Maria: I found this job opening for a marketing manager. And I thought, oh, that would be really fun, they were looking for someone who could do everything, like very strategic. So, I applied, got the interview, and they were actually really nice Adam: This is Maria. Or at least, that’s what we’re calling her. You know, to protect the innocent. Anyway, Maria was very excited about this new opportunity. From the outside, the job was everything she wanted. Maria: And she called me at the end of the day to offer me the job, so I quit my job, like two days later. Adam: A few weeks later, she started the new job eager to share her ideas. Maria: And as I sat down in my new desk, the designer who was sitting next to me, she’s like, “I tried to find you on LinkedIn to warn you not to take this job.” (stifled laugh) and I went, “Why?” and she told me, “These people are crazy!” Adam: Um, definitely not a good start. Maria: I just laughed, cause it was like, okay let’s see how bad it actually is cause I also wanted to give it a chance thinking maybe she’s just angry, she just doesn’t like it. But in this case, I should have listened to her. Adam: The next few weeks were a wild ride. Maria: So, we had a sales meeting. I was like okay, let’s try and look for a marketing way of getting customers in. And they were like “No, how about we just do an energy circle?” And I was like, “Sorry what?” They all knew what that meant, so they all stood up, and held hands And I’m there just looking around like, “What the hell’s happening?” And they just started like shaking, like, “Okay, shake the bad energy, shake for the universe,” and then the owner is like, “Okay universe, we need you to send us some sales.” And I’m just standing there like, “Okay” with that folder big full of strategies and ideas and campaign ideas Nothing. Adam: Was this a company or a cult? Maria: It was a bit cult-ish because at the Christmas party, the owner wrote a song for everyone, with everyone’s names on it and we had to sit there listening to him sing to us. And by early December we get a list on my desk, and it’s just a list of everyone’s names in an envelope. And then, on top of the list it says, “Please give whatever you’d like to contribute to show your appreciation for working here and your appreciation to the owner of the company.” And I was just so angry and I loudly went like “What? So, we have to buy him a present?” (laughs) I put 50 cents. I suggested to buy everyone in the company a Christmas present out of the marketing budget, and they said “No, coming to job is present enough.” Adam: So, the highly paid owner gets a gift, but the hard-working employees don’t? Call poison control! We have to rescue some people from a toxic culture. (piano playing) Organizational culture has big consequences for success and happiness but we often overlook it, because it’s hard to analyze. So what culture clues should you look for before you join an organization? And how do you shape the culture, once you’re there? (upbeat intro music) I’m Adam Grant, and this is Work Life my podcast with the TED audiocollective. I’m an organizational psychologist, I study how to make work not suck. In this show, I take you inside the minds of fascinating people, to help us rethink how we work, lead, and live. (upbeat intro music) Today, culture at work: How to recognize it from the outside and strengthen it from the inside. (upbeat intro music) Thanks to Morgan Stanley for sponsoring this episode. (upbeat intro music) Jenny: When I was in junior high school one of the things that I used to do as type of surveys that I would give to my parents Well, actually not just my parents, anyone who came over and I would ask them to fill out a paper-and-pencil survey I just loved surveys, I know, super weird. I would ask all kinds of questions about how happy they were at work and what their work was like and I just thought that was fascinating. Adam: Jenny Chatman is an organizational behavior professor at Berkley, and she was clearly destined to become the queen of organizational culture. (triumphant music) Jenny: I like being a queen, (triumphant music) I continue to be an optimist about this, that there is a place for everyone and there are organizations and jobs that really fit with some people, but not others. Adam: And through her many years of research and countless surveys, Jenny has the clear view what organizational culture is. Jenny: Culture is the values and behavioral norms that one sees expressed within an organization and it has to be sort of a systematic pattern of norms and expectations that people have in a particular setting that they might not have in another setting and one thing that’s interesting about norms is there’s no rulebook to teach them to you, instead we learn them through social interaction. They’re different from what’s written in the corporate handbook, these are observed patterns of behavior and expectations that we pick up from interacting with colleagues within an organization. Adam: People often claim their cultures are unique, but when you study thousands of organizations, you can start to see underlying patterns. It all has to do with how we balance key priorities. Research reveals that there are two fundamental tensions in organizational culture: Results versus relationships, and rules versus risk. If you ignore one of those values altogether, you end up committing one of my 4 deadly sins of organizational culture: (ominous music) Toxicity, mediocracy, bureaucracy, and anarchy. (ominous music) The first sin of culture is toxicity, the deadliest sin of them all. (somber music) New evidence on the great resignation shows that toxic culture is the biggest driver of turnover, more than burnout, more than low pay. Toxicity exists when a culture prioritizes results without relationships, getting things done at the cost of treating people right. The organization tolerates disrespect, abuse, exclusion, unethical decisions, and selfish cut-throat actions. If people don’t get fired for those behaviors or worse yet, still get promoted, Houston, we have a problem. At the opposite end of that spectrum is a second sin: Mediocracy: Valuing relationships above results. There’s no accountability, people are so worried about getting along that they end up forfeiting good work. In a mediocracy, even if you do a terrible job you can still get ahead as long as people like you. Before long, you end up with a Peter principle, where everyone is promoted to their level of incompetence and they get stuck there. (ominous music) The third sin is bureaucracy. That happens when a culture is all rules, no risks. New ideas are seen as threats to the status quo. People cling to process and resist creativity and change. They see questioning the way we’ve always done things as blasphemy. There’s red tape everywhere. If you want to use the bathroom, you have to fill out paperwork. And the fourth sin is anarchy: You have risks, but no rules. Anyone can do whatever they want, strategy and structure be damned. No one learns from the past or lands on the same page. It’s pure chaos. (ominous music) It’s bad enough when a culture commits one of these sins, but believe it or not, Maria’s jewelry company managed to be guilty of all 4 sins Maria: So, definitely insanely toxic. People were crying there daily. Every time I went to the toilet there was someone crying there. We used to laugh about that one of the cubicles, it was the crying cubicle. So you would never actually go there, in case someone needed it for crying. (laughs) Adam: They were a mediocracy, too. And not just because they did energy circles instead of marketing, they had no system for getting results. Maria: They were a small company that grew into a bigger company and none of the top two bothered to learn how to manage a company, incompetence a whole way through, but just act confident. Adam: They had all sorts of constraints on risk-taking. Maria: Very bureaucratic, like, you couldn’t speak directly to the owner because it was very about the steps, like remember how high I am and remember how low you are. Adam: And despite the bureaucracy around the chain of command, in other places, they didn’t have enough rules. Most of Maria’s job was anarchy. Maria: And turns out I kind of regressed in my career because I ended up not doing anything that I wanted to do and more like a party planner and universe messenger person. (laughter) Adam: I did not know that was a job. Maria: Oh, I didn’t either. (laughter) Adam: Could you figure any of this out before you took the job? Maria: I’ve been thinking a lot about that cause while I was there, I was thinking how can I make sure that this doesn’t happen again? If I had spoken to someone from the team during the interview, I am sure that the general manager would have been there with us and other than going through LinkedIn and finding people who work there and then messaging them and start saying, “Hey, I have just been offered this position what do you think about the company so I’m not sure if that’s even something that I would have done? Adam: You’ve probably felt that hesitation too. But gathering information about a culture before you agree to join is exactly what culture queen Jenny Chatman recommends doing. Jenny: I think that’s a great way of helping people be kind of detectives about the culture that they’re interested in particularly people who are seeking jobs. You want to ask, you know, what what do people care about here? What are they talking about? What is behavior focusing on? How much agreement is there? Do people seem to be aligned on these issues? And finally, what are their non-negotiables? What do people get really rewarded for, or if they violate these norms or behaviors, what do they get really punished for? Adam: You want to interview the company, but not during your job interview. Wait until you get the offer. Maria: I’m definitely doing that for my next job because If I’m getting into a new company I want to know exactly what I’m getting into so, next time I will do more of a reverse interview. Adam: It’s not about the slogans on the wall or the values on the website, culture is revealed in the stories people tell. (lively music) To gather meaningful culture stories, I have a few favorite questions for you to ask current and former employees. I posed them to some former students, and their answers told me a lot about their organizations cultures. The first question is: Tell me about something that happens here that wouldn’t elsewhere. Vivian: Every year, the class of new hires is in charge of organizing a senior team roast, where they basically spend 30 minutes, live, these days over Zoom, during our end-of-the-year strategy session roasting our senior team for things like the way they write emails, wearing pajamas during zoom calls, mixing up people’s names, basically anything embarrassing. And I think this is something truly unique about our culture, for a firm in the finance industry where humor isn’t often encouraged in the workplace. Adam: This is a firm that’s trying to avoid both toxicity and bureaucracy. By making fun of senior people, they signal that executives want human relationships and it’s okay to take risks. Also, it’s pretty rare that people wearing pajamas are into red tape. Romie: When an investment banking report came out about mistreatment of their first shares, I got an email from the chairman of our organization. We’d worked together once before but didn’t know each other very well and I was one of the only analysts he knew. He was horrified by the report. And wanted to see how I felt we were doing. And to make sure I didn’t feel anything remotely similar. He responded to my email by saying: “I hope and pray that no one at our firm would ever be treated like that. And even if one person felt they were treated badly, that that person would let us know and we could fix it immediately. If we ever failed to be people-focused, please let me know whether it’s about you or you’re aware of anyone else at the firm.” And then in all caps “NOTHING I CARE MORE ABOUT.” Adam: It sounds like the chairman is dedicated to fight toxicity, but culture isn’t about one leader’s behavior, it’s about how widely shared and intensely held the values are. So I want to know how committed others in power are to curbing mistreatment and what the consequences are. In healthy cultures, no level of individual excellence justifies undermining people. You’re not a high performer if you don’t elevate others. Which brings us to a second question: Tell me about a time when people didn’t walk the talk here. Gabriel: Our offices returned to in-person because in-person interactions are highly valued, according to the president of the firm. But the third most senior person at the firm is spending the entire winter in a ski town in Europe. Adam: This is a red flag. Research suggests that the worst stories about a culture are about senior leaders violating their own principles. They claim in-person relationships are valued, but apparently one of the top people is exempt from that value? Hypocrisy alert! You can also see signs of hypocrisy versus integrity by asking a third question: Tell me a story about who gets hired, promoted and fired around here. If you’re a detective, these stories are full of clues about what’s really valued Girl: An MD shared how he made MD in six years as opposed to the normal twelve. He told us how he works from 4:30 AM until 10 PM and he’s always available. He doesn’t expect it from everyone else, but he’s always grinding. Considering our firm prides itself on valuing mental health, it’s a bit demoralizing to hear that the way to advance quickly is to abandon those values. Adam: Here’s another warning signal: The company claims to value well-being, but do they really mean it? If you want to get promoted early, good luck not working 17-hour days (upbeat music) Collecting stories can help you understand a culture from the outside and identify toxicity, mediocracy, bureaucracy, and anarchy before you join. But what if you’re already inside? How do you build and maintain a strong culture? More on that after the break. (upbeat music) Okay, this is going to be a different kind of ad. I play a personal role in selecting the sponsors for this podcast, cause they all have interesting cultures of their own. Today, we’re going inside the workplace at Morgan Stanley (gentle music) Randy: We like to hike, we like to climb around in the mountains, we like to be like an hour and a half far from civilization fishing. My wife’s super active, and she just loves being out at the gym, running, doing all that kind of stuff. Adam: Meet Randy Norris Randy: I live in a town, just outside of Boise, Idaho, I’m a financial advisor with Morgan Stanley. I’m married to a wonderful partner for life, Lian. And I have two now adult kids. Adam: One day, Lian suffered a life-threatening medical emergency She suddenly started coughing up blood that was filling her lungs. Randy: She was admitted to the hospital, and she stayed in the hospital for the next 4 or 5 days, and did all kinds of tests, trying to figure out what was going on. The only thing that really came of it that we were told was that it shouldn’t happen again but it could happen at any time, and so basically, the advice was never be 10 or 15 minutes away from a hospital. Adam: Randy and Lian was scared and devasted at the thought of spending the rest of their lives tethered to a hospital. But then, Randy got a phone call from his insurance provider. Randy: She said: “I noticed you’ve been going to see a number of different doctors, are you getting the care you need?” Immediately, I just said: “No. No, we have something wrong and nobody has a good answer, and I’m really frustrated” And she said “Well, Morgan Stanley offers their employees the service called Second MD.” Dave: The purpose of that expert medical opinion service is really to provide a different point of view that can help avoid surgeries, potentially help save unnecessary doctors’ visits, maybe identify an alternative diagnosis or treatment that hadn’t been considered, especially when there’s a major decision to be made Adam: This is doctor Dave Stark, Morgan Stanley’s chief medical officer. Dave: Fundamentally, the job of a chief medical officer or frankly the job of an HR benefits professional is to develop and manage a portfolio of products and services to help employees and their families stay healthy, happy, and productive Adam: That’s what Second MD did for Randy and his family. After being connected to specialists across the country, Lian traveled to Oregon, where she was diagnosed with a micro vascular disfunction and underwent a successful surgery. Randy: After about 3 months of just not being able to figure out what was going on, Second MD came in, and within 3 weeks, we have a plan of action that was just guided and stepped all the way through I’ve been a raving fan of Second MD ever since. Adam: Research shows that employees’ commitment and loyalty depends heavily on feeling cared about and supported by their employer. Morgan Stanley has worked to meet employees where they are, with services they need, in person or virtually, from child and elder to special needs care. As for Randy, he and his wife Lian are counting their blessings Randy: On the anniversary of her surgery, she ran her first half marathon. Life is precious, life is short. We should enjoy it, and take a moment then, but every now and then just reflect on the blessings we have and the miracles that happened that get us where we’re at. Adam: Morgan Stanley believes employees are their greatest asset and they protect that asset by offering top quality healthcare options and comprehensive programs to support physical and emotional well-being. Learning more at morganstanley.com/our benefits (upbeat music) Adam: The first person who shapes the culture of an organization is the founder. Annie: Our founder, Barclay Simpson, had his 9 principles of doing business and it’s something that we refer to all the time. And one of them is everybody matters. Adam: Meet Annie Kao. She’s the VP of Engineering at Simpson Manufacture. They make anchors and fasteners for building foundations and decks. Annie: We are a manufacture and engineering company of building connections that help people build and design safer, stronger structures. Adam: And Simpson has been doing that for a long time. Annie: Just celebrated our 65th birthday. Adam: I thought it was really intriguing that you said, “<b>We</b> celebrated <b>our </b>65th birthday.” Annie: Uh-huh. Adam: A lot of people when they talk about other company, they wouldn’t know what their company’s birthday was. What’s behind that? Annie: God, you know, I didn’t even pick up on that, but I think for me, like, the people are Simpson, I feel like I’m a very active owner of who Simpson is and what Simpson is and so, you know, the successes that we had as a company both on the financial side, on the products that we’re able to release, like, I have very personal pride associated with that because I just, I know the people and the work that it took to deliver it. Adam: That identification with the company, that pride of ownership, is a sign that Simpson has an unusually strong culture. Annie: It’s very personal because I think that what a company does is a clear reflection on, you know, who I am as, you know, as a person, as an engineer, as a parent. Adam: Strong culture is one of Jenny Chatman’s specialties as a researcher. You can tell how strong a culture is by paying close attention to what she calls crystallization and intensity. Jenny: There’s a question about how much people agree about the culture, that’s the crystallization piece. Does everyone in the organization agree that innovation is important? Or is there fragmentation where our engineers want to be on the cutting edge of things but our marketing folks want to hold back and just provide what customers are asking for? And there’s a question of intensity, which is what are the things that we’re... that are absolute non-negotiable for us in the organization. Adam: Simpson doesn’t just have a strong culture. Jenny has observed it up close as an unusually healthy one. Jenny: So, full disclosure, I’m on the board of Simpson Manufacturing, even before consultants were billing hours for cultural transformation, Barc was building a strong culture and he had a number of principles, one was that he really supported his people within the organization and expected to do most of their promotions from within the company. So, there was a real investment in developing people Adam: An investment that often took people by surprise, including Annie. Annie: Barclay Simpson, our founder, used to attend all of the orientation classes that we held at our corporate office. So, everyone who starts at Simpson attends this week-long orientation at our home office and Barc would attend all of those, and he would have 30 minutes, he’d go round, ask everyone’s name, ask about their families, and talk a little bit about the history and he’d just going to sit down at one of the, you know, conference chair along with us, and then I think of other leaders that have guided our company, and just the common factor is how, kind of, openly caring they were, how much they make time for employees. It’s something that I have really tried to do, just within my department with engineering is, like, I need to be that, you know, for the employee and so just making sure that, you know, I’m owning that and also expecting that of my team because that’s the kind of culture that we want, and we have to keep it alive and just not assume that someone will is doing it. Adam: It’s often said that culture eats strategy for breakfast. But the reality is, that a strong culture can serve your strategy. Jenny: Yeah, I do think there is something to the motto in that if your culture is not aligned with your strategy, good luck, it’s probably not going to be executed very well, or if at all. But I also think that strategy is what gives organization its purpose. Without a strategic objective, the question is sort of why organize, or why be an organization. You’re coming together for a purpose, you’re trying to accomplish something together, the culture should be the kind of engine that allows you to execute on that strategy more or less effectively. Adam: So if you want to build a strong culture, you need to identify the core values that you’re trying to crystalize But crystallization alone is not enough. You’ve probably come across a workplace where everyone agrees on the values but no one really upholds them. Jenny: Think of your US postal service, where, you know, who knew that their motto was “Customers first,” right? Like who knew? I think they have the coffee mugs, they have the banners, but, is anyone willing to, sort of, stay past 5pm to ensure that everybody on the line is served? Probably not. And in fact, it’s the most common case in organizations to have high crystallization and low intensity, because typically leaders are asking people to agree with pretty good stuff like quality, or customers, sure, I like customers, you know. The real question, though, is are people punished for a failure to uphold the norms and are they willing to sanction one another? Adam: That’s where intensity comes in. Jenny: There was this case at Nordstrom that is known as a strong culture organization. An experience I had where a shoe salesperson was helpful, but not overly helpful. And another salesperson came over, which I happened to overhear cause, you know, he was dropping is tax deductible for me, right? I happened to overhear this conversation between the two, and the second salesperson was actually admonishing the first one for not going above and beyond in helping me. So that’s the sign of real intensity. Are people willing to take an interpersonal risk in order to uphold those norms? Adam: That might sound a little, well, intense. But it’s the point of a strong culture: People enforce it even when the boss isn’t watching. At Simpson, the crystallization and intensity around the principles is a big reason why people regularly stay for the long haul sometimes decades. Annie: I’ve just celebrated my 15-year anniversary with Simpson. Adam: Is that a thing? An anniversary with a company? Annie: YES! And so, we have this really cool online network, where we can actually go and celebrate our coworkers’ anniversary and so you can post messages and, like, kind of, memories. I was just happen to be the lucky recipient of like, I think 50 messages from people that I worked with congratulating me, which was pretty emotional and overwhelming. (cheerful music) Adam: The anniversaries are a result of that strong culture, and the messages also help to maintain that culture. They reinforce the principle that everybody matters. (upbeat music) Annie: And I think part of it, too, is everyone, like, wants to be a part of this, like, winning team, if you will, that the work that you do matters, and people who enjoy their work and bring that passion with them to their work just give so much more of themselves. So I feel like it’s translated itself financially for us. We passed the 1 billion dollars mark, I saw that there was some analysts who are predicting that we would be, you know, maybe, 2 billion by the end of this year. And it’s like, oh, okay. Like, we really see that the hard work and the culture that we build, actually, translates into financial success, which is a kind of self-fulling prophecy. Adam: Yeah, well, it’s interesting what you’ve just described dovetails very nicely with what we see in the research on strong cultures, which is you know, one: talented people are more attracted to them because there’s a clear signal: this is who we are, this is what we stand for. And that differentiate you in the marketplace. Two: Heightened motivation, over and over again. Like, I’m not just doing a job, I’m advancing a mission. And three: Those two things obviously feed into retention nicely, and they do that in part through a sense of belonging. When the culture is strong, like, everybody shares the same values, and also, is passionate about the same values, it’s me, and I can’t imagine working anywhere else because how am I going to find that again? Annie: Yes, yes. (upbeat music) Adam: So how do you create that kind of commitment and build a strong organizational culture? In her research, Jenny compared the effects of selection vs. socialization How much of culture is who you’d let on the bus? Versus how you drive it? Jenny: It turns out that people are, within some parameters, pretty flexible in terms of how much they can grow to adapt and fit with, or even appreciate the culture that they’re a part of. Adam: Wow, I think you just said that socialization eats selection for breakfast Jenny: That’s right! That’s right, which is interesting because I think if you asked most leaders, they would say it’s about who you hire, and, it turns out that people are actually more adaptable than we give them credit for. Adam: Jenny finds that when it comes to building a strong culture, socialization beats selection. The values and norms you set are more than twice as influential as who you hire So if you want to strengthen your culture, the first step is to bring it to life for people, especially new hires. Culture isn’t just communicated through the stories we tell, it’s created through the stories we tell. You want to find and share stories about a time when the culture became real Jenny: Stories are vital. I like to advise leaders to see themselves as curators of key stories within an organization You need to tell the story, but also give the moral of the story. And so, one very well-known example is Southwest Airlines. They were running out of money early in their operations. They were using 4 jets at the time. And they couldn’t make their payrolls so they had to sell one of the jets to pay employees that month. And they went to employees and said: We’re going to well one of our jets but we want to run the same route with 3 jets instead of 4, how can we do that? And employees came back with the idea of turning the planes more quickly than they were before. So Southwest now continues to be known for its turn time, the amount of time it takes to come back in the gate, unload passengers and bags, you know, clean the plane, reload passengers and bags and take off. And that’s part of Southwest’s, sort of, deep strategy. So that story got told, not just for the substance that turn time is important, but for the relationship between leaders and employees, and who actually came up with the idea. And everyone at Southwest knows that story and it absolutely maps on to the culture that emphasizes both urgency and speed, but also a deep investment and mutual respect between employees and leaders in the organization Adam: Research reveals that the most powerful stories are about people living your values. Once you’ve identified your best cultural stories, the second step is to reward and promote the protagonist in them, celebrate people who exemplify your values. Jenny: You would definitely want to focus on the formal and informal reward systems. Formally, if you have control over the compensation and you can reward that financial aid, that gets people’s attention very quickly. But then there are a whole host of informal rewards, you know, whether that’s gift certificates for lunch or a kick celebration for someone who had a small win that’s consistent with the desired new culture. These are ways of really capturing people’s attention. Adam: Wait a minute. If I heard you correctly, you’re saying I shouldn’t just pay people for their performance, I should pay them for their contributions to the culture? Jenny: Well yeah! Because, if... in my way of thinking about culture, the culture is your path to strategy execution, then culture is almost a proxy for top performance Adam: Wow! This is... It’s such a big step for so many organizations that are used to... I would say most of the organizations I’ve worked with over time were they’ve gotten good at measuring individual results and they know how to figure out if you are a superstar, they have no idea what your impact on the culture is. Jenny: That’s right. And, then the final lever, of course, is the leader’s own behavior. Right, she needs to absolutely emulate the culture that she’s trying to cultivate and there’s no substitute for that because people are looking at leaders for an understanding of what’s important. Adam: This is the third step. Leaders have to show up and model the values every day. That’s a principle Annie learned from Barc Simpson, the company’s founder and the CEOs who followed him. Annie: I just do office hours. We’ve been trying to build that in, and just say, like, our schedules are so busy, everyone never has time, so, I’m going to actually make that time. I’m going to be available for 2 hours on Monday morning, right after we’ve done our earnings call, so, if you have questions about why we decided to do this, why we didn’t move that project forward, what the heck was Karen talking about the financials, I have made the time for that. Adam: So, Annie, I haven’t asked you yet about the dark side of strong cultures but, I want, because we see empirically that despite all the upsides, the challenges that strong culture runs into has to do with group thinking, homogeneity, and becoming, sort of, stuck in the way we’ve always done things as opposed to adapting and evolving Annie: Yeah. Adam: Have you seen that? How have you navigated it? Annie: (sighs) Yeah, we... It’s so funny you’re asking this question because we’ve just talking about this as an engineering team, as how do we make sure we have, you know, a diverse set of perspectives and opinions so that we don’t fall into groupthink and, that like, well, this is how we’ve always done it. Let’s just not assume that we’re not doing, you know, groupthink. Like, how are we making sure to put together diverse teams. Right? Like, what questions are we asking as we start a project, or as we put people on projects to make sure that it has the right, the right mix of people, and I think we ask ourselves that question too when we hire, like, who can, who is the right new person on the team to challenge what we’re doing, and how do we celebrate being challenged what we’re doing, so that we are kind of... We’re looking for it, and that it’s not something that, you know, catches us by surprise. Adam: This is the paradox of strong cultures. If you want them to stay strong, flexibility needs to be one of your core values. Cultures are like buildings. Without proper maintenance, they fall apart. A culture needs regular service, and sometimes a full-scale renovation. So how do you know what kind of maintenance your culture needs? You do a culture audit. Jenny: A culture audit is actually pretty straightforward. You can start by saying: Here are our current norms, and then you could say: If we were fully executing on our strategy, what would our norms be? And then, you can identify the gaps, and figure out a bunch of behaviors that can fix that, using these levers: who would we hire, how would we socialize, orient, and train people, what stories would we tell, who would we promote, how would we reward people, you know, what would leaders be doing? At that point, you can get to real behavioral change that could be of value. Adam: Yeah, and one of the things I love about the idea of a culture audit is I can go and get responsibility for that, even if I’m not in charge, right? And in some ways, I’m taking a task that nobody has time for, or might not already be in anybody’s job description and I’m saying: “Hey, leaders, you can’t be everywhere, you can’t see everything, can I help you figure out what’s working in the culture and what needs to be improved? And if I can get that project, then I have a chance to then shape the discovery of data that can convince leaders that we need to some adjustments. Jenny: And then, the next piece of that would be that you make the culture changes part of the work that people are doing anyway. Adam: At Simpson, they have their version of a culture audit. Annie: It’s a culture and leadership survey. And so the first time we did this, there was feedback that people felt that they couldn’t really say something if they saw something that was against our values or against our policies. And so, as a result, we launched a program specifically to address that, called “Speak-up, listen-up”. We opened an anonymous phone tip line, we had an anonymous form you could fill online, all managers took training, we kind of put our money where our mouth is. Adam: Wow! It sounds like an example of protecting the culture. Annie: Yeah, I would say everyone in our company is responsible for protecting the culture and what it means for me is just... is going back and making sure that we are a values-driven organization. And so I’m going to do whatever I can, as a leader in our organization, to make sure that that is pervasive through every single role, every single level, because that’s not something that we are willing to go halfway on. And if we do, then that’s not the company that I want to work for. (lively music) Adam: The ultimate test of a strong culture is: Can it adapt? Building a great workplace isn’t just about expecting people to adapt to the culture, it’s also about adapting the culture to the people and the world. As the world evolves, your culture needs to evolve with it. (lively music) Next time, wrapping up Season 5 of WorkLife: Dan Heath: People have this sort of skepticism about change and everything you hear about change is pessimistic. I mean everything in our lives is change. For some reason, we code the really difficult things as change and everything else is just like a choice. Adam: Organizational change from the bottom up and the top down. (upbeat music) WorkLife is hosted by me, Adam Grant. The show is produced by TED with Transmitter Media. Colin Helms, Gretta Cohn, Dan O’Donnell, JoAnn DeLuna, Grace Rubenstein, Michelle Quint, Banban Cheng and Anna Phelan. This episode was produced by Constanza Gallardo. Our show is mixed by Ben Chesneau. Our fact checker is Paul Durbin. Original music by Hansdale Hsu and Allison Leyton-Brown. Ad stories produced by Pineapple Street Studios. Special thanks to our sponsors: LinkedIn, Morgan Stanley, ServiceNow, and UKG. (upbeat music) For their studies of organizational culture, gratitude to the following researchers and their colleagues: Charles O’Reilly, Chad Hartnell, Shalom Schwartz, Joanne Martin, Sean Martin, Alan Benson, Donald Sull, Constantinos Coutifaris, and my beloved late colleague Sigal Barsade. (upbeat music) Maria: The people that were there when I was there, are still there, and this was like two years ago. I sat there with them, trying to figure out how we could start their own businesses, cause I was like, you need to get out of here. Adam: For toxic cultures, there should be some kind of extraction team that you can send in, Maria: (giggles) There should be! Adam: Like a SWAT team that’s going to go in and rescue everyone. Maria: That’s a good business idea. Maybe I recruit a company who’d specialize in saving teams that are stuck in a shitty culture. Adam: I think that is a business waiting to be launched.
