All posts by Chris Fuller

Great culture is ultimately the result of intention, design, action, and accountability.  As a leader, it is your responsibility to LEAD where you need to go.  Below are 3 tips that will help clarify the reality of your culture, define what all stakeholders want, and best of all, you will learn how to process and transform your company culture into something clear, enjoyable and highly effective! 

1. Assess Your Present

Assessing gives you specific insight into where your organization’s imbalance lies. As a leader, it is important to be extremely attentive to the internal and external dialogue of your employees, clients, and key stakeholders.  To get a solid diagnostic look into your organization’s culture, you can approach the process two ways: informally (through candid conversations and honest observations) or formally (through a guided, thorough survey).

Practical questions to be answered in your assessment:

     1) What does it look and feel like to be our employee?

     2) Does our internal culture ripple out to our external customers?

     3) Is our internal culture delivering results that return appropriate value to our investors?

Once you know what kind of culture you’re starting from, where you need to go will be much clearer.

2. Architect Your Future

From wherever you start, this second phase is when you determine what your new culture must look and feel like.. 

If we set our standards to the highest desired point of a great place to work, hitting on all cylinders of operational excellence and exceeding client or customer expectations – what would that look like?

A critical aspect of Architecture is drawing it all up and lining it all out. It is imperative to establish your new norms – PRACTICAL daily habits, clear expectations, breaking the ultimate into easy to implement actionable behaviors.

The most effective way to discuss and establish the new norms you must follow is by a DITLO (“Day in the Life Of”) framework. Architecting an improved culture essentially involves creating a clear blueprint for what the new culture will look and feel like. It’s about clear roles and responsibilities, clear behavioral expectations.

3. Activate from A to B

Even though your organization’s needs are highly individual, there are a few guiding principles that will help you navigate any situation to your cultural end goal.

As a leader, your first task in the Activation phase is to lead by example. In the Activation phase, you are expanding your new results-oriented norms from strategies to standardized practices every single day (DITLO).

The most important tool for providing security for the people of companies needing to improve results is a scoreboard. A good scoreboard displays:

     • desired results,

     • the key indicators on the path to those results,

     • the daily activities that will create those desired results, and

     • individual and group progress toward the results.

4. Wrap Up 

Simply put, your company can never become healthier, unless you and your key people do too.

     1) Have patience: culture change is an ongoing process

     2) Expect failure: every time you endure, you grow.

     3) Be courageous: courage is acknowledging fear, and then taking action anyway

In one of my more comprehensive consulting projects with an organization, I was tasked with evaluating several departments to assist their leaders in enhancing performance. My initial assessment highlighted a pervasive lack of urgency and a prevailing attitude of complacency across the board.

Delving further, particularly into the sales and marketing divisions, I identified a critical area that was neglected due to recent shifts in leadership as marketing and marketing tools are important such as the use of backlinks which can help a company a lot, read here more about this. The marketing director’s departure had left a void, and the sales head had been asked to oversee both departments at the CEO’s directive. This arrangement was far from ideal, as it not only stretched his capabilities but also placed him in a role that was misaligned with his personality. Consequently, sales began to falter, and the marketing team struggled without proper guidance. Further investigation revealed specific challenges:

• A significant decline in inbound phone traffic, attributing to the ineffective leadership within the marketing department.
• The hiring of two new salespeople who lacked adequate training.
• The top sales performer being sidetracked by personal matters.

Our approach to remediation was multifaceted. We prioritized revitalizing marketing efforts, crucially integrating Search Engine Optimization (SEO) strategies to enhance online visibility and drive inbound traffic. For a comprehensive approach, leveraging SEO, digital marketing, advertising, web design services from Jives Media can further strengthen online presence and achieve sustained growth. By combining these services, businesses can create a seamless, engaging user experience that maximizes conversions and long-term success.

Recognizing SEO’s pivotal role in modern marketing, we developed a strategic marketing plan that included detailed SEO tactics from an enterprise SEO agency tailored to target key demographics effectively. This plan was complemented by establishing clear benchmarks, metrics, and objectives for both sales and marketing teams, ensuring each member had a definitive, measurable path to success.

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Implementing these strategies brought about a renewed sense of urgency within the teams. By providing a structured framework and focusing on leveraging SEO for greater market penetration, we not only addressed the immediate issues but also laid the groundwork for sustained improvement. The personnel, inherently capable and motivated, thrived under this new direction, showcasing the power of strategic oversight combined with clear, actionable goals. For more effective tips and tricks regarding SEO, blogs like eCommerce SEO Essentials can now be read online.

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Does this story resonate with anything in your current business? Is your business defined by great relationships without consistently great results?

Let me first say that I commend you for creating a strong relational culture that embraces trust, transparency, and personal respect. This is not easy! But, I want to challenge you to activate a culture that is both happy and accountable.

First, start by addressing your organization’s imbalances so that you can bridge the gap between a strong relationships culture to a strong relationships AND strong results culture.

• What is/are the problems? Be specific!
• Why are these specifics not working?
• Who will be responsible to fix them?

From here, create new norms that are defined and measurable. Some key goals for your organization might be:

• Clarity of Roles and Responsibilities (Who does what)
• Speed up (Who does what by WHEN)
• Produce more (encourage stretch goals)
• Increase quality
• Improve business acumen
• Increase creativity
• Drive innovation
• Solve problems quicker
• Think critically

“You can’t change what you can’t measure.”

Organizations that need to tighten up must provide their people with parameters clear enough to guide their beliefs, which will trigger right behaviors. Maximize your website’s impact by leveraging the capabilities of free seo tools.

The trust you place in your workforce works best if you clarify expectations, directly communicate roles and responsibilities with expected timelines.

I can’t emphasize this enough. “The best relationships start with great communication around expectations” When needs/expectations aren’t met – the relationship starts to sour AND hurt feelings will lead to the break down of the relationship. We want you to feel equipped, empowered, and successful – SO we communicate, delineate, delegate, equip, empower, AND add accountability! Do you have the right marketing talent and strategy to take your brand to the next level? If you’re unsure, you might benefit from hiring a digital marketing agency like Candy Marketing.

Entrust your people to embrace and embody predetermined beliefs, that lead to successful behaviors built for maximizing effectiveness and then hold them regularly accountable. The Client Verge home page offers all the details.

These standards are sure to set your team up to succeed.

What in your company do you need to do to “tighten up”? Where? With whom?

For the past twenty years, I’ve had the honor of working with some of the most seasoned and dedicated leaders around, from both small boutique companies and large conglomerates. Over these years, I can confidently say that I’ve never met a leader who doesn’t want to see his or her company succeed.

Yet, even with the best intentions, leaders can find themselves needing assistance in developing culture that establishes practices and habits for success. Most often, I’m called in to help existing companies address a “situation.” They have a problematic department; they aren’t hitting their ideal performance metrics; they have relational dysfunction; they want to diversify or open new branches; they want to expand their horizons…but something is holding them back. In these situations, most company’s leadership simply needs to be reminded of what will make the company fire on all cylinders—from both a results-oriented standpoint and a relational one.

When the leaders are sound, solid people, with every good intention for their company, the problems come down to a basic imbalance—overplaying a particular strength, or a focus on what some have called “the tyranny of the Or.”

This imbalance can be hard to put your finger on unless you’re trained to look for it. But once you understand what you’re looking for, the signs are quite obvious (and often more widespread than anyone realizes):

1. Highly productive companies with a workhouse atmosphere, where well-paid employees eventually feel inadequate valued. This could be from a personal/work-life balance or a what have you done for me lately feeling. (We need to “lighten up” the culture and value the contributors)

2. Highly relational companies whose people enjoy the perks, the camaraderie and pats on the back but eventually become frustrated with the lack of achievement, feel an inadequate sense of purpose, accomplishment or momentum. (We need to “tighten up” the culture)

3. Highly confused companies with an inefficient mix of highly relational departments and highly driven departments whose people eventually never find enough identity to establish any sort of lasting loyalty. (need for both)

In every situation above, the problem is not an utter lack of success. It is simply that a incomplete culture had taken each company as far as it could go. The prescription for achieving that next level of success isn’t a matter of completely discarding what they already have; instead, it’s time for each company to embrace what I like to call an “And” mentality:

Relationships AND Results

People AND Process

Connectedness AND Individuality

Sprints AND Strategic Rests

Service AND Profits

Security AND Accountability

Systems AND Innovation

Today, it seems as though much of the content on company culture focuses on either greater results or better relationships. I would like to propose that these two parts should be of the same discussion. As a result, I have decided to break up this blog post into a 3 part series beyond this intro on the subject. In each subsequent post, I will dissect and exemplify situations in which organizations may need to “Tighten Up,” “Lighten Up,” or do both in order to achieve this “And” Culture!

As a leader, you may pride yourself in heading an organization that offers a competitive salary, a great benefits package, and may even be touted by everyone from Forbes to Fast Company as holding the future in its hands. But again, what is it really like for the people who sit within your walls, day in and day out? Don’t just assume that they agree with your press…or even your numbers. You have to actually ask them.

In a case study shortly after the personal computer market took it’s first nose-dive, Dell computers—a company who had seen huge successes—issued an informal survey of its employees. To the surprise of the top brass, it showed that a majority of employees would leave the company if they could. The diagnostic could have stopped there; the company brass could have assumed the uneasiness of the market played a big part in people’s desire to leave and then offered a slew of perks that they believed would solve the problem. Instead, they went a level deeper, and issued another survey about what was making employees feel that way.

The second level survey revealed that no one felt he or she had a connection to company founder Michael Dell—everyone found him distant and aloof—and their perception of the managing COO was that he didn’t listen to their concerns, and simply bulldozed people for the sake of driving numbers.

Again, it could have stopped there, with the founder and COO being tasked to change their behavior to something more relatable. Again, Dell went one level deeper, with some DISC personality assessments on their leaders. It revealed that Michael Dell was a classic introvert, who had turned over operations to the COO who, as a proven driver, was bound to get results or die trying. That system had worked while the demand for Dell computers was high, but when the market took a dive everyone felt detached from the founder and over-driven by the COO, and suddenly they didn’t have a strong enough reason to stay, beyond keeping a paycheck until they could find something better.

The illustration reveals the difference between perception and reality, when diagnosing your organization’s culture. Your diagnosis cannot be based on your perception. It must be based on reality. The workers at Dell perceived the higher-ups as being aloof and uncaring, when in fact they were trying to help the company in the only way they knew how. Similarly, the leadership team perceived, “We’re doing well; we weathered the storm,” while the reality was that the storm had shaken the loyalty of their workforce. The behavior of the people seemed to say everything was alright but upon a deeper review, an MRI so to speak, the chatter in the halls revealed a different story.

Below are three applications for you to actively engage and know your employees’ opinions. I hope you will take the time to uncover the truth in your organization!

• Make a concerted effort to listen to the chatter in your halls and break rooms.
• Have open, gut honest conversations with key employees.
• Conduct surveys of employees that gauge what their work experiences and interactions look and feel like.

Bottom-line, what would your employees say if you asked them if they were happy with their job?

I was hesitant to chime in on the Leadership question relating to the call that essentially ended the game and the Seahawks quest of repeating.  I’ll risk it for the sake of conversation!  Let’s see what we can learn together..

Right decision or wrong decision?

Here are some of my thoughts on the process and what we might take away from it as Leaders.

When it comes to decisions and results, I was taught early on there are 4 combinations:

The options for any decisions are:

• Good decision that goes well
• Good decision that goes bad
• Bad decision that goes well
• Bad decision that goes bad
  

So to hear Coach Carroll say..

• They fully intended to run the ball on the next play – but
  
• They felt they could only run him twice (clock management/keep Brady off the field)
  
• They wanted the Patriots to have to defend against pass and run
  
• This was a set up play that was supposed to be safe(65 similar plays from the 1 this season – 0 interceptions)
  

Just an interesting exercise to think about:

• Where are we trying to outsmart ourselves?
  
• When we don’t play to our strengths, Is it out of boredom?  Trickery?
  
• What is our competitive advantage?  Our secret sauce?
  
• Is there an aspect of our overall ‘Game’ that we are trying to work around?
  

 Situational thoughts:  Ailing defensive secondary + Competitor like Brady with skills to exploit = get fancy with play calling to drain the clock (fear based)

Commentary from a friend, Dennis (a great leader who runs a business team near Boston):

• Pete Carroll calling a 1 yard slant = Bad decision that went bad
  
• Malcolm Butler jumping the route = Good decision that when well
  
• Seahawks based their play calling on fear and went away from their strengths, never a recipe for success
  
• You go for the WIN, you do not waste a play, you get in the end-zone and then let your defense stop Brady with only 30 seconds on the clock
  

All around bad leadership by the Seahawks……

For a more objective discussion of the analytics (sorry Dennis), this is a great read from Benjamin Morris @skepticalsports :

http://53eig.ht/1CvnqSU

The truth is this:

Good or Bad decisions are not judged by the market – Outcomes are!

#WelcometoLeadership

In Application of this, here are some thought on how to leverage this scenario with our teams:

 A look at process:

     > Situational Analysis 

              * (where am I lens-ing this?  Our Defensive Secondary is in trouble and Brady is Awesome)

     > Decision

              * (Stay with greatness or try something else) ((Remember: many people may be affected!))

     > Execution

              * (into the hands of the players)

              *  ((some poor leadership decisions are extremely difficult to overcome!))

     > Outcome

              * (live and learn)

Preparation and repetition leads to insight and intuition

              * Based on the alignment of the receivers – Butler had insight/intuition and knew how to respond

Keep doing the ground and pound… not sexy – but a winning formula

Beliefs drive behavior

              * Butler said he had a vision that he was going to make a great play

              * Coach Carroll believed this was a safe option and he had a play to waste

You have to want it – you have to want it bad enough to floor the competition and take your destiny!

Do what is in front of you to win and do it as soon as the opportunity presents itself… Don’t play NOT to LOSE – PLAY TO WIN!

Your thoughts?