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Most organizations have what I call “Culture 1.0:” a mission statement, a vision statement, and a list of company values. (No shade, but these are typically "trust, integrity, respect, excellence, teamwork, fun," or some version of these.)

Unfortunately, this doesn't work, and it hasn’t worked for years.

It isn’t that these values aren’t important, they aren’t positive, and they don’t embody how we want people to show up.

It’s simply that value statements aren’t clear.

Communicating culture with clarity.

One of the shifts that I work with teams around is changing your mind from this value-based culture, like trust or respect, and translating those into behaviors and to create a clear code of conduct for the organization.

By doing this, we not only demonstrate what we believe (values, what is true about ourselves) but with precise clarity what specific behaviors we hold ourselves and each other accountable to. It communicates: “This is how we expect you to show up, both in your job and how you impact and treat other people on the team.”

The defining difference between a value-based and a behavior-based culture:

This doesn't mean you have to take your list of values and throw it out the window. Ask yourself, if you have trust, integrity, respect, etc, what do those look like in practice?

One exercise is just to ask yourself what are 3, 4, or 5 examples of each of those values in practice? What does that look like? Part of the problem with value-based culture is that those words don't mean the same thing to every single person, so providing clear behaviors for each value gets the whole team on board.

For example: integrity. Integrity means something different to different people.

If you have a team of people, they all have a different interpretation of what “integrity” means for the company as a behavior and even the person in your organization who gossips, who creates drama, who does things that I would say lack integrity would probably say about themselves, "I'm full of integrity, I would never embezzle from this company."

It's such a different definition from one person to the next.

Transforming values to behaviors, in practice

Value: Integrity
Behavior: We don't bad mouth or gossip about other people. If you have a problem with somebody else, you go right to that person, you go right to the source and you sort it out with them. It also means that if I say I'm going to do something, I do it. If I have a deadline I need to hit, I make sure to take ownership and accountability for it, no excuses. I am responsible for that task.

Value: Excellence
Behavior: We actively seek out feedback from other people and we don't see feedback as a threat or criticism, we see it as an opportunity to improve and build better relationships.

This clarity is a critical element of building intentional, deliberate culture.

Remove the notion that culture is a list of loosely understood values and instead get really clear about what does that look like in action? What would we put on our culture statement say so that any person in the company could read it and know exactly what it means from the second they’re on-boarded?

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This article was created by Galen Emanuele for the #culturedrop. Free leadership and team culture content in less than 5 minutes a week. Check out the rest of this month's content and subscribe to the Culture Drop at https://bit.ly/culturedrop 

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