Creating the Right Culture – Part 2
I was watching a gripping interview with Four-Star General Stanley A. McChrystal, the guy smiling in the picture. He’s the new Obama-appointed commander of US forces in Afghanistan.
You know, you can get a sense when someone speaks that, listen, now I must pay attention, this is not someone to be taken lightly. General McChrystal is clearly one of those.
He was talking, amongst other things, about how he creates the right culture in the units under his command and how the main difference between a great unit and an average unit is the expectations each member has for every other member in the unit.
General McChrystal has created a great culture of excellence, hard work, and reliability in his teams, but he now has the tremendous task of creating a favourable culture in an entire country, i.e. Afghanistan.
The strategy in a nutshell is, once you have an entire country with the right culture, in other words, an entire country accepting certain things as good, normal and beneficial to all, you can then start withdrawing the troops and they will gradually carry on and protect that culture.
So if General McChrystal has been entrusted by the US president to change the culture of an entire country (and he’s doing a great job so far), I think we can pay attention to what he has to say on the issue.
Since the “why” is more important than the “how”, I first wrote about why the culture is so important, and this is the how, based on my thoughts while watching the interview.
Having a great culture conducive to achieving great things doesn’t just apply to companies. It’s also for your family.
1. Start immediately
Don’t let perceived limits stop you.
Don’t wait until your kids are five or until you’ve been married a while.
For a company, whether you have a great culture or not, start immediately creating what you want. If you have a new company, even better. Your first employee is the most critical one since he/she will have a big part in forming the subsequent culture in the company.
2. Set high expectations
Have high expectation from yourself first. General McChrystal lives a very disciplined life. He’s up at 4h30, out the door by 5, jogs an hour, and eats only one meal a day because any more makes him feel bloated.
He also has high expectations for his team:
“The best units I’ve ever been in, the difference between those units and others was expectations, the expectations they created in each individual and themselves. The same individual in a very good unit wouldn’t be nearly as good in a unit where there wasn’t that sense of expectation on him.”
Expect excellence. Make that part of your own life, and make it part of your culture. General McChrystal says, “There’s no way to cut corners on values. There’s no such thing as ‘the end justifies the means’. At the end of the day, if you’re not proud not only of what you’ve done but how you’ve done it, it’s not long term. You can’t build a force on that.”
3. Have a clear vision and get people to buy into it
This point is key. Your vision has to be bigger than you or your company. It has to be about helping people, other people. That’s the kind of vision people will buy into and help you make a reality.
Though the vision must be about helping others, people won’t buy into it unless they can see the benefit for their own lives. Not just achieving the vision, but also the process of achieving the vision must impact them in a positive way.
When they buy into your vision and make it their own, they will then be willing to not only adopt, but also promote and protect the culture.
When I say ‘protect the culture’, what I means is, people will have the same high expectations from all the other individuals in their team.
Keep this in mind for family too. Have goals, dreams and a vision for your family. Without this you cannot expect to be anything other than average at best. If you don’t have a vision for your family, why not take some time to think about it right now.
4. Let people know that you trust them
This point is also key to making the concept of culture work for you. People couldn’t care less about your high expectations if they don’t get the sense that you trust them to meet these expectations, without always hovering over them and critically checking up on them.
General McChrystal says, “I was much more of a believer that a leader had to be very directive, had to be a micro-manager. There was a saying that ‘the only things that get done well are the things the boss checks’. I really don’t buy that. I buy that if you create expectations in a force of standards and responsibility – if you look at somebody and say ‘I’m not going to do that job for you but I hold you responsible, and I trust you’ -in most people that really engenders a sense of commitment.”
I know that in my own life, when I was at my previous church, looking back I’ve realised that one of the main reasons I never reached new levels and soared to my full potential was because I never sensed that the leadership had high expectations from me, and I seldom sensed that they trusted me to do my part well.
Summary
When you have a great vision (one which goes beyond making money) which benefits everyone, and you can communicate what needs to be done to achieve this vision – your expectations, and you create a sense in people that you trust them to do what it takes to make the dream a reality, then you will be well on your way to building an awesome team with an awesome culture.
And there are few things more satisfying than being part of a team with a great culture of excellence.