What the Hell is Culture Anyway?! with Arnie Malham
Jason Rush Petra Coach
Recently, Petra Coach presented a webinar, “What the Hell is Culture Anyway?” with Arnie Malham.
If you’re a business leader, this information is crucial to sharpening your skills and growing as a leader and team member.
You can find the full recording here.
The below Illustrated Model is from The Vivid Ink Company. Kristin McLane and her team transform the spoken word into lasting and actionable works of art. Check them out on Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram or their website.
To augment the recording, we noted takeaways and tips from the presentation.
Top Takeaways
Once you name your culture, then you can start to grow it
Elements of a great culture
Mindset of growth
Mindset of trust
Mindset for action intention
How to get your team to buy in to the culture
The key to buy in is that all teams need a champion, checklist and alignment with core values and purpose
Don’t give all of the responsibility to one person – Spread out the responsibilities through the organization
5 Lessons Learned
If you don’t grow the team, you can’t grow the business
Upstream communication is as important as downstream communication
If you don’t celebrate your milestones, neither will anybody else
The best culture programs aren’t led by leadership, they’re led by champions
If you can’t give a tour, you don’t know the culture
What is Culture?
Think about who has a culture
Countries or regions in a country
Teams, businesses, sports teams & families
Almost every group of people have a culture
Think about what those groups have in common – beliefs, language, symbols, colors, music
You want to attract a culture that helps you achieve your goals
Things in culture that are repeatable
How you celebrate milestones
How you onboard new people
How you recognize and support growth
Where does culture start?
It starts with the aspirations of the leader and is sustained by actions
Culture with purpose
Programs within the culture attract different people
Build programs around your purpose
Ex: programs around growth – ones that take you towards your goals – Better Book Club
If you can’t grow people, you can’t grow your business
Make the programs repeated remarkable and recordable
Actionable Items:
Name your culture– give it a symbol, give it a mascot, color, logo, make it part of who you are
(examples of culture names: Camel Culture, The Petra Way, it could be based on a legendary team member, something that started early in the organization)
Onboarding Checklist – When someone shows up for the first day, have a plan for that person to follow (60-day plan) Lay out who is responsible for what part of onboarding – Think about preventing the statement “I didn’t know that”
Tip: Move someone’s first day to Tuesday. Monday’s can be so busy and hectic and it’s more difficult to make it a good day for the new hire.
Team Empowered Appreciation– Have your team give each other appreciation. Use physical thank you cards to show appreciation. (During the pandemic – send an email instead of a physical note. You just have to shift how you do it)
Policy Manual– If your policy manual has more pages than you have people, it needs to be simplified. Stop making rules for the few that break them and start making guidelines for the many that need to thrive in your organization. Pull out legal and health info – and save it somewhere else. Less words, more clear – Guidelines over rules.
BetterBookClub – Stop telling people what to read – Everyone is on their own journey. This is a book club for people to become readers and to recognize those within the organization. This will help you grow your team.
Big Takeaways
Culture reflects leadership
Every company has the culture it deserves
Great company culture has a purpose, elements that are repeatable and remarkable, has actions that backup intentions, have champions and checklist
Q&A
Q: What platform do you use to collect morale surveys?
Surveymonkey.com – Respond to every message, and do not read the responses alone
Q: What do you mean by giving a tour?
A tour of the office/organization. An outsider needs to see that there is a culture that is alive. Tell your companies stories through the organization.
Jason Rush
