Monthly Archives: April 2013

Creating Culture Enthusiasts: Part 1

Culture, Employee engagement

Who do you believe more? The paid spokesman telling you that “Brand X” is the best or your neighbor who spent the entire dinner talking about how she can’t live without it? Enthusiasts influence.

So, how do we go about instilling enthusiasm for our brand within our workforce?

Let’s look at what enthusiasm is: 1) a lively interest 2) something inspiring zeal or fervor 3) strong excitement of feeling.

Can you imagine if all your employees had zeal for your organization? Not just for their specific job—although job satisfaction plays into this. But real fervor and excitement for your company. For your mission. For your story. Just think about what could be accomplished if employees became an advocate of your brand.

It’s truly win-win. Employees are happy, productive and committed, which leads to great success for the corporation.

So, how do you get there? First things first, you have to have something people can get excited about. There has to be something they can rally around. Maybe it’s your product that drives it. Maybe it’s your leader. Maybe it’s a service you provide. Those specifics can vary. But all of those things go into making up the culture. And that, we all have. Whether it be good, bad or stagnant. Your company culture is there. In the most simplistic of terms, the culture is simply the personality of the organization.

The cultural core of a company is composed of the beliefs, values, standards, worldviews, moods, and communication of the people that are part of the group. These are the invisible manifestations of culture. They are the really powerful stuff. Some of the tangibles, or visible manifestations, that your culture may help define are the dress code, the work environment, the benefits and perks and so on.

Take a moment and think about your organization. What are the intangibles? The tangibles?

My judgment would be that if you immediately had several responses come to mind, that were positive, then you have a pretty healthy culture. You’re in a good spot to continue building. If you had to struggle a bit, think a little bit harder, then a culture exploration might be a good initiative for you and your leaders to work through. I’ve blogged on that before.

Once you identify your culture components, how do you make sure those on staff are aware? Because even though something exists, that does not mean that people are actively aware of it—engaged and enthusiastic.

The first step is this exercise. Putting concrete definition around your organization’s culture. It can be pulled from internal attributes or taken from the public mission of the company, or both. Again, this is examined more closely in my blog. I also know you can find other resources to help in this process. The culture at my agency SicolaMartin certainly represents both—internal and external components. Every single employee will tell you that SicolaMartin make the complex compelling. It’s the positioning statement. But they’ll also talk about the Flying Saucer, the Ninja Awards, the 3 I’d Martian, the core values of respect and honesty, monthly staff meetings, the People Team and the fact that the President kicked everyone else’s ass in Wii Olympics.

You want to make sure that whatever your culture is, you have people on board who will embrace it. This concept has to be a key point of strategy in recruiting, onboarding and throughout career development.

I utilize three key opportunities for culture installation. Simply put, be authentic, be consistent and follow through. We’ll dive deeper into how to make each of these work for you in the next section.

Originally published February 7, 2012, on sicolamartin.com

Communicating Culture: Part 2

Culture, Employee engagement

Hello again. If you’re new to my blog postings, may I suggest you take a couple minutes and check out Part 1 of this topic exploration on corporate culture. In it, I talk about what culture is and suggest ways to help define your company story. It sets this post up nicely (I think).

Here, I want to discuss the concept of culture change. I say “concept,” because each organization is so unique in its practices and goals that there’s really no easy formula to guarantee a positive culture shift. But I will attempt to lay out a broad roadmap that those not faint of heart might want to travel. But I warn you, it’ll be fraught with danger. Ok, maybe not danger (there’s really no need to be that dramatic) but it will be hard, frustrating and possibly take a long time.

The first thing I suggest is to get buy in from management. This can be tricky, depending on if the leadership agrees or not with your assessment of the culture. If you feel you might have a challenging time effecting change—due to roadblocks from above—then do your homework and build a case. You don’t want to walk in unprepared. Create informal focus groups and talk to employees and trusted members of your industry. If you can solicit information anonymously, then great, as folks tend to be a bit more honest in that format. Once you feel like you’ve got a good cross-section of data, analyze it with an eye towards specific improvement projects. And wear your skin thick. You asked for this, so don’t get bent out of shape at all the negative comments. Then buck up and advocate an action plan. Sell it into leadership and move forward, openly communicating with employees. Be as transparent as possible, communicating often and consistently on how these changes will benefit the WHOLE. I can’t stress the importance of this enough because you are going to face resistance. Remember, your culture is a reflection of your people. There’s a reason your culture is what it is. This is why it’s so hard. But change can happen, as long as you and your management teams are persistent and consistent. You just have to keep moving forward and repeat the exercise with the entire organization in mind. Broaden your focus groups. Get those that are resistant to change in your core group of change drivers. If you can get them on board, the rest will come easier. Continue to analyze your data and stay focused on a few items that will have the biggest impact. There’s most likely no need to start from scratch, and in fact, trying to do so will probably alienate the very folks you’re attempting to motivate. So, stay focused and take it chunk by chunk, story by story. And if you can, evolve your stories. Get people telling a different, more positive narrative about your organization. In time your culture as a whole will evolve, as well.

Originally published June 7, 2010, on sicolamartin.com

Communicating Culture: Part 1

Culture, Employee engagement
I’m HR and so I tend to talk a lot. Communication is a big part of what I do and knowing how to best communicate in a given situation is key. And although most of my conversations are done one-on-one (how I like it), I had an opportunity recently to share our company story with a larger audience… and it was enlightening.I was invited to speak at an HR conference on corporate culture and to discuss ways that companies can learn to tell their story (I had it pretty easy, because SicolaMartin has a great story to tell). I also met folks from other great companies, like Rackspace and St. David’s, who—like SicolaMartin—score high on the culture scale. But I was a bit shocked to hear from so many whose companies seem to be suffering from an identity crisis. So I thought I would contribute a blog post (or two) on this topic of culture from HR’s perspective. It’s an area I am extremely passionate about. A passion inspired and nurtured by the leadership of SM. And it will also finally get that “she’s a slacker and has not written anything yet” statement off my page of the website.

Culture, in its most basic description, is your organization’s personality. Personality can be defined as the visible aspect of one’s character and develops over time based on preferences, choices and exposure to different experiences.

Your company has a personality. A culture already exists. Whether you like it or not is the question.

Before I go any further, let me tell you my point of view on HR’s role in an organization’s culture. We are there to support it, cultivate it, manage it and recruit into it… we make suggestions, offer insights and (if it’s a positive culture) use what the culture offers to inspire. BUT, we don’t create it. Or, in my opinion, we shouldn’t. Culture, at least long-term successfully sustained cultures, is created by the top leadership of the organization. If your C-levels aren’t exemplifying the culture you hope to communicate, then it’s going to be an uphill battle to get the employment force to believe in it. We’ve all experienced that, right? Without buy-in from above, it’s very difficult to get a program off the ground. It can be a challenge, though, selling it up because so much of culture is intangible. Sure, there are the things you can see that give you a quick read about a firm. The dress code. The work environment. You can ask about perks and hear about the benefit offerings. But that’s pretty surface.

It’s the things you can’t see that are usually the more powerful, but by nature, harder to define. And it’s these things that truly make up the cultural core of a company. It’s the values and beliefs, the attitudes and standards, the moods and worldviews of the people in the group.

And much of these views are created organically. I’m a big fan of organic growth and it can be an extremely positive thing. But, granted, there are some risks. On the “pro” side, organic implementation gives ownership to those instigating the change; it allows leadership to be perceived as open to new thinking and ideas. It can create loyalty among employees and most importantly, it creates its own story.

But you want that story to be a good one, so it’s HR’s role to support positive cultural momentum and redirect practices that could lead to opposing the company’s values and goals. And that’s the risk. If you just let it go with no management or cultivation, there’s no telling where your company’s story may end up. So, first, you have to know what the values and goals are. Does your company have a mission? Do you know what it is? Do your employees? This is how you can support a positive culture—by asking the right questions. Look to your industry. Advertising is fun and creative. We work hard, but we can also have Martians and critters (check out our website if you don’t know what I’m talking about). We make the complex compelling. That’s our story. Every employee knows that we turn marketing complexity into compelling ideas. But what’s your story? That’s the most important thing. Knowing who you are. Identifying your key talent and asking them what they like about working there. Where are they getting their motivation? Talk to clients and vendors. Get their perspective. Just make sure you’re being authentic with who you are. If the story you’re trying to tell is at odds with the reality, it’s going hurt your culture, morale and perception more than help.

But it’s not good enough to just know it. It has to be practiced and supported by management. If a core value is RESPECT, but a manager is disrespectful to an employee they supervise, and no action is taken on the part of HR or leadership, that value diminishes. That’s why it’s so important we stay engaged with our employees. Don’t ever underestimate the impact of word of mouth.

You’re not always going to be able to keep what’s repeated about your organization positive. I get that. But as HR, we can certainly manage it with that goal in mind. Even in exit interviews you can do your best to manage the transition and shoot for a positive result. You see, culture can’t only be good in the good times. Often, it’s in the down times that our true selves, our true culture, are revealed. In fact, it’s a strong culture that may help your company pull itself out of a downturn. That’s another experience SicolaMartin has had. We’re 25 years old…we’ve pretty much seen it all.

And although we have had to tweak our business model over the years to evolve with the times, we really haven’t had to make many changes to our core culture—thankfully—because culture change can be difficult and require a great deal of perseverance. But, if you find yourself at an organization in need of change, we’ll talk about some of the things you might be able to do to get that going in Part 2. Stay tuned.

Originally published June 2, 2010, on sicolamartin.com

It’s about the people.

Technology

I’ve been on a South by South Break (harhar) but did want to take a moment to try to wrap up my experience from SXSW. I say try because truthfully, I’m still processing the information received, working to find ways to apply it to my field and also stay in touch with those I met. And that’s important. The connections made. The conversations had. It was great seeing the latest tech, hearing from experts on trends and learning new methods from others, but the most memorable thing is the people I met. Hearing the stories of others. While we waited in line for the keynote. When we bumped into each other lost, looking for the next session. As sophisticated as the technology gets – and it’s pretty darn slick, 3D printing, anyone? – we still yearn for human interaction. And that was evidenced so clearly at this interactive of all interactive festivals where strangers became friends and instead of trading business cards traded twitter handles.

The comradery was palpable. And I think Austin gets some of the credit. I’m proud of my city for being friendly and welcoming, inviting others to be the same. And the organizers do a great job of creating conversation around each session. Although it was my first year, I still felt connected. I had one of my new friends tell me how the last digital conference she went to had 5,000 attendees and she was overwhelmed. When I said last count I heard was 27,000 for SXSWi she couldn’t believe it. It just doesn’t feel like that. Which leads me to my biggest takeaway: It’s about the people. It’s the people creating the tech. It’s the people using the tech. It’s about the people. Smart, passionate people do great things. I liked rubbing shoulders with those people. I like thinking I’m one of those people. If you want to see more of the details of what I experienced at SXSW, check out my twitter or search #SXsxsw. In 361 total tweets at SXSW, I published my notes and got carpal tunnel. It was totally worth it.

sxsw4

That’s me, third from the left. And I’m already looking forward to next year.

Originally published March 21, 2013, on sicolamartin.com

First time @ SXSW

Technology

 

sxswSo, it’s my first time at SXSW. I’m diving into theInteractive festival starting Friday and I’m excited. Overwhelmed, but excited. I have a few objectives. First, just to take it all in. Immerse myself in the environment, and soak up the culture that is SXSW. Some of the smartest, most innovative and hard-working people will be there and I want to rub shoulders with them. Which is my next objective – to be on the lookout for creative talent. If you’re a developer or technology strategist or creative director or a really cool dude people like working with, hit me up. As the HR director for an ad agency, I’m gonna want to talk to you. I also want to absorb all the content available. I believe we should always be learning and what a great opportunity to hear from experts in their field to take – or discard, depending – their advice on a variety of topics.So, I have my schedule sketched out – which was no small feat considering the hundreds of options available. It took hours to nail down what I think is a perfect flow, but I know that I’m going to have to be flexible and, as all SXSW to-do lists will tell you, “go with the flow.” Still, I hope to be prepared enough to hit up my must sees like The Art of Doing: How Superachievers Do What They Do and Beyond Work/Life: Changing the Debate & Making Change and Using Your Online Network to Get a Job #IRL.

I’ve heard that workshops with more tactical information tend to be meatier and more applicable so I’m going with that approach. But for a broader view, here are some of the Interactive staff picks. What has your experience been? What are your must-see sessions?

If you have any advice to send my way, tweet me @kellichuff. And if I see you at SXSW, please say hi. I’ll be that lost girl asking for directions.

Originally published