A Four-Step Cycle for Strengthening Your Company Culture (2024)

Strengthening a culture is not a one-off project; it is truly never-ending.

An organization’s culture is arguably its greatest asset. Culture attracts andretains top talent, rallies employees to find innovative solutions to problems,protects the company from outside threats, and is the key driver for pushing theorganization forward. So, it is no surprise that instilling, nurturing andcontinually strengthening a healthy and thrivingculturesits at the top of the list for organizational leaders.

At thinkPARALLAX, we work withourclientsto strengthen their culturethrough extensive employee engagement, training and professional development.The engagement tactics and communication strategies that we offer are derivedfrom a core philosophy dissecting what a strong culture looks like, and how togo about strengthening it. We break down that philosophy here:

A thriving culture is built on a strong foundation

Metaphorically speaking, an organization is like a car, with leadership actingas the steering wheel, the marketing department as the body and paint job.Culture, therefore, is the car’s engine — it power the car forward. Whilecombustionenginesvary slightly from car to car, each one requires the same foundational elementsof fuel, air, pressure and electricity to harmoniously work together to powerthe vehicle. Similarly, while thriving cultures undoubtedly vary acrossorganizations, they all carry three foundational components that propel them.Powerful and effective cultures are those that are values-led, alignedand trusting.

1. Values-Led:Values are what guide all of us; they are also directlyresponsible for our beliefs. Our belief system then influences our attitudes.Our attitudes, in turn, affect our behaviors. A culture that shares similarvalues will perform and collaborate better than one that doesn’t. If thefundamental values between individuals and theircompanyas a whole differ, their subsequent behaviors will often contradict one another.At the nucleus of any high-performing group – be it a sports team, aneighborhood or even a country – is an agreed-upon set of shared values thateach member holds, guiding his or her actions.

2. Aligned: An aligned culture is one that is pointed towards the company’sNorth Star. Not only does everyone share the aforementioned values, but theyalsounderstandandalignwith the company’s purpose and mission. They areaware of how the company is impacting the world and appreciate how they, as anemployee, play a role in achieving the company’s vision. This alignment instillsa deep and powerful force to push the company forward, promotingintrapreneurship and organicallyproducing employee brandambassadors.This also gives members a sense of belonging – something humans innately crave.

3. Trusting: A culture built around trust ignites cooperation, teamwork andproductivity. If people are worried about losing their jobs next quarter,getting penalized for making a mistake or other fear-based worries, they willspend less time helping peers or the company and instead focus more onprotecting themselves. As Simon Sinek points out in his book,Leaders EatLast:“When we have to protect ourselves from each other, the wholeorganization suffers. But when trust and cooperation thrive internally, we pulltogether and the organization grows stronger as a result.”

Before modifying a car’s engine to make it faster and stronger, you need toensure that bolts and wires are in place to connect the new pieces. Therefore,before an organization can look to strengthen or engage its culture, the abovekey fundamental traits need to be ingrained.

Strengthening a culture: The Four-Step Cycle

Before exploring our four-step cycle, it is important to call out that culturesshould be strengthened, not changed. More than having a more constructiveconnotation, the act of strengthening a culture entails undergoing continuous,calculated and measured improvements, as opposed to drastic changes. Ourfour-step cycle for strengthening a culture includesinvestigatingthe currentstatus of the culture,identifyingan area of improvement or desiredimplementation,engagingemployees (which carries the most weight and is wherethe meat of this lies), and lastly,evaluatingthe outcomes and results. Withthe foundation at the core, this cycle helps our clients to effectivelycommunicate and engage with their employees in an effort to foster a thrivingculture.

1. Investigate:This is the research and discovery stage, aimed at gettingthe heartbeat of the culture. Gather as many insights as possible to gauge thecurrent state. Ensure whatever devices and tactics used during this stage arewithin means and repeatable. Investigate the overall sentiment of the culture atall levels of the organization via focus groups, surveys, open-door policies,interviews, management retreats, etc.

2. Identify:Equipped with the research and insights from the previousstage, now it is time to diagnose the culture and define goals. What positiveaspects of the culture shone through in the research? What areas can beimproved? Are certain desired attributes not as prominent as others? Create afew SMART goals for the top areas where you want to strengthen the culture.

3. Engage:As explained earlier, the roots supporting a strong culture arethe agreed and acted upon shared values. And remembering that values drivebehavior, the opportunities for strengthening and engaging a culture can beaddressed through three general avenues: Value promotion, valuepermeation and value performance:

– Value promotion:Do employees know the company’s values? Do theyunderstand them? Are they aware of how the values are guiding the company towardits vision, and how they are being acted on? Promote the company’s values ineverything — from putting them on the walls in offices and manufacturing plantsto employees’ checks and performance reviews. Similarly, when communicatingchanges to the business, its strategy or desired outcomes, clearly show how theinitiatives relate back to the core set of values.

– Values permeation:How ingrained are the values? The organization’s valuesneed to be embedded within everything, with the aim to have employees gain adeeper understanding of them. This can take numerous engagement form fromleadership development, to onboarding, to general education. Caterpillarcreates arobustreporthighlightingtheir ‘Values in Action,’ Salesforce has new hiresvolunteer on dayone,the NFL sponsors its athletes’ chosen charitieshighlighted on theirshoes, WeWork doesn’t allow itsemployees toexpense meals withmeat,SurveyMonkeyhas aninternal recognitionprogram–whatever the tactic or initiative employed for permeating the organization’svalues into the culture, ensure that it is authentic and clearly understood byall members.

Additionally, permeation is not preaching. For example, if a value of anorganization is related to the environment, telling members to recycle more orto eat lessmeatis not diffusing the value, rather an attempt to change behavior. Instead, amore effective approach would be educating and informing them about why it’simportant to value theenvironmentand how it affects them by personalizing it. Thus, the simple act of recyclingbecomes one of the many possible outcomes caused by a value-driven behavior.

– Value performance:Are the values being lived? The goal is for theorganization, leadership and all members to continuously demonstrate and act onthe shared values guiding how they behave toward one another, their work, theirclients and their community/environment. To foster and encourage this, highlightand celebrate those individuals, groups and departments within the organizationthat are living the values and who are demonstrating the related behavior.

4. Evaluate:Now, it’s time to measure. What went well? What didn’t? Thisstage is measuring both the results and the effectiveness of the engagementtactics. What worked? Which didn’t? As you continue through multipleprogressions, you will begin to refine engagement practices, honing in on onesthat are most effective for your specific business and operations.

While it is not an official step of the cycle, the last step is: Repeat.Strengthening a culture is not a one-off project, it is truly never-ending. Asthe company grows, so does the culture. This is why we call it a cycle — thereis no endpoint, only further progress.

This post first appeared on the thinkPARALLAX blog on January 14, 2019.