software and still have two organizations. You can put the same logo on every building and still have five different cultures.
Every acquired organization brings its history, expectations, leadership experiences, relationships and unwritten rules with it. Those don’t disappear on the closing date.
On Friday They’re Competitors. On Monday They’re Colleagues.
I saw this firsthand years ago while working with two credit unions involved in a merger.
On paper, the merger made sense. But underneath the transaction was a significant human challenge. Some employees from the credit union being absorbed simply didn’t like people from the other organization. They had viewed one another as competitors.
Then suddenly they were expected to sit beside each other, operate as one leadership team and work toward common goals.
Think about that transition.
On Friday they’re your competition. On Monday they’re your colleague.
An organizational chart can’t resolve those emotions.
I became involved in a significant leadership development, team facilitation, communication and conflict-resolution process because bringing the organizations together structurally wasn’t enough.
The people had to come together as well.
That’s why I believe culture integration should be one of the highest priorities in any merger or acquisition—not something leadership addresses after all the operational work is complete.
Values Are Personal Before They Become Organizational
There’s another reason organizational culture can be complicated: values reside within people.
At CRG, we distinguish between stated values and the Values Preferences that actually influence behaviours, priorities and decisions.
Two executives may both claim to value “excellence” but mean very different things. One may associate excellence with precision and consistency. Another may see it as innovation and speed.
Neither is necessarily wrong. But without understanding those differences, conflict can easily be interpreted as resistance, attitude or incompetence.
CRG’s Values Preference Indicator (VPI) and Team Values Indicator help individuals and teams understand the motivations and values operating beneath their behaviours. That awareness can become especially important when you’re attempting to bring different organizational cultures together.
Leaders Create the Experienced Culture
Culture cannot be delegated to HR.
HR can support it, facilitate conversations and reinforce expectations. But ultimately, leaders establish culture through what they consistently model, reward, correct and tolerate.
If leaders expect accountability but avoid it themselves, people notice. If they talk about respect but become disrespectful under pressure, people notice. If collaboration supposedly matters but important decisions continually happen behind closed doors, people notice.
Pressure often reveals culture most clearly.
When revenue declines, a major customer complains, someone makes an expensive mistake or two departments strongly disagree, how do leaders respond?
That’s when the values statement gets tested.
Audit the Culture People Actually Experience
Instead of simply asking, “What are our organizational values?”, ask:
“If someone observed our organization for 30 days without seeing our values statement, what would they conclude we value?”
Look at meetings, promotions, recognition, performance conversations, conflict, communication and leadership behaviour.
For organizations that have grown through mergers or acquisitions, ask another question: Are employees in different locations actually experiencing the same organization?
If not, rewriting the values statement won’t solve the problem.
Changing repeated behaviours will.
Dr. Ken’s Leadership Insight
Culture isn’t created by the words hanging on your wall. It’s created by thousands of behaviours, decisions and experiences repeated over time. And when organizations merge, you aren’t simply combining systems, people and balance sheets—you are combining histories, expectations and cultures. Leaders who intentionally understand and shape that experience create an advantage that compensation alone may never replace.
The senior leader who returned to his former company after two years discovered something organizations sometimes don’t appreciate until they’ve lost it.
A great culture has tremendous value.
People experience it. They compare it. They remember it.
And sometimes, they even come back because of it.
Don’t simply ask whether your organization has clearly stated values. Ask whether your people are experiencing them.
Because ultimately, your culture isn’t defined by what you’ve written.
It’s defined by what happens every day when nobody is reading the values statement. |
