Culture club

We are operating in an increasingly challenging environment, which makes it even more important to recognise the importance of leading a values-driven organisation. Edgar Schein wrote: “Leadership and culture are two sides of the same coin.” Leaders largely shape culture by the things they pay attention to or ignore, the things they value and reward, and the things they measure. The best strategy in the world can be undeliverable if the organisational culture doesn’t support it. 

Some key questions worth exploring around this issue are:

Do your organisational values really shape actions, behaviours and decision-making on a day-to-day basis?

Do your individual values align to those of your organisation?

Is culture talked about frequently inside your organisation and understood by all staff and relevant stakeholders?

Do people have a common understanding about what ‘living your values’ looks and feels like?

Can and should you measure culture and values and the impact on your business?

Do your business metrics, key performance indicators and work processes align to your organisational values?

A few years ago, at the start of our journey to become a more values-driven business, culture was something talked about infrequently and was not well understood by the majority of employees and managers.  In addition, leaders who were responsible for distinct business units behaved inconsistently, and in a minority of cases, their behaviour did not reflect the expectations within Gentoo’s values.

Various interventions have been put in place over the last few years which have had a clear impact on these two elements.  Culture is a word that is now very well understood and talked about frequently as being one of the key elements of organisational success.  Secondly, all managers and leaders are clear about the expectations of their behaviours in relation to our values.

In terms of measuring this change, we have been able to do this at an individual leadership level via our executive 360 appraisal process. We also have our Sunday Times Best Companies results and Values Surveys, broken down at a team level which we use as part of a suite of performance information. 

This enables us to ensure leaders are accountable for culture and values alignment in their parts of the business.  It also provides a focus for us in terms of providing support and development where it is required the most.

When these results are correlated with business metrics, it demonstrates that high levels of engagement and cultural and values alignment does result in business success in terms of targets and outcomes.

Gentoo’s values

We have recently refreshed and re-launched our values, primarily based on employee feedback that suggested they needed to be more meaningful, accessible and understandable. We have five values which clearly set out the expectations of “the way we do things around here”.

Do the right thing – doing what we say we’ll do and doing what is expected of us. Being a positive role model who is ethical, reliable and honest.

Make a difference – making a positive impact on colleagues and customers by our behaviours and actions.

Work together - working with people effectively, building relationships by respecting and valuing the difference in others.

Keep learning - taking responsibility for personal development, seeking out opportunities to learn and grow.

Give all you’ve got – utilising all of our skills and talents, demonstrating drive, commitment and loyalty.

Making it real

The expectation is that these are brought to life every day. This is in terms of how we deliver services and conduct our business. These values are integrated into our appraisal process and brought to life via a behavioural map to illustrate what both aligned behaviour and unhelpful behaviour looks like.  

Employees take their cues from everything they experience on a day-to-day basis, therefore systems of work and key performance indicators need to be aligned too. There is no point in claiming you are customer-focused if your systems reward actions that don’t have the customer at the heart of them. Similarly, there is no point in claiming you value your employees if the systems or processes don’t reflect that.

Organisations who recognise their employees as being their biggest asset, investing in them, understanding their personal values and what drives them, are generally the most successful businesses. Something worth thinking about in this extremely challenging environment which we all find ourselves in.

Michelle Meldrum, managing director, Gentoo Operations

Dedication

This article is dedicated to Chris Monk, who sadly passed away just days before writing this. Chris was an experienced organisational development consultant and coach who had been working with Gentoo’s leadership team. Chris worked with us on many of the issues raised in this article. He had a fantastic ability to connect with people, situations and the wider systematic context.  He was highly respected by all who met him. He will be sadly missed.