A high performance culture: much coveted, rarely found.

I think about organisational culture a lot. It's an important part of my job and, in truth, the opportunity to build another outstanding culture at a global business was one of the main reasons I went back to work. The topic truly fascinates me.

I interact with many different, often super smart, professional people who talk about building an outstanding culture - other leaders; consultants; PE sponsors; colleagues and friends. In all honesty, I have not yet heard anything that is really convincing in terms of defining what it is, and how to build it.

I have a well-developed view on the what and the how, but it's not really possible to cover the ground in an engaging way in a LinkedIn article. So let me focus on one foundational principle - the secret to culture is trust.

A high performing culture exists when people who don't know each other, can trust each other.

First a definition: when I talk about "an organisation" in this context I mean a group of humans who cooperate in the pursuit of a common goal. This will mean a business later on in this article but, for now, keep it at the broader level.

One thing that sets higher intelligence animals from others is their ability to cooperate to achieve a common goal - killer whales, apes and chimpanzees and, of course, humans.

Now, think back to when we humans were hunter gatherers, roaming in tribes limited to 200 - 300 people. The maximum cooperative limit of their group was determined by the maximum number of people who could genuinely know each other. By knowing each other, they could trust each other. This trust enabled them to cooperate and work together in the pursuit of common goals at some scale.

But human progress was slow during this time - there is only so much an organisation of 200 - 300 people can achieve and progress was limited to the tribe itself (such as a successful hunt), rather than reaching beyond its perimeter.

But, humans today can organise and cooperate in their thousands, and achieve unbelievable things together. How?

The answer is - laws and societal codes of conduct. With codes of conduct governing behaviour, humans can organise themselves into larger groups to cooperate for specific purposes, even when they couldn't possibly know everyone in the group, because they could rely on behaviours governed by common laws and rules.

The more uniform and complete the trust, the bigger the goal that can be pursued, and the more quickly and efficiently it can be achieved...

...and bigger, better, faster IS high performance.

But this is actually all well-understood. Codes of conduct exist in organisations today - at the base there is the employment agreement (the "law") and the employee handbook. But these are often written setting out the expectations of behaviour between of the company and the employee rather than between employees themselves. Totally necessary and fair enough - but it won't engender the trust we are looking for.

Enter...

..."the values"

This is where the first mistake is often made. Logically, based on my story so far, the values should be a code of conduct, first and foremost, setting out how people inside the organisation can expect others inside the organisation to behave when they are in the organisation. This code needs to provide everyone with a basis from they can trust one another without knowing one another.

However, what often happens is that values are diluted with all sorts of well-meaning, laudable, desirable traits but they don't provide the basis for trust. For example - "we are innovative and curious" is a desirable trait but it is not a value on which trust can be built. It doesn't help govern how people can expect to be treated by others. If you want a high performing culture then your values have to do a very specific job.

Now, the second mistake. Even if you get the values into a good shape to provide the basis for trust...

...the easy part of culture is saying what is expect from each other - what we want to see more of and, frankly, what we want to see less of in terms of behaviour.

The hard part of culture is calling out when we don’t meet that expected standard.

It’s a bit like when you have to interrupt someone to tell them that they have a bit of spinach stuck in their teeth, or a bit of food on their chin. 

It’s awkward for you to say. It’s embarrassing for them to hear. But they need to know for their own good.

The alternative is a culture where it's preferable to lower standards rather than helping people to get better, for the sake of a transitionary moment of awkwardness and embarrassment. This is a low performance culture.

In simple terms, there is a difference between consumers and citizens of any organisation's culture. You can try to build a culture based on setting out the code of behaviour that you want, and need, for trust. But if you don't do the hard, spinach-in-your-teeth bit, then your people will be merely consumers of your culture, not citizens of it.

Make your values the behavioural code of your organisation and nothing else, and then be disciplined about enforcing it.