What is business culture driven by if not your personal brand?
I keep asking myself questions about how we got to the point in corporate cultures where humans became a RESOURCE instead of people. So today, I dove a little deeper into some research to see if I can get a better idea at what is currently driving business cultures, if it’s NOT personal brands.
First let’s start with a definition of culture.
Definition of Culture
LiveScience defines culture as, “the characteristics and knowledge of a particular group of people…it can be seen as the growth of a group identity fostered by social patterns unique to the group.”
The thing I like about this definition is the concept of the “group identity”.
I think any of us who have worked as part of a team in the past would agree that the concept of a group identity is quite real. Some of the predominant ones that come to my mind are my high school basketball team, and the teams that I worked with in my corporate environments.
Each of them had their own group identity…and some group identities were more aligned with mine than others. And in that, I mean that some of them took MY identity into consideration in the creation of the group identity, and some had a pre-defined group identity that they fit new people into.
Side Note for Entrepreneurs: as an entrepreneur, you may think that there is NO group identity for your business because you are the only participant. However, this is surprisingly not the case. Any other group identities you’ve belonged to in the past influence your concept of a work culture, and you can by default imprint those identities into your business; even if they AREN’T aligned with you. We’re used to someone else creating the framework, and we build ours on what we already know. It’s critical that entrepreneurs watch for this, or you are risking becoming the very thing you tried to escape from ;)
OK, so let’s keep going with the concept of group identities. What are some of the things that contribute to the group identity, and where do they come from?
Major Elements of Culture
The major elements of culture, as described by library of the University of Minnesota, are “symbols, language, norms, values, and artifacts”. Specifically in this article, I’m going to concentrate on norms and values.
Let’s start with values.
The article defines values as an element of culture that involves, “judgments of what is good or bad and desirable or undesirable”. In each group identity, these values are defined by the ACTIONS of what is identified as being good/bad/desirable/undesirable.
For example, I once worked for a start-up that was all about ”getting it done”. I say this because the behaviors that were celebrated (i.e. defined as GOOD behavior) were those of working long hours and “just getting it done”. It was more desirable to have a minimum viable product in the fastest time possible, than it was to have something that made sense in the long run.
And this value was re-emphasized over and over again.
Was it a value that was listed in the Company Core Values? Nope.
But it was the value that was lived, and celebrated, over and over. So…it became a key value of the culture.
It became a norm, which the article defines as, “standards and expectations for behaving”.
Written Values vs. True Culture
So many written values in businesses are based on what sounds good. What we “should” believe. But if those values aren’t LIVED, then the culture doesn’t reflect them. The culture reflects the values you LIVE, which then become the normal behavior.
Here’s the problem.
If the defined values are NOT aligned with the true values and norms in the organization, then new employees, and even clients, aren’t identifying with the right things.
They join the team thinking their personal brands are aligned with your brand identity. And then they leave when they find out they aren’t.
From here, there are two courses of action:
Re-define your corporate VALUES so they match your actions, or
Re-define your ACTIONS so that they match your defined corporate values.
Either way, a change is required.
As a leader, it’s our responsibility to make it clear what the TRUE corporate values are. And if you want to get REAL alignment, you have to be ready to take either of these actions (ideally, both).
But if you DON’T want to take the responsibility, then your ability to lead your organization to where you want it to go is impossible. Because you can’t get everyone on the same value train, which means norms throughout the company change. And once you get big enough where an expanded leadership team is ALSO making their own interpretations of your brand based on their experience, you get farther and farther away from making it what you originally wanted.
It’s not that what you’ve been doing is wrong. It’s that you didn’t know another way.
Now you know.
So now you can do something different.
You can take back control of the group identity. You can find the people who are aligned with that. You can create sustainable growth based on the values you HAVE instead of the ones you think you should have.
Because there are no right or wrong values. We just need that alignment.
That’s step one. If this is where you’re at, sign up for your Brand Leadership Campfire today!
Bringing Personal Brands to the table…the difference
Ok, so now that we know that our business culture is driven by, the next step is to take into consideration what it looks like to embrace the concept of personal branding in that culture. Stay tuned for next week’s blog which will dive deeper into this topic!
