“Great things are done by a series of small things brought together”
Vincent Van Gogh
Businesses are always looking for ways to expedite their growth in the market. Culture very often is seen as one of the tactics that can help in this growth. Leaders want to create a company culture that helps keep employees engaged, increase performance and thus increase revenue. Words like Innovation, Excellence, Integrity, Collaboration, Inclusion, Connected, Nurturing, are recurrently used to describe the culture most organisations desire.
Too often however, these cultural norms seem to apply only during client interactions and sales. Excellence only plays a role when preparing documents for clients (reports, presentations etc). Collaboration, Inclusion come in when needing to crack a big sales deal or working on a big project. Integrity is often limited to dealing with clients for better brand image, and connected, nurturing are just good words on paper.
But in many organisations, if one looks closely, these words are not ingrained as an intrinsic state within the organisation. Leaders and team members have to consciously practice certain behaviours so that they can “show up” the way the culture demands.
Instead of practicing behaviours, how would an organisation operate if their culture was intrinsic to them? What if employees practiced Excellence even in the smallest of tasks like sending internal memos, planning parties, making tea or coffee.
What if people collaborated in keeping the office space clean, supported other team mates achieve their goals, pitched in if someone failed? What if people lived in integrity when using office stationary and used common items with care and regard or when making internal commitments to team members? How would an organization be if these cultural norms were followed not just by leaders and their teams but every individual in the organisation; from the office help to the CEO?
“Treat employees like they make a difference, and they will”
Jim Goodnight, CEO SAS Institute
Narayan Murthy, shared a story of a janitor in Infosys with us, when we interviewed him for our In Search of Greatness series. Once Murthy was giving a talk on Innovation to the employees of Infosys when a janitor who was in charge of cleaning that room was present in the room. After the talk, the janitor approached Mr. Murthy and requested him to clarify what innovation was. Mr. Murthy told him “Your job is to clean these rooms. Can you think of ways in which you can do your job faster, better and cheaper? Can you find products in the market that you can use so they clean better and are cheaper than what you are using today? Can you find different ways of cleaning so it’s faster and better. Can you come to work everyday and ask yourself, how can I do my work better than yesterday? That’s innovation”.
Making profits and generating high revenue is important and crucial for an organisation and naturally it requires most of the energy. It is also vital that cultural practices are not limited to the big impact making tasks. Small actions, incremental changes have significant impact on how the organisation functions over time. When the culture percolates to the last person, to the smallest of tasks, it no longer stays a behaviour that needs practice but becomes an intrinsic way in how an organisation operates.
What do you think? Can you find ways in which you can make your organisational culture intrinsic?
