Culture is the Way | Book Review

“If you want to stand out and win in today’s competitive
environment, you must obsess over building culture and continually
seek ways to improve your leadership performance.” (p. 75)

Matt Mayberry, former professional football player, shares his realization that the same characteristics that distinguish the best football teams are also required to succeed in business (p. 4). It’s a great analogy, as we’ve never seen a frustrated NFL (National Football League) coach run onto the field in the fourth quarter, bench the quarterback and take over.

Mayberry identifies three key lessons from great sports coaches that business leaders at all levels can apply as we move forward on the culture-building journey (p. 5).

1. Develop a burning desire to improve culture.
2. Generate and bring positive energy daily.
3. Don’t just manage people, coach your people. 

A perfect example: Legendary San Francisco 49er coach Bill Walsh (p. 29):

“Champions behave like champions before they’re champions. They
have a winning standard of performance before they are winners.”

The leader role is tumultuous today: Dealing with work/live balance, generational differences, and the pressure of a rapidly changing and competitive technical environment. There has never been a time in history when companies had to balance so many important aspects in how they communicated with their workforce, the resources they offered, and the implications that ensued (p. 17).

This review emphasizes Chapters 5-9, or the five how to steps when building a world class culture.

What Culture Is & Is Not

Simply put, [culture] is how well an organization does everything behind closed doors (p. 22). Or put another way, it’s the sum and results of our actions, not our words. In the leader role, it’s what we do, what we model, that counts.

On page 30, Mayberry provides a list of common practices, often credited with possibly creating a more modern or trendy environment, that actually are not indicators of culture. Here’s a couple favorites:

• Culture is not wearing whatever you want to work, such as pajamas, sneakers, cut-off jeans, sweatshirts, etc.
• Culture is not having ping-pong tables and other fun games in the office.
• Culture is not a separate aspect of organizational and business execution.

Culture is deeper than perks and fun stuff, it’s deeper. Mayberry lists Five Key Elements of a Positive Culture (pp. 31-33.):

1. Employee energy, excitement, and value.
2. Alignment and togetherness.
3. Clear expectations.
4. Accelerate execution.
5. Talent attraction and development. 

We can easily relate these five elements to our Academy Leadership Excellence Course (LEC) workshops: Energize2Lead, Aligning & Accomplishing Goals, Personal Leadership Philosophy, Setting Leadership Priorities and Coaching to Develop People, respectively.

Traps & Roadblocks

We’re continuously surrounded by distractions, and there’s no end to short cuts offered us whether the topic is personal weight loss or how to get rich quick. Mayberry shares an honest insight: “If something is hard and the more likely I am to resist it, the more it is usually going to benefit my life and the harder I should attack it.” (p. 41)

Worse than distractions are losing our priorities. Mayberry calls out (so does the Wall Street Journal) Boeing -- once an American business giant known for its safety procedures and fantastic culture in which employees thoroughly enjoyed working (p. 43). There’s no shortage of critical WSJ article comments about Boeing -- ranging from loss of a safety mindset to moving headquarters away from the manufacturing site.

Mayberry’s Antidote: Avoid Culture Dilemma Traps by (p. 47):

1. Don’t underestimate culture.
2. For everything you add, be willing to subtract something. Think of this as a caution when “chasing the
next shiny thing,” which may blur priorities.
3. Be ruthlessly clear about your priorities.

Mayberry’s Five Roadblocks to Cultural Excellence (p. 57): 

1. Lukewarm Leadership Buy-In.
2. All slogans and No Action.
3. Temptation of Instant Gratification.
4. Distortion and Distraction.
5. Lack of Cascading Change.

May be compared to Kotter’s Eight Stage Change Process:

1. Establishing a sense of urgency.
2. Forming a powerful guiding coalition.
3. Creating a vision.
4. Communicating the vision.
5. Empowering others to act on the vision.
6. Planning for and creating short-term wins.
7. Consolidating improvements and producing still more change.
8. Instituting new approaches.

Not how both approaches inform us that alignment and buy-in are critical, genuine change takes time, and it’s a continuous process.

How To Build

Create Your Cultural Purpose Statement

The cultural purpose statement should not be confused with a mission or vision statement (p. 96). When we look at Mayberry’s questions that a cultural purpose statement answers (pp. 99-100):

1. What do we care deeply about as an organization, both internally and externally?
2. Where are we now and where to we want to be?
3. What must happen now to bridge the gap between where we are and where we want to be?
4. What do we want our culture to stand for?
5. What is our culture’s most significant impact area?
6. How would we like our culture to be perceived?
7. What experience do we hope our culture will provide?
8. What mantras or statements best summarize our call to action?
9. Can we, as leaders, live up to this mantra or statement daily?
10. Can this mantra or statement benefit not only our business but also our personal lives? 

One might think of normative behavioral statements from our Core Values Alignment workshops. Whether a cultural purpose statement or a normative behavioral description, both are describing actions.

Winning Hearts and Minds for Impactful Culture-Building                                                                             

Improving or successfully changing culture is predicated on the level of commitment from leaders to engage the hearts and minds of all employees (p. 106). This is consistent with Gallup’s Q12 engagement survey, notably Q5: My supervisor, or someone at work, seems to care about me as a person and Q12: This last year, I have had opportunities at work to learn and grow. Over the past several years, leadership course attendees increasingly mention empathy while composing a leadership philosophy. Nice trend.

The Culture Implementation Playbook

If you want to successfully implement and drive culture change at scale, you must shock the organization (p. 133). Mayberry lists four actions in the playbook (pp. 134-140):

1. Drive Alignment Forward.
2. Behavioral Manifesto.
3. Communication Strategy.
4. Culture Rollout Roadmap. 

Mayberry’s actions are very similar to Tony’s Hsieh’s Delivering Happiness Chapter Five, Platform for Growth: Brand, Culture, Pipeline. In this chapter Hsieh describes in detail the unique Zappos culture, or corporate brand. Both Mayberry and Hsieh understand this involves sharing with everyone within the company (rollout) rather than a small group of executives handing out the equivalent of an organizational ten commandments.

Be Fanatical About Sustained Impact

Mayberry quotes Larry Senn (p. 140): “Culture is not an initiative. All initiatives are enabled by culture.” Think of a leader’s routines or habits: A daily stand-up meeting, leadership by walking around, one-on-one sessions with direct reports or a larger annual meeting. Meetings with clients and prospects. Hiring, and firing events. Each of them is an opportunity for showcasing culture, or for culture to inform a decision. When our actions consistently model our culture, over time the behavior is visible.

It’s more about coaching every leader and manager to incorporate
the behavioral manifesto into every interaction with direct reports. (p. 157)

The Ultimate Differentiator is Leadership 

Coaching as a leader is so important that some organizations, such as the WD-40 Company, go so far as to call every manager in the company a coach rather than a manager (p. 181). That’s a nice way to describe leading. For significant promotions at a long-time client organization, an expected interview question is “What have you been able to get done through others?”

Mayberry closes with a Chief Culture Driver Pledge (p. 243). His statements such as For today, I will encourage those I lead to impact the culture in one small way are ideal phrases one may include in a Personal Leadership Philosophy.

Summary

How do we know our culture is progressing in a positive way? Consider using S. Chris Edmonds’ five culture survey questions at the end of each chapter in the culture engine to measure progress of Mayberry’s five steps.

There is an immense opportunity right now for all leaders and
managers to seize the reins to create a world-class culture that
brings out the best in everyone. (p. 227)