Culture is the Ultimate USP: Create a Competitive Experience

Culture is the ultimate product.

For every team, every organization, the clearest way of understanding your USP (unique selling proposition) or key differentiators is by examining organizational culture.

Turning Inward: Crafting Ethos, Not Just Vision

I’m always inspired by my clients because they force me to think in ways I didn’t know were necessary until I come upon them. For long term engagements with teams, we like to start people with conversation about team vision and values. And while many organizations have done this work thinking about their external stakeholders (clients), few have done this work through the lens of themselves as stakeholders or clients. When we turn this exercise inward, instead of thinking about a mission and vision, the work becomes more clearly an exercise in crafting team ethos (cultural guidelines).

the distinguishing character, sentiment, moral nature, or guiding beliefs of a person, group, or institution. – Merriam Webster

Selling Culture: It’s Not Transactional, It’s Relational

Recently, as I was working with a team to explore their team ethos in this manner, it became apparent that they didn’t understand what it was that they were selling to each other by being on a team.

A note on selling. I’ve taught communication and executive presence and leadership skills for a couple of decades now. And the one thing that I am certain of is that we are always selling something. You can conjure images of Glengarry Glen Ross here if it’s helpful, but I don’t mean selling in the dirty, transactional sense. Instead, in the context of interpersonal relationships, selling refers to advocating for ideas, processes and ourselves. Coalition building and fostering sponsorship for ideas and initiatives also selling. And further, on a team, it is the culture that sells people on staying on your team, or in your org, even when they can likely find gainful employment doing similar type work elsewhere. Persuasion is a kind of selling. And employees are bought in whenever they continue to choose where they are employed. When an employee quits, that is a failed sales transaction, or rather a result of poor marketing (ongoing employee retention efforts).

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Marketing to Your Internal Stakeholders: Your Team

But the thing that I find fascinating is that it is really easy for us to go to work and think about selling to the public (external stakeholders). And in this way, we completely neglect the ongoing marketing and selling work we must do to maintain a team of highly engaged (and high performing colleagues).

In thinking about our external client personas, it is easy to narrow it down by investigating the demographics (identity markers) and psychographics (belief systems) of people to whom we offer our products and services. But in shifting our attention to our colleagues, demographics become far less important than the psychographics. Understanding what our colleagues believe, value and choose to move through the world becomes not just important data to know, but critical to our ability to cultivate a functional team ethos that serves the needs of the group. Teams are always selling and the product that they are selling is culture. The best way to intentional create culture that serves those internal clients, is to understand their belief systems.

Why Stay? The Cultural Advantage

After 20 years in the workforce, I think I now qualify as a ‘mid-career’ professional. With that, comes some varied work history in a plethora of different environments. I have worked easily on a dozen teams and that doesn’t include all of the different ways I volunteer and give of my time in other collaborative settings. But in each of those instances, whether paid or volunteer, the chief reason that I choose to continue to contribute to those teams has very little to do with what I get to create or build for the external client. I am a Learning and Development professional. I create training and coaching programs through my own firm. And my clients tend to be small to midsize companies that care about healthy workplace culture, and continuous improvement. I could do that same work for the same client base at any number of mid to large companies seeking a Learning and Development professional. But the reason I work for myself, and not for another entity is on the grounds of the work culture I am able to enjoy in working for myself – working for High Tides Consulting. The key differentiator is culture. The USP is culture. The #1 retention tool I have as the Founder of High Tides is culture.

Workplace Culture: A People-Oriented Function

Now back to this client experience. There is a way of viewing the world/a cultural perspective that prefers task orientation to people orientation. Workplace culture is a people-oriented function of work. Full stop. If team members find the idea of curating intentional team culture feels hard or “squishy” it is because it is not based on the end product. It is not transactional. The work of building culture is interpersonal. It’s relational. And interpersonal skills require that we give of ourselves, are made aware of our strengths, acknowledge our challenges, and then learn how to navigate them to serve our communities (team, department, organization) in collaborative ways. Curating team ethos is an awareness exercise that will likely feel icky for folks looking for transactional solutions. And that is on purpose. Culture is not a transaction. Culture is an experience. And teams who can create the best employee experience are rewarded with higher employee engagement, retention and performance.

Every employee is a client and an end user and the product that we are selling each other at work is culture. That is what every employer competes for the best talent over. This means that no matter what function you have, whether you’re selling after school tutoring or bars of soap or public policy, the real appeal of joining the team is that culture. Employees join, subscribe, and stay because that culture works for them and what they believe the experience of work can be. You can sling policy and education and soap in a lot of places. But if your experience of that sucks, so will your employee engagement.

Managers Set the Tone, Everyone Build the Experience

We have all heard the expression that people don’t quit jobs. Almost. What workers truly quit is the company culture. And fortunately or not, managers play a huge part in crafting the cultural experience.

But the good news is that culture is co-created. And managers don’t create culture in silos. They may set the tone, but each person on the team has an opportunity to opine, pushback, object and affirm the culture that works for the collective. The challenge is all in how good those folks are on selling that product.

Culture: The Ultimate Competitive Advantage

In a global marketplace where our work has us interfacing with a broad diversity of tough, experience, and perspective, culture can start to feel like a buzzword. But truly, culture, and the cultural experience cultivated through work is the key product that employees create and sell to each other on a daily basis. While it feels like our primary task as workers is to serve external stakeholders – create products, sell services – the real employee retention driver is how well we can identify and craft the worker experience, the cultural experience of the workplace. When we take the time to understand what each team member believes, how they are motivated, and what we value, we foster workplaces that are attractive to be a part of – keeping workers engaged, motivated and loyal.

But the building of culture is not a transactional experience. It’s not like selling widgets or offering services. Instead, co-creating organizational culture is interpersonal, relationship and full of as much nuance as the human experience.

And while people managers can often set the tone, the opportunity to participate in the workplace experience is one that is available to every single employee, in every department and on every team. The best products we offer one another aren’t widgets, policies, or services—they’re the experiences we create through the culture we build. And that, more than anything else, is what keeps great teams thriving.

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