Creating the Right Culture
I attend a church in Sandton, and I never thought I’d say this about a church, but I absolutely love it there. It contributes to my life in a huge way and provides me with opportunities to contribute to other people’s lives which gives me a sense of fulfillment and significance in life. I’ve never felt condemned there, only ever inspired.
Now before you think this is a post about church, it’s not. It’s about the importance of culture and what I’ve learned about it since joining this church in Sandton. Stick with me here cause I need to explain the background before I get to the meat of this post.
I used to be part of another church, one in Centurion. I had been there for over ten years but one day I decided that my time there was coming to an end. When I informed the relevant person of my decision to leave, one of the things that he said to convince me to stay was, “they’ll never take your nonsense over there like we do over here.”
This statement didn’t offend me because I knew what he meant and that he didn’t mean it in an insulting way. I wasn’t very reliable. Sometimes I would show up for band practice, sometimes I wouldn’t. Sometimes I would come in time for the service, other times I wouldn’t, or something would piss me off and I’d leave in the middle of proceedings.
Contrast that to how I am now at my church in Sandton, the one that wouldn’t take my nonsense: In two years I’ve never been late for a service, not once. Even though I wasn’t part of any volunteer team at the time, I was and still am always at church fifteen to thirty minutes before the service starts.
Now that I’ve started volunteering with the media team, I don’t come dressed like a slob, I don’t sit by myself and ignore everyone else, I don’t just go where I want when I want, like I did at my previous church.
At first I thought that I had developed more self discipline, but then over time I realised what was going on. In the Sandton church, there’s a culture that is consciously and proactively encouraged and cultivated.
People just know, without anyone having to tell them, that we operate at a high level of excellence here. We put in the extra effort in every aspect of the church, from the security to the hospitality to the camera work, the sound team, the music team, the lighting team, the message, the social area, and yes, even the toilets will amaze you. It’s a culture that you want to be a part of and you want to contribute to.
You know certain things are expected and certain things will not just be accepted. You don’t feel the need to test the limits, something which I have always been FOND of doing at my other church and at school. There’s a strong culture of excellence that you “sense” the second you drive through the gate, and that culture is experienced subconsciously at every moment of your time at church.
It’s quite a large church. The main auditorium seats just over a thousand people and about four thousand people attend over the various services on the weekend. Despite the size of the church, there’s a sense of unity among everyone, a sense of team, a sense of a common goal.
The only reason that culture exists in such a large and diverse church is because it was cultivated since the church was tiny. Once the wrong culture exists it’s hellishly (if you’ll appreciate the wording) difficult to change it.
In many churches there’s bickering and back biting and just general sloppiness in how things are done. There’s little or no discipline and order. Kids run around where they want when they want, babies are always crying, cell phones ringing.
Because of the culture in my church, people switch their phones to silent, and they take their restless babies to the parents room, and they don’t just rush for the exits while the pastor is closing in prayer.
You can so easily read that and think the church feels like you’re in the Russian military. But it’s a feeling of freedom not restriction, because no one is hovering over your head saying “turn your cellphone off right this minute”. You fit in effortlessly because that’s how things are done there – that’s the culture there – and it benefits everyone, and because it benefits everyone, everyone contributes to maintaining that level and maintaining that culture.
I grew and developed as a human being, not just because of the incredible input I get every weekend from the pastor’s message, but because of the environment itself, the culture. I knew that if I got there twenty minutes late the gates would be locked. Did I bitch and moan to the leadership? No. Why? Because I knew, understood, respected, and appreciated that punctuality was part of the culture at the church. So I started becoming punctual.
And once I became punctual, the benefits spilled over into other areas of my life. It has helped me in business. I run Brothers in Beat with excellence in mind, and not the kind of excellence you see on motivational posters at the reception of large corporations. I’m talking about the kind of excellence you can’t even explain with words. You have to experience it and it has to become a part of who you are.
People experience a culture of excellence at every point of their experience with Brothers in Beat – from the brochures and marketing to the response on the customer’s query to the look of the quote, to arriving well on time, to the event and beyond.
I thought about all this when reading a piece from The Simple Dollar blog. The guy was describing how some people love their jobs and others hate their jobs.
The message of this post is simple: The culture you cultivate in your company is not often if ever noticed on a conscious level, but it’s the most vital part of your company because it determines what kind of employees you attract, how long you retain that talent, and the quality of the work they deliver.
What kind of culture exists at your company? Whether you try or not, there is ALWAYS a culture at every company, it’s just a matter of which culture. Do you find that you need to create pressure and pain in order to get people to do their job? Start cultivating the right culture, and people will automatically fit into it and help cultivate and maintain it if it’s something they want to be part of, something that inspires them, something that makes them feel like part of a team that’s achieving something worthwhile.
Changing the culture takes time and it takes a great leader who is willing to inspire people and change their perspective. Because it’s not through pain, or pressure, but through perspective that culture is created, and a great culture creates an environment conducive to achieving great things.