When we're about to make a product, what we usually prioritize most is meeting user needs. For example, if making a pen, the manufacturer must make it write smoothly with sharp, clear lines. If making a sofa, it must be comfortable to sit on. But... why is corporate culture mostly created unintentionally, or just rules followed for a long time without changes according to the times? Why do we forget to think about the main question of employees' needs who are the 'users' of corporate culture as well?
Corporate culture is more than just Core Values
Today we'll talk about the framework from Fearless Culture, a company that consults on corporate culture for Netflix, Spotify, Airbnb, and many others, which is used to design corporate culture. The framework is divided into 3 main parts:
- Core Culture
- Emotional Culture
- Functional Culture
Core Culture
Core culture focuses on long-term vision and helps answer what this organization exists for.
1. The Company’s Purpose
Purpose is the answer to employees' question of 'why' we do what we do every day. What are we doing it for? Who benefits from our work besides the company? For example, Google's purpose is "to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful," and the Company’s purpose is "to do everything to promote and elevate the quality of life of people in society, with the belief that access to fair and transparent financial services is a right everyone should have," and so on.
2. Core Values
Core values are what guide how employees should behave to follow the company's goals. Good values are values that can be actually practiced, not just empty words or letters stuck on walls just for beauty. For example:
Spotify: 4 core values
- Dare to Risk: Learn from mistakes, drive innovation at all levels of work
- Trust: Be transparent, leaders have Servant Leadership mindset who "serve" employees both in providing help and creating motivation
- Give Everything: Constantly develop yourself, work is everyone's shared responsibility
- Freedom in Work Methods: Develop through repeated trials, emphasize Agile working
Or 7 Core Values of Ngern Tid Lor PLC, which are not just short words but values with clear explanations that can be understood immediately without interpretation.
3. Prioritize the 3 Most Important Things for the Organization
Knowing what 3 things the organization prioritizes most makes decision-making easier. When all employees know together what to prioritize, choosing what's right for the organization won't be difficult. Try using the sentence pattern "more than" to make the picture clearer. For example, Spotify prioritizes:
- Freedom more than control
- Doing work well more than just getting work done
- Using data to inform decisions (data-informed) more than operating with all data (data-driven)
4. What Deserves Reward and What Deserves Punishment
Most companies praise one thing but reward another. Good corporate culture should be consistent, rewarding those who deserve it and punishing those who destroy good work atmosphere. Because Core Values are meaningless if they can't be used in daily life. At Spotify, employees with creative ideas are rewarded, even if you're in a lower position, if your idea is good, you'll receive appropriate rewards. Conversely, Spotify punishes people who "play politics" at work because it makes team members lose trust in each other.
Emotional Culture
Emotional culture includes creating psychological safety, giving candid feedback, and rituals.
5. Creating Safe Spaces
If you want teams to work effectively, what needs to be done is create psychological safety. Psychological safety is when teammates or people in the organization feel safe enough to "dare" to express opinions, dare to think and try new things, without fear of making mistakes or being accused or punished. Spotify creates psychological safety through a culture that embraces failure and has mottos like "No fear, No politics" to support everyone feeling comfortable daring to initiate new things.
6. Giving Feedback
Good corporate culture supports people in the organization feeling safe enough to discuss and exchange ideas regularly. Because giving feedback is an important tool that helps us discover weaknesses, helps us know where we should adjust, and how to make teamwork better. Culture that values candid feedback isn't culture that supports employees watching for each other's mistakes, but culture that instills in everyone the mindset "we will learn and grow together." Netflix supports everyone to "disagree" face-to-face with reasons why they disagree. There's no backstabbing or disagreeing but staying silent.
7. Rituals
Rituals are activities done regularly to strengthen team relationships and make people in the organization more united. For example, having monthly board game activities, exercising every week, or setting aside time for Zoom to talk about things other than work so everyone knows each other better for teams that don't come to the office. And like Ngern Tid Lor PLC that has Happy Day, Happy NTL activities every month to encourage NTLers to dress according to set themes together, where they can use this opportunity to talk, interact, and strengthen relationships with colleagues more closely.
Functional Culture
When talking about culture, most people tend to see it as something related to comfort or relationships between team members only. Although that's not wrong, it's not the complete correct meaning either. Because corporate culture also covers work processes, decision-making, meetings, including various rules in working as well.
8. Decision Making
The right to decide should belong to the person who knows that matter best or whoever has been assigned to solve the problem, not the person with the highest position. Decision-making can be done in several ways. Some organizations may use more than one method depending on the problem and situation. For example, might use majority vote for general matters but delegate authority to one person during crisis times when decisions must be made quickly within limited time.
9. Meetings
We can bring out our best work performance when we interact and consult with others. Meetings are one way to get work done quickly, but many times meetings become time-wasting. So we must choose to meet only about important things while clearly stating the purpose and time frame so every minute of meeting attendance isn't wasted.
10. Rules
Talented people don't like being under inflexible rules. If there are rules, they should be rules that facilitate work and make work more efficient, not rules that become limitations on work.
Summary
We often think corporate culture is something that occurs naturally from people in the organization, not necessary to design. But actually, culture that everyone intentionally designs can best meet the Company’s goals and employee needs. This kind of corporate culture will succeed. And don't forget that this didn't happen by accident, but comes from intentional design with clear purpose of who it's designed for. At Ngern Tid Lor PLC, we have dedicated time and attention seriously to building a values-driven organization. Our corporate culture is the result of intentional design, not something that occurred naturally.
If you want to learn more about our journey and the way we've done it, join TIDLOR Culture Wow and exchange ideas about values with us!
Interested, contact 02-792-1990 or fill out the form here to wait for a callback from Culture Gangster
Source
Why Workplace Culture Can Be Designed (And How to Design Yours), www.fearlessculture.design
How to Use The Culture Design Canvas - A Culture Mapping Tool, www.fearlessculture.design