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Having spent some time exploring human consciousness, let’s now explore the things you can begin to do to lift the level of your organisational culture. Over the following three chapters I will introduce you to the three cultural buoyancy devices. A cultural buoyancy device is a method for lifting the level of your organisation’s culture. Each device offers a means of introducing, enhancing or accelerating the positive features of an above the line culture. You may not have to apply all three in your organisation, but I suggest that, if your culture needs to improve, then you will need at least one of them.

There are of course many ways of lifting the level of your culture, some of which you may have already initiated, and, if so, then more power to you. What I offer here are the three most effective means I have come across for lifting an organisation’s culture. These cultural buoyancy devices are effective for a number of reasons, including the following:

The three cultural buoyancy devices

The three cultural buoyancy devices are:

  1. Ensure your leaders are worth following.
  2. Make the work worth doing.
  3. Create cultures worth contributing to.

Before we jump into the details of each of the devices, let me give you a quick overview of what each means and entails.

Leaders worth following

Leadership has a huge impact on a culture. When people in a culture perceive their leader as someone worth listening to and following, then the culture will align with the leader’s recommendations, advice or instructions. So what makes a leader worth following? There are many things, but in my experience the most important are that the leader is credible and approachable, and they take culture seriously. We shall look at each of these in more detail in the next chapter, but let me provide you with a quick summary here.

‘Credible’ means the leader knows what they are doing. This can be as a result of previous experience, education or a combination of both. For example, I worked with Alloy Yachts of Auckland, who build some of the world’s most expensive and prestigious super yachts. Many in the leadership team, although no longer physically involved in building the boats, had been boat builders earlier in their careers and so were well respected by the current carpenters and other craftsmen.

‘Approachable’ means being perceived as safe enough to approach for advice or direction, or even just a friendly chat. Mike Bennet and the senior leadership team at Z Energy in New Zealand became approachable leaders worth following when they undertook training to clarify their own personal values to enable them to better understand their underlying positive motivations to become even more people oriented. The leader’s personal values have a huge role to play in terms of how they evaluate other people. Becoming increasingly approachable was extremely important to the leaders: they wanted to lead by example as they were about to invite the staff at every one of their petrol stations to put the ‘service’ back into their service stations. The staff at Z petrol stations accepted the opportunity and challenge, and are now recognised in New Zealand as consistently offering a warm, friendly culture.

Craig Cotton and the leaders of The Better Drinks Co did the same to clarify their own personal values in order to better understand what was driving each and every individual. Using the resulting insights, each leader was able to work on becoming better people and consequently leaders worth following.

Taking culture seriously

Leaders worth following take culture seriously and invest time and energy into the company culture to support the culture and optimise its own innate potential. Leaders that cling to the 20th century concept that culture is too ‘soft, intangible, unmeasurable’ to be taken seriously by senior businesspeople put their company performance at risk. The more leaders understand the role and power of an organisation’s culture the more able they are to contribute to it, and in doing so earn the respect and willingness of other people within the culture to give their best. The Kennards family and their company’s national leadership team have done this at Kennards Hire, by letting go of a perception of centralised control of the culture and by empowering all the branch managers and staff at their centres to take ownership and accountability of their local workplace culture. By encouraging the branches to take full ownership of the culture the family received unprecedented follow-ship from the branches, which committed and stepped up to make a culture that was already very good into one that was excellent. Alex Baumann at High Performance Sport NZ, ably supported by Susan Thomason and Chris Morrison, challenged themselves and their fellow leaders to become better at leading the culture and have done an impressive job of inspiring the amazing, talented and dedicated team to raise the cultural bar to impressive levels. Dave Rene and the incomparable coaching, playing and support group at the back-to-back champions Waikato Chiefs Super 15 Rugby told me that the role of culture sits at the very heart of the success story that is the Chiefs’ recent history. By asking leaders within the squad to lead by example, the behavioural tenets that the team and coaching panel devised to bring out the best in themselves and the players have seen the growth of leaders worth following as they have aligned themselves around the leadership to deliver a champion team.

Work worth doing

It seems obvious to state that when people see the work they are required or asked to do as worth doing, they will apply themselves and their skills fully. It seems obvious, yet this concept is not as well understood as it could, or should, be in organisations. As you will read in chapter 15, this requires slightly more consideration and effort by the leadership team than simply producing a commercially disguised declaration of war though the company vision or mission statement.

Work worth doing has two key components that have to be embodied in the doing of the work. First, the work should be meaningful and contribute to something bigger than just the employees’ contribution in return for a wage packet. Second, the work should enable or facilitate some experience of personal or professional growth for the individual.

Cultures worth contributing to

In chapter 16 we will explore what a culture worth contributing to consists of, and how contributing to such a culture can act as a cultural buoyancy device for the culture itself. A culture worth contributing to differs from a culture you belong to. Belonging within a culture offers a high degree of comfort: it feels natural to be in the midst of such a culture. Most people describe such a culture as feeling like home to them, or at least feeling at home within the culture.

A culture worth contributing to is different. In these cultures you the individual can see the greatness of the people around you and, rather than simply sitting back and passively absorbing everything the culture has to offer, you become proactive within the culture. You initiate conversations about life and experiences within the culture, in order to explore how things might be improved or simply maintained.

There are, of course, many things that make a culture worth contributing to and in chapter 16 I will highlight what I have found to be the most important and effective for creating buoyancy in the culture.

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Figure 13.1 the three buoyancy devices

The three buoyancy devices that can lift your culture above the line are summarised in figure 13.1.

So let’s get started with our first cultural buoyancy device, becoming a leader worth following.