Closing Culture Gaps

If I asked you to describe your credit union’s culture, what would you say? If you weren’t sure how to answer that question, where would you look for help in doing so? Many people would consult things like mission statements, core values and guiding principles. And the words and phrases found therein do provide insights on what I refer to as the "professed culture," the one the authors would like to have. In my experience most mission statements and other such foundational documents have two things in common:

• They all sound good.
• They have little or no impact on employee behavior.

So where would you look to see evidence of the actual culture? That culture—the only culture you have—is reflected in the behavior of people working in your organization. Here’s a suggestion. Pick a type of behavior found in your mission statement. Some popular examples are teamwork, collaboration and service. If you asked each of your employees to identify a specific situation for which that type of behavior is important and the specific things that employee is expected to do in that situation, what would they say? And would they all say the same thing? If you don’t know how they would respond, you can be pretty sure  they don’t either. What that means is that the good-sounding words are not being translated into behavior. Effective leaders consciously create and fine-tune cultures by closing the gaps between what sounds good and what gets done.

Jim Bearden, CSP, is author of The Relentless Search for Better Ways, about leadership and winning, and co-author of Good Business: Putting Spiritual Principles Into Practice at Work.