After writing that culture stems from the top, and how to protect your culture when going through a hiring spurt, I received this email over the weekend and am sharing it, and part of my answer, with you. (At Mark’s request, I’ve scrubbed his email and my response of identifying information.)

Hi Miki, I’ve been enjoying your blog and have found it helpful, especially the info on culture. I was recently promoted to COO for our company. I joined when we were a small start-up primarily because of the culture the CEO had created.

We’re on a growth kick now that includes several small acquisitions, and because of time constraints he’s leaving it to me to handle the integration of sometimes dozens of new people into our corporate culture. The problem is that I don’t think I’m doing a good enough job; the once strong culture we had is seeping away. Is this inevitable? What can I do to help keep a grown up version of the culture I fell in love with? — Mark

Hi Mark, Your situation has similarities to the question of retaining a culture during major hiring growth, you have the additional challenges of little choice regarding who joins, the acquired employees preference for their own culture, and the normal human resistance to change on the part of the acquisition’s employees as well as your own. Although your CEO has left you to deal with retaining an environment that he created (culture does stem from the top) the good news is that he hasn’t abandoned it, but needs to focus on other things and trusts you to deal with it. That means he’ll support your solutions as long as they don’t require a lot of his time.

Obviously, as your company grows some change is required, but that doesn’t mean that you’ll have to lose what you love. Your goal is to set up an environment that will retain the best of your current culture, incorporate the best parts from the cultures of the companies you acquire and provide the infrastructure to support a flexible framework for its future evolution. Doing this will also help you to develop a process to integrate an acquisition, since you can bet that they would be just as concerned about losing their culture as you are about losing yours.

First…
Culture is mostly about philosophy and attitudes, in other words, the way people think, so it’s imperative to identify and write up what really makes up your culture and be sure to explain this to the management in the acquisition(s) and ask them to do the same thing for their company. Chances are you’re most aware of the end results as opposed to the reason they happen, so you’ll probably need to backtrack to identify the source(s) of those features, i.e., the attitudes or underlying philosophy that made them happen. Identifying and understanding these intangibles can do more to support your culture and integrate the best of an acquisition’s culture, while leaving it flexible enough to grow with the company, than creating lots of new processes and/or policies that are prone to ossification (AKA, bureaucracy).

I caution our clients regarding the dangers in creating too many policies or too much process. Just as the Preamble to the Constitution delineates the doctrines underlying it, policy descriptions should identify the major underlying philosophy and attitudes involved. This enhances people’s understanding of the underlying tenets and provides guidance to management in cases of conflict or uncertainty. Because policy is your most potent infrastructure—the most tangible and, therefore, the hardest to corrupt or ignore—they need to be used most sparingly. Policies should be reasonably broad—macro rather than micro—since -they are meant to support flexible process, not ossified bureaucracy.

Share what you’re doing with your CEO, explain what you’re doing, why it’s necessary, how you plan to use them and then keep him apprised as you go through the process. Although this can’t be his main focus you still want his input. You want to have not only his buy-in, but active approval—it’s important that the COO and CEO are seen as acting in concert on all cultural issues.

Second…
Once you have identified the parts of your culture you’re ready to develop a Dual Mission Statement (DMS). Mission statements are excellent supporting cultural infrastructure. Done correctly they are of great use to customers, vendors and employees. The Business Mission Statement (BMS) deals with the company’s interaction externally, while the Cultural Mission Statement (CMS) discusses how the company interacts internally. Together they comprise the Dual Mission Statement.

The BMS is a description of exactly why the company exists, what it plans to do, and how it is going to accomplish its goals. A good BMS should be concise enough to post over everyone’s desk and relevant enough that it will offer some guidance when they are struggling with key decisions. It’s not too broad, nor is it generic or misleading. An example from a client is, “Our mission is to provide our customers with the best low line size telecommunications access products uniquely fitting their applications and needs at competitive prices.”

Along with the BMS you want to create a powerful Cultural Mission Statement (CMS). The CMS is a summary of the philosophy and attitudes of the company towards its people. It, too, must be concise enough to post, and clear enough to guide people in their interactions.

Third…
Share what you produce with your senior staff and the key people from each acquisition. Listen to what they say and revamp accordingly. Besides viable input, this gives you the opportunity to achieve their buy-in, rather than trying to cram it down their throats later on. It may take several rounds and some discussion, but the time involved will be well spent since it also identifies potential management trouble spots that may surface later on.
Plan on repeating the process annually, as well as any time there’s an acquisition or the company goes through a major growth phase.

Fourth…
Once everything is settled you want to produce a physical Dual Mission Statement by combining the BMS and CMS together on an 8 ½ x 11 sheet of paper, in a readable font. The end result should have a comfortable amount of white space and be produced in a visually pleasing format that can be posted at each employee’s desk as well as larger versions for common areas. If possible, frame it for each person (this will emphasize its importance) and be sure that every employee at all levels receives it—current, from an acquisition and all new hires from then on.

Finally…
The most critical part of any culture is that everybody, especially management, walks the talk. Presenting the DMS is a great way to launch an ongoing campaign to ingrain the culture into the company’s DNA. Make the presentation of the DMS a company-wide event; use technology if your organization is far flung, but make sure that it’s truly inclusive. Get your CEO involved by making it an opportunity to talk about both his business and cultural vision—where the company is going, and how concepts in the DMS are real and make it a terrific place to work.

Follow the company-wide meeting up by responding to all questions regarding the DMS and offering training (formal of informal) to any managers who are unsure of how to implement the attitudes and philosophies described and tie a part of managers’ compensation to support and implementation of the culture. Use technology (wiki, email, blogs) to keep a spotlight on your culture, so that people know it alive and well, but remember, people aren’t stupid. If managers betray the letter or the spirit of either the CMS or BMS without any kind of repercussions then they’ll know that the culture is a sham and they can ignore it with impunity—and your people will know it’s time to start looking!

This entry was posted on Monday, May 1st, 2006 at 8:46 pm and is filed under Business info, Communication, Culture, Retention. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
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