Category: Business Tips

Earlier this month, we wrote about how your new employees hold the key to understanding your company culture.

In a nutshell, because your recent hires lack institutional context, they’ll notice things that your more senior employees take for granted.

They also have ready access to comparison (in the form of their previous positions), and they may be able to provide valuable insights into both your organization’s strengths and areas for improvement.

Giant Reflections

As a relatively new Giant, I find that I am uniquely positioned to observe our company culture now.

Here are a few of the things I’ve noticed about Giant culture, as well as some culture-building lessons that you can apply in your workplace.

The Observation: Culture comes up a LOT.

In my very first meeting at Giant Voices, our leadership team brought up the importance of building and maintaining a strong company culture. The subject has continued to come up regularly since.

The Lesson: Facilitate discussion around the things that matter.

Giant leadership understands that culture is important. Rather than taking a “set-and-forget” approach, they know that companies with strong cultures monitor and develop them on a consistent basis. 

The Observation: Employees are held to high expectations—and trusted to meet them.

One of my very favorite management insights comes from Creativity Inc., a book about leading creative teams written by the Creative Director of Pixar, Ed Catmull.

Catmull writes that he presumes that his employees are talented and want to contribute meaningfully in the workplace, and that the job of management is to identify and eliminate any obstacles to their success.

At Giant Voices, team members enjoy a high degree of autonomy. Some people work in-office, some from home, and some mix it up from day to day. The shared assumption making all of this possible is that our team members are ambitious, creative, and committed to doing their best.

The Lesson: Trust motivates and empowers.

What I love about this approach is how much trust it demonstrates.

I believe that over time, people will adjust their behaviors to match the style in which they are managed. We all remember those early pandemic horror stories, for example, about employees who were forced to work camera-on so that their supervisors could keep an eye on them. No thanks!

Regardless of intent, this type of management sends a clear message that employees are not trusted. People who don’t feel trusted feel disempowered, and disempowered employees disengage—making them the exact type of employee you shouldn’t trust. It’s a vicious cycle.

Thankfully, the opposite is also true: showing your employees that you trust them is a great way to make them feel engaged, empowered, and motivated—especially when it’s coupled with a company-wide commitment to doing excellent work.

The Observation: We celebrate together.

Next week, I’ll attend my third Giant Voices social event in two months. I’m excited! This team genuinely has fun together.

The Lesson: Keep fun inclusive.

Of course, not all company gatherings are an automatic success. I’ve noticed two things that ensure that ours are enjoyable. The first is that they are always optional. It’s hard to get buy-in for mandatory fun, and allowing employees to choose not to attend prevents a celebration from feeling like a chore.

The second is that company celebrations typically take place at least partly within normal working hours. When gatherings occur only after work, they run the risk of dividing your team instead of uniting it.

For example, if your company only holds evening events, you may accidentally create a divide between employees with childcare obligations and those without—or between those who can afford to pay a little extra for a sitter and those on a tighter budget.

Keeping at least a portion of company celebrations during the workweek makes sure that these gatherings are accessible to your entire team.

The Observation: We get amped about the work.

The Giant Voices team has one all-team each week that we use exclusively to shout out strong work and share exciting projects.

It’s a considerable investment of person-hours in connection and another example that leadership understands the importance of culture.

It’s also fun and inspiring to see the creative work that my colleagues are up to.

The Lesson: Invest time in connection.

Whether your team is in-office or remote, it’s important to devote some time and space to connection, alignment, and learning from each other. Even thirty minutes a week can provide a sense of predictability and rhythm for you and your employees.

The Observation: We have boomerang Giants.

This one isn’t as scary as it sounds.

As Giant Voices approaches its tenth anniversary, a number of people who worked at Giant Voices early in their careers are now returning in more senior roles, bringing with them broader industry experience and historical knowledge of the Giant Voices clients and team.

The Lesson: Strong cultures pay off.

Of all of the things I’ve noticed that speak to the strong culture at Giant Voices, this might be the most unique.

Think about this: of all the jobs you’ve held in your life, which would you want to return to?

It’s not necessarily the job with the coolest office or the sexiest title, but it’s almost certainly a position where you genuinely trusted and enjoyed your team and felt supported in doing your best work. In other words, it was probably a place with a strong, healthy culture.

What’s Next

We’ve been getting a lot of questions from our clients lately about how to build and maintain a strong workplace culture, and we’re not surprised. Remote work has required employers to rethink their approaches to culture, and recruiting and retention are also top of mind for many.

Expect to hear more from us in 2022 about team dynamics, leadership, and how investing in a strong company culture is a critical business practice.

Questions? Just reach out. We’re here to help.

Over the course of my career, I’ve had many conversations with peers in jobs that just didn’t feel right.

In most cases, my friends reported that although they loved their work (and their coworkers), things seemed off. Why didn’t folks chat in the break room? Why did every meeting seem tense? Why did people keep leaving.

As hindsight makes obvious, these workplaces had significant culture problems.

There’s a lot to learn from experiences like these. What strikes me most, however, is that my friends’ coworkers didn’t seem to notice their organization’s day-to-day problems, even as they witnessed their negative effects.

At Giant Voices, we believe one of a company’s most important target audiences is internal. If your employees aren’t your biggest fans (and strongest advocates), there’s likely something amiss.

Still not sold? Allow us to offer up why we deem it a critical and profitable strategy for your organization.

Taking Your Cultural Temperature

We all develop cultural blindspots. It’s normal—and can even be healthy: accepting the status quo allows us to focus on the tasks at hand instead of being endlessly overwhelmed by the bigger picture.

The problem occurs when this baseline requires a change. Practices that struck me as odd or problematic were, for my friends’ colleagues, “just the way things are.” It’s the boiled frog effect in real life.

So what is a leadership team to do? How do you evaluate culture when you’re inside of it every day?

It’s a sticky wicket, but we’re here to help.

How to Evaluate Company Culture

1. Ask your newest employees.

To assess your company culture, we recommended interviewing employees who have been with your organization for three or fewer years.

Consider questions like…

• How does the climate and workplace culture here differ from that at your previous companies?
• What do you like about our culture?
• What feels odd or surprising?
• What might help you do your job better?

To empower your interviewees, go ahead and lay your cards on the table: “I am asking you these questions because you are newer to our company. This gives you the ability to notice things that others might take for granted.”

You might be surprised at just how helpful (and observant) your new hires can be.

A bonus? By soliciting their input, you’re making them part of your positive culture task force. They’ll be on the lookout for ways to help your company become stronger.

2. Conduct an anonymous climate survey.

Climate surveys, often administered by third-party consultants, can assist in driving cultural change by identifying areas on which to focus attention. Gathering data also allows you to monitor progress over time and can be useful in your annual ESG reporting.

These surveys typically focus on work-life balance, leadership and management, employee experience, and inclusion. They can help increase employee satisfaction and engagement and, if needed, can form the basis of a cultural reset. We can help you get started.

3. Seek outside help.

Don’t underestimate the value of an outside eye. Much like your newer employees, independent consulting partners are in a better position to evaluate your company culture than your long-term employees are. They’re also well-versed in interpreting data and in developing workplace and industry-specific solutions.

At Giant Voices, we use data to locate organizational gaps (both operational and cultural), then make strategic recommendations that help our clients build stronger companies and reach their goals.

What’s Next?

At Giant Voices, we believe a strong organizational culture is one of the most important determiners of business success.

After all, the world’s most brilliant idea will fall apart if a team is disaffected and burned out—while an engaged, happy, thriving team can take a so-so business plan and burnish it into something powerful and lasting. 

And, like all things of value, culture doesn’t come cheap. There’s no one-size-fits-all culture-printing machine because culture can and should be specific to each organization.

We’ve been hearing more and more from our clients lately that culture is on their minds, too. We’ve got a lot more coming your way in the new year. 

And if you don’t want to wait—just give us a shout! We’ve been helping clients build strong company cultures since our founding, and we can help you preserve what’s unique and special about your team while identifying ways to make your company even stronger.