Ultimately, culture is more than just words; it’s about action. It’s behavior. It’s what people do, not what they say. Leaders can espouse all the values and strategies they want; if they’re behaving in a way that contradicts what they’re saying, their behavior ultimately becomes the culture.
An internal-use study by the Hay Group (now Korn Ferry), which I had the opportunity to read, found that 70 percent of a company’s climate—their word for culture or environment—is created by the leader and the styles and behaviors he or she uses to motivate, develop, and communicate with employees.
If the culture of an organization is shaped by the behavior of its leaders, the executive team must be aligned on what that behavior entails and be on board with the culture you are trying to create. On an executive team, each member is responsible for a big portion of the company. If an executive is not on board with the culture transformation, they will return to the portion they oversee and demonstrate, through their behavior—and sometimes even their words—that the culture transformation is not to be taken seriously.
The Dangers of Misaligned Behaviors
One of the most common dangers is letting that behavior slide. All too often, CEOs give executive team members too many chances when they have not bought in. Every time I ask a CEO what they would do differently if they were doing a culture transformation again, every single one says they would not tolerate an executive team member who was not on board with where they were taking the company. If any members of your executive team do not buy in, you will not be able to move forward. Those executives will cascade misalignment down through the entire branch or department of the company for which they are responsible, and you’ll end up with an entire chunk of the organization out of alignment, and different parts of the company pitted against each other.
An even worse case scenario is when an executive agrees in all the conversations with the executive team about the culture transformation initiative and then goes to their department or part of the organization they run and poo-poos everything the CEO is saying. If an executive pretends to be on board but then undermines the effort behind the CEO’s back, you may not be aware of this attitude, which can be even more damaging.
Trust but Verify
How do you prevent this? To borrow a phrase, you want to trust but verify. I would recommend implementing a mechanism to check in and assess how the transformation efforts are cascading across the organization. This might include one-on-one or group skip-level meetings, where the CEO meets with the direct reports of an executive, or a “lunch with the CEO” initiative that invites people across all levels of the organization to the executive floor for lunch.
Ultimately, if you don’t get everybody on the same page, you will be wasting your time. Every member of the executive team must be committed to this culture transformation and willing to invest the necessary time and effort to make it a success.
Make It Work Together
How do you get the executive team on board? Through the collaborative process of articulating in writing the purpose, vision, values, and strategies for the company that we talked about in previous blog posts.
Generally, CEOs have a clear idea of what they want for the company, where they want to take it, and what changes they want to make. They may have been talking to one or two of the executive team members; often, within an executive team, there is a circle of trust—those who are closest to the CEO, a couple of people the CEO will bounce ideas off of. While you can discuss things in smaller groups, if you want the full team moving forward with you, the whole executive team needs to be kept in the loop.
Involving everyone on the executive team gives everyone a sense of ownership over the decisions being made, and that sense of ownership is essential for your executive team to be fully on board and aligned with your Purpose, Vision, Values, and Strategies.