The Overlooked Value of Culture Misfits for Healthy Business Growth

By Xenia Duffy Obel

Company culture is a hot topic and top-of-mind for many business leaders these days. Designing and creating a strong company culture with rituals and artefacts to match has become an important signifier for purpose-driven organizations focused on growth. Culture is crucial.

As with so many other trends in business when they become popular, we try to distill what other successful companies have done before us and copy the behaviour that we believe led to their success. Unfortunately, a rigorous focus on creating a unique and exclusive culture can lead to an unhealthy weeding out of diversity. When companies hire and fire based on cultural fit, there is a good chance that you will get more of the same. The same opinions, the same thinking, the same conversations, the same preferences.

A company that is not acutely aware of the fact that their true company culture is the sum of the core values and beliefs of the organization – embodied by the behaviours observed in the office, in the meetings rooms, at the coffee machine – fail to truly understand the foundation of their organization. Deliberately imposing a designed culture onto an organization (rituals, artifacts and posters on the wall) without anchoring the culture in the behaviour and clearly articulating what the underlying values are, will fail to build a strong foundation for an effective organization.

You are what you do.

Effective organizations have cultures that are value-focused. The core of a strong culture that generates trust is not rituals or artefacts. It is built on shared values. Shared values allow for diversity. For innovation and creative thinking to thrive in an organization, we have to trust that there is room for diverging opinions, conflict and even negative emotions. We have to believe that opposing perspectives are good and differences are valued. When we can agree to disagree, every individual contributor is set free to fulfill their true potential.

As Ron Friedman so eloquently puts it in Five Myths of Great Workplaces:

“For too long, we’ve relied on assumptions when it comes to improving our workplaces. Isn’t it time we looked at the data?”

When the research tells us that people need to feel competent and autonomous to be effective and productive in their jobs, why do we still believe that expressing diverging opinions and exchanging opposing viewpoints should be avoided in the workplace?

Trust in an organization is built from doing what you say you will do. Cohesion and alignment between the values and the core purpose of the business builds a solid platform on which every member of the organization can stand, take responsibility, think for themselves, speak freely and add value to the culture and business strategy. Only then will we stop running mindlessly into the horizon because we simply do not know if we have ‘performed according to expectations’, ‘met the goals’ or ‘nailed the must-win-battles’.

I encourage anyone thinking about joining a new company (or considering to leave their current) to review the most important company culture signifiers and investigate how they align with the business strategy and underlying values of the organization. How the culture comes to life in daily work and daily behaviours are essential indicators of the company’s internal alignment and ability to execute its strategy effectively. What is their employee turnover? What do people say on Glassdoor? Are people smiling and talking freely in the office space?

When you succeed in identifying a real Cultural and Business fit – a team that shares both your values and your purpose in life – you will find your true tribe.

Good luck out there!

Original posted here.

The Author: Xenia Duffy Obel in her own words. "After 13 years in HR with large international corporations as well as family-owned businesses, I decided to change lanes and become an advisor to entrepreneurs and leaders, who want to lead sustainably and build organizations that balance purpose and profit.

Tired of the constant battle trying to make change happen from the inside of established organizations, I now work from the outside to make a difference in how we think about work, organization design and do business. I want my kids to be able to work in a place that is significantly different and better than anywhere I have experienced in my career.

I am convinced that successful organizations of the future will have the ability to grow trust, build communities in which people thrive and achieve together. Creating sustainable relations within and around an organization will be a powerful source of competitive advantage, growth and positive results of the business."