Culture gets worse as a company grows. It’s a universally accepted truth. Perhaps even part of the panacea of management truisms like Parkinson’s Law or Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. But is it true? There’s an exception to every rule. A variable that breaks every law. Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs was so convincing to psychologists of the day (and after), they didn’t bother to collect data and find evidence to refute it (which is very unlike academics, though to be fair, it was published in 1943!).
We feel the impacts of organisational culture every day. It’s ubiquitous and (as I’ll attempt to convince you below) incredibly important for objective performance metrics, not just wellbeing. It also changes as an organisation grows and becomes more complex1. So, isn’t it about time that we started to question our assumptions about this big, amorphous, and quite frankly intimidating concept?
What even is culture anyway?
Wait! Before we dive into culture, I think it’s best I define the idea, so we’ve got a similar concept in our minds. Otherwise, you’re not going to agree with anything I write below. While no one really knows, a useful working definition is the shared values, beliefs, attitudes, norms, and practices that shape how people behave and interact within an organisation2. Or stated more simply, it’s the way things are done around here. Now that we both agree on what we’re talking about, let’s move on to the next common criticism when you talk about culture.
Does it actually impact performance?
I’ve spent a lot of my career working with engineers and other technical experts. When I started talking about people and culture, they always quite rightly asked for evidence, often for objective measures of performance. I like to think I’ve learned a few lessons in my career, so here’s some evidence. Many research studies show the relationship between organisational culture and better performance, including ROI3 4 5 6 7.
“Ah, but the culture of my organisation is bad, and it will never change!” I hear you say. Yes, there are far too many examples of organisational change programmes not working8 9. But I said there are exceptions to every rule. And the exception to this rule is that you can change elements of organisational culture with sufficiently focused and well-executed work10. However, you’re right that the initial cultural template of an organisation influences future behaviour11. I can’t promise to fix your culture. What I’m offering is to tell you what’s working well for us and how we will shape our culture for an even better future.
Key Components of Oxygen Conservation’s Current Culture
Communication
As a business grows, the biggest challenge to culture is communication1. Growth can magnify and multiply communication flaws in an organisation, evidenced by shower decision making, new employees receiving conflicting messages about expectations and culture, teams working in silos, and feeling further away from leadership12. Indeed, as the number of people in a team or organisation grows, the number of connections grows exponentially (as shown below). The time between speaking with colleagues may also increase as the number of people increases.
The important role of communication makes sense when you consider culture as a shared understanding and way of doing things. The quality and quantity of communication13 is going to impact relationships amongst your people, and as a result, your culture. At Oxygen Conservation, we used this knowledge to build strong relationships and culture, now and for the future. Specifically, the company gets together every Monday for our Blackstone meeting. It gives a burst of energy and an opportunity for anyone to ask about anything going on in the business14. Team members talk with their line managers every day, building relationships, moving work forward at pace, and having fun doing so. And we go on team events to our wonderful estates to experience adventure while reconnecting with the environment and each other.
Care for people
My Mum worked in various nursing roles for her entire career. She cared deeply about the patients and wanted to do a great job for them. Perhaps that’s why focusing on both care for people and performance resonated so strongly with me. Years after finding this wonderful concept in Radical Candour15, I still can’t find a better or more concise explanation of our high-performance culture. We care for people because it feels like the right thing to do. It also has a tangible impact on measurable outcomes, like wellbeing and productivity16.
We show our care for people literally every day. Our Daily Survey asks about wellbeing, workload, and confidence. It’s convenient (it lands in people’s inboxes and takes less than 30 seconds to complete), has opened conversations about wellbeing numerous times, and has always been well-received by employee and line manager. Our Quarter Review conversations start with an employee’s wellbeing and then move to talk about performance. And beyond the formal methods, our people will call their line manager or colleagues for a boost of energy or just to share a concern.
Don’t just take my word for it. I asked Karis Eyres (our wonderful People Coordinator) to give me feedback on this article, and she said this:
“I think there’s also something to be said here about the way everyone supports one another – I think in many organisations people forget to recognise others’ achievements and more often identify when someone has done something wrong. We celebrate our successes a lot – and deeply value our people as well much as the work we do.”
Values alignment
If you’re a line manager reading this, thinking I am communicating and showing that I care, but something still isn’t right, could it be the alignment with the organisation that’s the challenge? There is a difference between an organisation’s values and an employee’s personal values. I’d never thought about that until I did the research for this article, but it really clicked with me. Organisations focus on functional outcomes (like accountability, quality, and teamwork) while people want more human concepts (honesty, doing the right thing, and making a difference)17. What does your organisation value?
At Oxygen Conservation, our values (environment, impact, adventure, together) are human concepts to which our employees feel closely aligned. They were selected because it’s how we work now, not how we want to act in the future. A great pleasure of my job is speaking with applicants throughout our recruitment process. Everyone who wants to or does join Oxygen Conservation is aligned with those values, with candidates seeming to identify most strongly environment and impact (adventure and togetherness come later through team events).
How we’re going to shape our culture for the future
I think the alignment with environment and impact is driven by a strong emotional connection with our mission, namely, to Scale Conservation. People want to make the world a better place for themselves and future generations, and they love nature the sense of awe and wonder it provides. They also want to spend their days doing something meaningful. How then is Oxygen Conservation going to build an even better culture in the future?
Recruitment
I asked experienced people professionals at a recent CIPD Midlands event whether they had any examples of cultures getting better when they scale. While no positive examples were forthcoming, people did admit that have seen people lower their recruitment standards because they needed people to get the job done. This is not a criticism of those people or companies, it’s common18 19.
With this in mind, our recruitment approach is different. We will continuously improve our standards and expectations of team members by only hiring people who make us better in a meaningful way20. Recently, we’ve hired Will, Doris, Hannah, Alicia, and Benjamin. We can already see their positive impact on performance and culture. This is quite frankly incredible because they started weeks ago, or in some cases, joined us for a team event before their start date. The future of Oxygen Conservation is hiring people who, through their exceptional character and credentials, make both the culture better and impact greater.
Leadership
A person’s line manager has such an impact on their day-to-day working experience, as evidenced by the adage that people join companies and leave bad bosses, and this research21 22. But let’s be positive because managers who care about their people and reinforce alignment with an organisation’s values support the company’s growth and competitive advantage23. Also, good leadership behaviour sparks better job satisfaction24.
At Oxygen Conservation, we don’t create accidental managers. Each manager receives tailored support and training, helping them grow from their specialist areas and learn a new technical area, people management. Beyond this relationship, we implement management practices (like Quarterly Reviews with performance scoring and agreeing priorities), celebrating what’s working and making the hard decision to stop practices that are good but not great.
Innovation
What you emphasise within a culture is important too. Proactively focusing on key elements of culture, be it innovation, digital awareness, or experimentation, is good for organisational outcomes as a company grows25. Over the years, we’ve highlighted different concepts from marginal gains26 to unreasonable hospitality27 to help drive performance and give us an edge. I’m not sure what next year’s theme will be. What I can tell you is that today we’re exploring how AI can maximise productivity while enhancing our humanity. We’ve already automated onboarding to make people feel special and spend more time building relationships as people join Oxygen Conservation. Now, inspired by Workday’s recent developments28, we’re exploring how AI agents can help us draft emails, interview questions, python code, and more.
Conclusion
If you’ve made it this far, thank you, and I hope you’ll stay with me for one last idea. Namely, if you look at culture as one big amorphous blob, I don’t think you’ll ever change it for the better. Instead, look a level deeper and consider the Innovation Stack29 of your culture. For us, that’s communication, care for people, values alignment, exceptional recruitment, inspirational leadership, and innovation. For you, it could be completely different. If so, please comment and create the conversation because I’d love to learn from you.
Author: Andrew Dewar, Head of People