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In this follow-on to last week’s article about Culture Plans, I’m digging a bit deeper into how to create a Culture Plan and who is involved in the process.
How to create an effective Culture Plan
Creating a Culture Plan involves spelling out a structured, intentional process to align your values, behaviors, and working environment with your mission, vision, and goals. It should include each of the following components and the processes to achieve each.
Understanding the Current Culture
Core Values Assessment: Given that culture = core values + behaviors, you’ve got to begin by ensuring that your current core values align with the culture you are trying to design.
Current Culture Assessment: Begin by understanding the current culture of the organization. This involves not only observing how employees interact, how decisions are made, and the general mood within the organization but also conducting an audit to identify gaps between your organization’s stated values and the actual behaviors observed.
Employee Surveys and Feedback: Conduct surveys, interviews, or focus groups to gather employees’ perceptions about the current culture. Ask what works well, what challenges exist, and what changes they would like to see.
Robust Data Analysis: Combine relevant data, such as employee turnover, engagement levels, performance reviews, and customer feedback with employee surveys and feedback. Analyze to get a deeper understanding of your organization/culture health.
Defining the Desired Culture
Mission, Vision, and Values: Reaffirm the company’s mission and vision, which should guide the overall culture. Define or revisit the company’s core values to ensure they align with long-term business objectives.
Leadership: Ensure you have both commitment and alignment from leadership on the desired culture. Leadership commitment is essential, as they set the example and reinforce culture expectations.
Behavior Expectations: Clearly define and articulate the specific behaviors (acceptable and unacceptable) that reflect the desired culture. For example, if collaboration is a key value, what specific actions will exemplify collaboration?
Culture Goals: Define the outcomes you want to achieve. These goals could include fostering innovation, creating a people-centric environment, or increasing employee engagement.
Risk Assessment: What risks or threats could impact your culture transformation? How will you mitigate the risks? What are you culture transformation blockers and enablers?
Identifying Key Culture Drivers
Leadership: Identify how leaders will communicate and model the desired culture. Leadership behavior is critical to shaping and reinforcing culture.
HR Practices: Align recruitment, onboarding, performance management, and rewards with the desired culture. All processes should be viewed through the lens of the core values.
Internal Communication: Ensure that communication supports the desired culture by promoting transparency, open feedback channels, and regular updates on culture initiatives.
Physical Environment: Consider how the physical or digital work environment can support the culture. For example, open-plan offices or flexible remote work options may encourage collaboration and innovation.
Policies and Procedures: Align company policies with culture objectives. Define policies and processes through the lens of your core values.
Developing Action Steps
Culture Training and Development: Create training programs that educate employees about the company’s mission, values, and culture expectations. Focus on skill development that reinforces desired behaviors, such as communication or leadership training. Plan to require this training on an annual basis.
Team-Building Activities: Organize team-building initiatives that promote core core values to help strengthen relationships and create a shared sense of purpose.
Incentives and Recognition: Establish recognition programs that reward behaviors aligned with the desired culture. For example, give awards to employees who go above and beyond in demonstrating the company’s values.
HR Practices through Core Values Lens: Ensure that hiring practices include an evaluation of culture fit. Similarly, performance reviews, promotions, and terminations should reflect employees’ contributions to sustaining or enhancing the company culture.
Communicating the Culture Plan
Communication Planning: Create a communication plan that encompasses the who, what, when, where, why, WIIFM, what if we don’t, etc.
Communication Campaign: Introduce the Culture Plan through a company-wide communication campaign. Share the company’s vision, values, and specific culture objectives with all employees, explaining why these are important and how they will benefit the organization.
Expectation Setting: Clearly outline the behavior expectations for employees at all levels and what will be done to support them in achieving these expectations.
Feedback Mechanisms: Provide a way for employees to give ongoing feedback on the Culture Plan, ensuring that they feel involved and heard.
Embedding Culture in Daily Operations
Lead by Example: Leaders must consistently model the behaviors and attitudes that reflect the desired culture. Their actions will be a powerful driver of change.
Align Policies, Practices, and Processes: Ensure that policies like promotions, rewards, discipline, and work-life balance reflect the desired culture; these practices should reinforce the behaviors you want to see. And all processes must be created through the lens of your core values.
Culture Champions: Identify your Culture Champions, or key employees who embody the company’s values. Empower them to lead by example and help influence others to adopt the desired culture. They will be critical to driving adoption of the desired culture throughout the organization.
Regular Communication: Regularly talk about and promote your core values. Discuss how the culture is evolving and share success stories. Keep culture top of mind by integrating it into daily meetings, newsletters, and other internal communication channels.
Monitoring and Measuring Culture Progress
Metrics and KPIs: Define key performance indicators (KPIs) to measure the success of each culture initiative and to track culture success, in general. Metrics may include employee engagement scores, retention rates, employee satisfaction, productivity, feedback from 360-degree reviews, Market Responsiveness Index (MRI), and more.
Regular Culture Assessments: Periodically check in on the culture through employee/climate surveys, focus groups, and interviews. Use this feedback to assess how well the Culture Plan is being implemented and identify any areas for improvement.
Outcome Tracking: Measure whether culture initiatives are achieving the desired outcomes. For example, if increasing collaboration is a goal, look for evidence of more cross-team projects, higher productivity, or better employee relationships.
Continuous Improvement: Culture evolves over time, so be prepared to adjust the Culture Plan as the organization grows or as new challenges arise. To be safe, do an annual review and refresh. But be sure to stay true to your desired culture.
Celebrating Successes
Recognition of Culture Wins: Celebrate milestones and successes in your culture transformation. This could be through employee recognition, public acknowledgments in meetings, or company-wide events.
Storytelling: Highlight examples of employees who exemplify the desired culture. Share stories of individuals or teams that model the core values, which reinforces their importance and motivates others to follow suit.
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Including “the how” behind each of these aspects in your Culture Plan ensures that your plan is actionable and executable and that your culture transformation outcomes align with your strategic objectives, engages employees, and fosters a positive, high-performance work environment.
Who Creates the Culture Plan?
Creating a Culture Plan requires collaboration across multiple levels of the organization to ensure alignment with the company’s values, goals, and vision. While different stakeholders are involved in the creation process, overall responsibility falls on leadership teams who have the authority to shape organizational culture.
Primary Responsibility: Senior Leadership and HR
- HR Department (HR, people/talent, culture): HR takes the lead in creating, managing, and implementing the Culture Plan. They ensure alignment between the Plan and organizational policies, monitor progress, and communicate the Plan across the company.
- Senior Leadership (CEO, executive team): Senior executives are ultimately responsible for setting the vision, approving the Culture Plan, and modeling the desired culture. Without their commitment and leadership, cultural transformation will not succeed.
Key Contributors: Culture Champions
- Culture Champions: This cross-functional governance committee provides input into the design of the Culture Plan and helps define success metrics. They ensure that all departments or business units are aligned with the Culture Plan and that their specific needs are considered.
In Closing
Culture transformation takes time. Build a timeline into this Plan, allowing a solid 12-18 months to achieve your goals. Your timing could be quicker or take longer, depending on how quickly your organization effects change, the size of your business, leadership commitment and alignment, and clarity of plans moving forward.
By following the steps outlined here, you can develop a Culture Plan that aligns with your strategic objectives, engages employees, and fosters a positive, high-performance work environment.
Next up, I’ll be digging a bit deeper into how to implement a Culture Plan and who is involved in that process.
We believe that it’s really important to come up with core values that you can commit to. And by commit, we mean that you’re willing to hire and fire based on them. If you’re willing to do that, then you’re well on your way to building a company culture that is in line with the brand you want to build. ~ Tony Hsieh