The Petri Dish – Creating a Leadership Culture

Culture is an intangible phenomenon, but you can feel it, see it, and hear it within an organization. So, is it really that intangible?

The first part of the journey to grow a culture is understanding the nature of it. For me, I look at it like a petri dish. If you stop for a second and simplify our perspective of ourselves and the people around us, we are all biological organisms. Certain conditions allow us to survive; food, water, oxygen, shelter. Other conditions offer an opportunity to thrive; social connections, emotional support, love, sharing, achievement, etc. I believe that we over-complicate a lot inside our organizations, and if we just take a step back we will be able to see our companies for what they are — a petri dish.

Consider the grade seven science fair. Students test all sorts of hypotheses. In my day, there were always three or four projects contrasting plant growth or tooth decay by comparing the environments for the specimen in water vs. cola, or something to that effect. We all knew the outcomes before they started, but the point is clear — organisms live and thrive in healthy environments and die in unhealthy environments. This brings us to our organizations.

There is a spectrum to culture, from toxic to energized. Here is a quick visual:

Toxic    Unhealthy       Disengaged       Functional      Engaged      Energized

The job of leadership is to build the petri dish and set conditions for a healthy environment for culture to grow. This is done in three simple, but not always easy, steps.

1. Identify the values of the organization.

2. Lead by example to bring values to life.

3. Create mechanisms to give teeth to the organization’s values.

Identify the values of the organization.

This exercise is generally harder than expected. The first time Paul and I did this we were guided through a strategic process that had us pick out a bunch of words we thought were values and then, through elimination, we found our first set of cultural values. The issue we found with this approach was that we identified values that we thought we SHOULD be, not what we were. It was a good process because it made us conscious of this idea and helped us to become more aware of our real values.

A few months after this strategic session, we realized that we weren’t living out the values we identified. So we revisited the idea and came up with the following. (Note: they weren’t exactly the same as these, but they were close. Values can evolve and be refined.)

At Intrigue, we value:

Leadership – Do what you say you’re going to do when you say you’re going to do it.

Trust – Practice open, honest communication

Fun – Life’s too short not to smile 🙂

Action – Embrace failing forward

Service – Under promise. Over deliver.

Learning – Practice an unquenchable thirst for applicable knowledge

Now that we have identified our values, we can see them in ourselves, in our team, and alive in our organization. The trick here is to make them real and authentic to you as a leader or leadership team. If you don’t, the next step is near impossible.

Lead by example to bring values to life.

The stereotypical cultural values poster in a team room or on a wall in a boardroom usually means nothing because the values in the organization aren’t visible in everyday behaviour. You probably already know this, but it should be mentioned anyway:

Any behaviour you want to see in your organization must be modelled by you.

This statement is fundamental. If you review the list of values at Intrigue and meet me or Paul (and now essentially everyone on our team), you will observe the values through our behaviours. The best part for us, is that these values are near and dear to our hearts and they are authentic to who we are, so they are relatively easy to live out. That is the KEY! When values are aligned with ourselves and our leadership approach, they have an opportunity to thrive. Now, let’s get into the HOW a little…

Create mechanisms to give teeth to the organization’s values.

This is where values truly come to life. By creating mechanisms that put teeth into our organizational values, we are positioning our business to run the way we believe it should — even when we’re not there.

Living out the values is the first step, but I believe a true business is self-sustainable. Value mechanisms are necessary to ensure the culture stays strong when leadership is not physically present.

Here are a few examples of what we have done to make this a reality:

Leadership – Do what you say you’re going to do when you say you’re going to do it.

We live and die by our calendars at Intrigue. If something needs to get done, we have to have time set aside to complete it. Tasks, like writing this article, are in our calendars. This ensures we have the time to get what we need done. If someone asks me to get something done, the task goes in my calendar, and then I update the person when I can have it completed. It’s simple, but it works, and it puts teeth into our value of leadership.

Learning – Practice an unquenchable thirst for applicable knowledge.

We have developed a program called Leader Building. It’s a simple and very powerful tool. On a weekly basis, team members reflect on our purpose, vision, values, or read a chapter, article, or blog relating to their role. They write their takeaways from their reflection and reading in an online form and our leadership team provides feedback. For us, Leader Building creates the habit of learning, reflection, and personal growth.

Here are a few books that we have in the program:

• 15 Invaluable Laws of Personal Growth – John C. Maxwell
• Start with Why – Simon Sinek
• All Marketers are Storytellers – Seth Godin
• Transforming Leaders the Sandler Way – Dave Arch
• The E-Myth Revisited – Michael Gerber
• Scrum – JJ Sutherland
• Great by Choice – Jim Collins
• To Sell is Human – Daniel Pink

Action – Embrace Failing Forward

As a new team member, the first thing people have fun handling is the question, “What do YOU think we should do?” This simple question unlocks a world of potential. It makes people problem solve on their own, it builds confidence, it demonstrates leadership support for the person being asked, and makes people feel like their opinions matter — and they do!

The last piece of this approach is about letting people implement their suggestions and build a comfort level in letting them fail. I have an amazing father-in-law in my life. He has taught me a ton about home construction, but when it comes time to make an important cut for moulding, or trim, or something else, he wants to take over. He says, “If you mess this cut up, you’ll have to buy another piece.”, or something to that effect. The thing is, I need to mess up a cut or two in order to learn to get it right if I want to be able to do it on my own. Our job as leaders is to give people the opportunity to fail so they can learn and become self-sustainable, confident, and better than us.

I could go through all of our values, and the mechanisms we use, but I’m sure you’re getting the point. If you want to learn about the other mechanisms, or if you want some help building this approach for your organization, connect with me on linkedin and reach out!

https://www.linkedin.com/in/intriguerobertmurray

Rob is an action junkie at Intrigue. When he isn’t meeting with clients to create marketing campaigns to grow their business, he is meeting with Chuck Norris to find out how he became the king of action. Rob is part of the Young Professionals Network of Guelph and the Master Planning Steering Committee for the Guelph General Hospital. When Rob isn’t working, he works on finding new ways to catapult himself through the air.