Founder and consultant,
Bruce Wilson & Company
From one big happy family to innovation-based environments, most companies have a workplace personality and a framework for "the way we do things around here." Like DiSC for people, organizational culture profiling is essential for understanding how companies work. And for good reason: Companies with great cultures also have great people. In a war for talent, when you’re going toe-to-toe with corporate competitors, a great culture is the ultimate differentiator.
Culture vs core values
While it’s true that a great set of core values is a magnet for hiring, it’s not the same as culture. Culture is a shifting dynamic that evolves over time. A good example of this is if one of your core values is a fanatical focus on your customer. That value is a bedrock commitment to service that never changes. Culture would be the way employees are able to adapt to changing customer expectations. This distinction between the two is critical as you scale up. Stick to your core values but recognize you need people who can change as circumstances change without compromising your fundamental purpose.
Start early
Great cultures start sooner rather than later because it’s easier to hire for what you want than fix it when it’s broken. Recruit intentionally and seek out people with shared values, instead of hiring to fill a need. The expression “hire slow and fire fast” means just that. Take the time to match how a candidate works with how your organization works to save on the cost of an employee who doesn’t fit and stays too long on the job. Allowing negative behaviors to fester is expensive, with replacement and turnover cost potentially including the loss of a customer or two.
Hire for character not credentials
Companies using Scaling Up, Traction, Entrepreneurial Operating Systems and other EOS-based methodologies encourage hiring people for who they are before hiring them for what they know. I realized the wisdom and practicality of this approach years ago when building Environmental Care. We consistently hired for attitude, trained for skills, and ended up with a cohesive, talented team of colleagues who consistently performed at the highest level. Turnover was low, enthusiasm was high, and we were able to grow upwardly mobile and culturally-aligned managers and leaders by promoting from within.
Cultural add
A good rule of thumb for getting the right people is this: Getting the right people and the right chemistry is more important than getting the right ideas. I’m seeing nearly every landscape company changing their perspective from cultural fit to cultural add — hiring people who are not just compatible, but add value and bring fresh ideas that strengthen the whole team.
Weak link
Great cultures require a role model at the top. When leaders fail to lead by example, a once-positive work culture can fall apart slowly and then all at once. It can occur when companies go through explosive growth spurts; they have no plan to scale; or when branches and divisions become silos or turf battles occur. Unless all leaders are culturally aligned or use their leadership for the good of the whole company, a well-honed culture can begin showing cracks, with dysfunction keeping the company from clicking on all cylinders at the same time.
Balance competing desires
The wrong metrics can drive undesired behaviors just as the right ones can effect positive change. An example of this can be seen in KPIs and performance tracking, where individual performance is rewarded over team performance. In my company, I encouraged a collaboration-over-competition culture by incentivizing and rewarding a “one-firm” mentality. As a result, what was good for the individual was good for the whole. Our customers received benefit from the collective power and expertise we offered together and the “power in unity” approach made all the difference in setting goals we could rally around as a team.
Words of Wilson features a rotating panel of consultants from Wilson360, a landscape consulting firm. Bruce Wilson is founder and chairman of Wilson360 (formerly Bruce Wilson & Co.) He can be reached at bruce@wilson-360.com
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