Organisations with rich, healthy cultures achieve income growth seven times higher than those with less well-defined cultures. As a result, those leaders are better at attracting talent that enables them to keep generating growth and value. No wonder many sleepless nights areA result of the subject.
But those who pay attention achieve superior results. They do it by articulating a set of values that they live by, and then making sure their managers and people live and breathe those values too. But why does this lead to sleepless nights?
As a leader, you constantly have to check those values are being lived all the way to the front line. With the health and growth of your business at stake, trying to achieve this can take over your every waking moment. That being the case, why not follow these tips from CEOs who have focused on culture to enable success?
1) Think carefully about your values
Ensure staff reflect the DNA of your organisation; ensure they enable you to achieve your goals. Too often, leaders describe their values without sufficient explanation, meaning they cannot truly drive culture.
Dame Louise Makin, CEO of specialist health-care company BTG, said: “I honestly believe the absolute key to success is the quality of people and the way youconduct business. Everything we do is guided by values, which we long ago designed to underpin and foster a culture that would enable fast growth and meaning. Every step of the way we have made sure we have had, at our core, integrity, teamwork, accountability, delivery, openness and continuous learning as our values.”
2) Put your leaders on the front line
To understand the culture and what changes are necessary, leaders must spend time on the front line of the business. Vernon Everitt, MD of customers, communication and technology for Transport for London (TfL), described developing culture as being all about trying to see life through the eyes of the customer.
To do this, TfL has initiated a “front-line experience”, where senior leadership have to spend at least two weeks of the year in the field, acting as a revenue inspector on the Tube, on the bus service, or mopping the decks at one of the piers where the river boats turn up. Everitt said:?”It’s only by doing this, by standing shoulder to shoulder with staff, that we can truly understand their experience and help deliver a better service.”
3) Create a strong set of values to empower and energise people
Your culture if you wish to do away with sleepless nights?” should enable everyone in the organisation to make decisions in your absence, based on knowing what you would do. Companies that create more leaders are more agile. To create leaders, you need to empower people to make decisions without going up and down the management chain. To achieve this, leaders need to provide a purpose and clear principles.
In 2010, Debbie Hewitt MBE was appointed to help turn around the failing Moss Bros Group. At the heart of the company’s recovery has been the motivation and ethic of its people. “The previous mission statement didn?t engage people,” said Debbie. “It wasn?t the reason people came to work every day. We needed to describe it with more emotional language to make men feel amazing.”
Don’t want sleepless nights about culture There are more tips on the next page, spanning how to bond with customers and striving to do the right thing.
4) Make sure middle managers live the values
Managers either enable or kill values. Employees, no matter how keen, will not be able to live and breathe your values if your managers don’t. No matter how much the top team lives the values, if your middle managers are not doing so as well then culture breaks down.
Killian Hurley, chief executive at Mount Anvil, a specialist property developer in London, said: “One of our core values is relentlessly striving to do the right thing. That means when we are hiring people, one of the qualities we look for is decency. We want people who, when faced with tough choices, will do the right thing. We absolutely know the right thing to do is the best thing to do.”
But YouGov research shows many employees do not believe managers care about the organisation’s purpose. It is here that culture breaks down, and employees become cynical about the company’s values. Unless all managers live the values in their actions and words, it is impossible to deliver the culture that can be such a competitive edge.
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5) Beware of barriers that prevent people from living the values
Nothing kills engagement and motivation faster. Too often, leaders accidentally put policies in place that prevent employees from living the values. At Odeon and UCI Cinemas, poor performance was linked to employees” lacking sense of shared vision or faith in leadership. Its CEO,Paul Donovan, said: “We had a policy that wouldn?t allow our employees to see any new film for the first two weeks. When customers came in and asked about movies, staff just shrugged. They couldn?t say anything.”
Improvement has stemmed from the creation of a clear vision and values: “We want staff to be film fanatics, committed to delivering excellence through teamwork, in an informal and empowering environment, which will allow their passion to shine through.”
6) Your values bond customers to the brand it will definitely eliminate those sleepless nights
Make sure there is consistency between your internal culture and external expectations, otherwise you’ll never cure your sleepless nights. Steve Hood, chairman and CEO?of Trust Ford, the dedicated Ford dealer group, said: “If you can embed your values in everything your employees do, you can create a differentiator for your brand. Your culture is important, both for attracting the right employees and winning and keeping customers. If you don’t have engaged employees living your values you?ll never retain your customers.”
David Statham, managing director of Southeastern Railways, agreed: “The values you choose and live are crucial to success. Happier customers give us long-term security. You can’t make rules for every single circumstance. You have to provide a framework that enables employees to make individual decisions each day. You can only do that by instilling in them a sense of purpose. The people who travel on our networks are colleagues, families, friends, neighbours. It’s all about looking after people we know. Everyone has an opportunity to make a difference.”
This extract from People with Purpose by Kevin Murray is £2017 and reproduced with permission from Kogan Page Ltd.
Kevin Murray has been advising leaders and leadership teams for three decades. He specialises in leadership coaching and strategic communication, and gives talks on leadership around the world. He worked as director of communications of British Airways and Chairman of the public relations division of Chime Group. His previous books The Language of Leaders and Communicate to Inspire were both shortlisted for the CMI Management Book of the Year prize, and his latest book People with Purpose is out now, published by Kogan Page, priced £19.99.
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