Culture: Offense and Defense

Architecting a culture that gets stronger as you grow

It is possible to strengthen company culture through periods of high growth, but it doesn’t happen on its own. In fact, the faster a company grows, the more likely culture weakens without appropriate proactive and reactive systems and actions.

I’ve learned this the hard way while growing through acquisitions, hiring-sprints, rapid global expansion, and the creation of divergent innovation channels. These periods of growth put a strain on even the best of cultures, requiring not only new talent and evolving organizational structure but also different ways of working and changing relationships.

Not being aware of the need, because “things are up and to the right” or feeling that there’s not the time for “culture stuff” is understandable and predictable. The team is building, hiring, training, putting out fires, selling, and trying to keep the wheels on, and it can seem that there’s just not the time for anything else. Throw fundraising or acquisitions in there, and it can be doubly difficult. But this saying about our health as people should be kept in mind for a company’s culture.

If you don’t make time for wellness, you’ll be forced to make time for illness.

There are many ways to think about building ‘cultural wellness’ or ‘cultural fitness’ in a growing company. One approach I love is thinking of culture-building intention and activities through the lens of teams, games, and sports, and specifically…offense and defense. Any team needs both offense and defense to win in sports, and a business team is no different. What is even more powerful is thinking of culture, talent, and optimal operating environment as THE game in and of itself, not simply a play to run in the broader game of business or markets.

I like thinking of culture as THE thing for many reasons, not the least of which is that I learned through experience that while many other variables in a business can be strong, a weak culture can undermine all those strengths rapidly. Remember:

Culture eats strategy for lunch every day.

When I allowed myself to see culture as THE thing, I started to see holes, blind spots, opportunities, informal leaders, and even areas of strength. Culture is what happens when leaders aren’t in the room. It shows up in immune responses to challenges. Culture is what people say we do (or don’t do) here, and culture lives deeply in “how” things get done.

With this lens, I became more attuned to the role of various culture builders and culture stakeholders, including me, our company’s systems, our team leaders, our priorities, and resource allocation, all in a different light. I learned a framework for building cultures that get stronger through growth: Commit // Be. Do. Say. // Evolve.

1. Commit to culture as a mission-critical component of any business. Commitment means it’s apparent that culture is important to leadership and that there are mechanisms to check-in and take the cultural temperature. Commitment to culture is evident when culture is used as the lens through which decisions are made and a primary filter for “how” things get done.

   A few ways to do this are to ask: How do others in the company describe our culture? What is additive to our culture? What thumbprint will this decision (or how we do this thing) leave behind? How does this decision/thing/approach reinforce our cultural norms or values? How might this conflict (or be perceived to conflict with) our values and culture?

2. Be. Do. Say. This is the way. How we show up and how we make people feel is the “be”. It’s about showing who we are as individuals, being authentic, and demonstrating humble courage. People can sense if what we do and say is inconsistent with who we are, and saying and doing things not reflective of our values results in high emotional labor for leaders and teams.

   Our actions are the “do” and the topic of this post. Specifically, our actions fall into offense and defense. There is no “middle ground”. We are either reinforcing and building the culture, or we are weakening it. Culture offense is proactively, consciously, and intentionally building an optimal culture. Culture defense is responding to what happens in a way that strengthens the culture. Our actions speak so loudly, that people often don't hear the words we say.

   While words are hollow without matching actions, when layered on top of supporting actions, words are powerful. Be clear when talking about culture and behaviors: “say” what you mean, and do what you say. I’ve heard many leaders verbalize that some things “go without saying”. Remember this phrase I have heard many versions of: “If we don’t use our voice, someone else will use our silence”. What goes unsaid sends as powerful of a message as what is stated, and it can leave a void that less productive words may fill.

3. Evolve: Organizations, industries, and people change, and so too should the culture. While core values don’t change much, how they are lived, reinforced, defended, and clarified should absolutely evolve over time. For example, if a company has “Commitment or Show Up” as a core value, given flex and remote work and advances in technology, that value may be carried out differently now than in previous years.

   Many of us have heard and used the term “culture fit”. That can be dangerous if taken to the extreme, it suggests that the culture of today is fit for a changing world and different scale of the company and is future proof. Find people, processes, partners, and activities that complement the culture, strengthen it, and propel demonstration of the company’s values into the future. That may mean some people or activities don’t exactly fit in the boxes, processes, and policies you have built today, but they may be the very thing you need for tomorrow.

Actions // Offense and Defense:

Offense: People, Love, and Community

• People: Recruiting, Selection, Hiring, and Training: In high growth periods, some companies bring in more people in a month than they had the entire last year. Those new folks were not there yesterday or last year for that win, that mess up, that training, those funny moments, etc., and they don’t “get it” by just having your company name on their paycheck. Nothing shapes a culture more than the people in it. Choose carefully and wisely, train constantly, allow room for learning through failure, and coach your teams like your company depends on it.

• Love: Rewards, Recognition, and Promotions: I love the saying “to permit is to promote”, and I’ve also learned, “to promote is to cement that person’s behavior as the gold standard” into the minds of others in the company. Who you show love to (reward and elevate) in your company tells the rest of the company, “this is what it takes to win”. Make sure your people recognition advances WHAT you want to be done as well as HOW you want things done.

• Community: Events, Gathering, Feedback, and Connection: Whether it’s Townhall Tuesdays, Garage Talks, Feeback Fridays, First Wednesdays, names for cross-functional project teams, coffee meetings, buddy systems, or office hours…rituals shape culture, provide latticework for a culture to grow through and around it like vines, and create a sense of place and belonging. Consistency of events, committees that shape these traditions, and sunsetting some things when it is time are all a part of building community. Great community building requires creating and holding space, seeding connection, keeping teams fresh and mixing, and allowing co-creation of community-impacting initiatives.

Defense: Compliance & Commitment

• Compliance - what gets measured gets managed, to permit is to promote, and a million other phrases apply here. I don’t like over-using compliance for business success or cultural strength, but having measurable standards and coaching, correcting, and addressing things that fail to meet those standards is a foundational element of good business.

  While there are many blurred lines and grey areas in business, there are some things that are absolute, clear, and binary. Treat them as such, and when a company value or core element of structure is clearly violated, be sure it or they are addressed appropriately.

• Commitment - what we defend reinforces the commitment to who and what we are defending. While a commitment to the vision, mission, and values of a company is a strong element of culture offense, I also like it as a tool for defense. I lean on commitment over compliance when at all possible when reacting to a situation to reinforce and defend culture and values. I have learned to focus on what we are committed to as a driver for a reaction to a situation.

  Example: “We are approaching/handling “X” this way because our cultural norm or value is “Y”, and I would be failing the company if I didn’t make that clear”.

  Commitment is the compass, and compliance is the road map. If I had to choose, I’d much rather have a compass than a road map given the ever-changing dynamics of the world. Of course, both together are ideal!

  How we make people feel when we are on cultural defense and showing what we are committed to both send direct and subtle messages to the company. A culture can be best spotted by what people are committed to when leadership is not in the room, including what they stand up for and will not allow. A cultural beacon is hearing someone say, “we don't do that here” or “we do X here”.

  What we react to, discipline, address, condemn and what we tolerate, condone, or ignore equally send ripples through the organization, leaving behind cultural thumbprints. Taking a stand on something to reinforce cultural commitment should not be reduced to the moment or event, but rather respected as the many moments, events, and backchannel conversations that will reverberate and live on in the company. Focus on what you say, but also consider what your words and actions “say” about your organization, your commitments, and your culture.

All Together Now:

• A framework for culture: Commit // Be. Do. Say. // Evolve

• Offense: People, Love, Community

• Defense: Compliance & Commitment

A culture can only be its best with both strong offense and defense, intentionally applied. A light offense leads to the culture being shaped almost exclusively by whatever beliefs and practices new hires bring with them, leaving a massive gap between words and actions. The resulting different beliefs and behaviors between cohorts of hires eventually create a deficit of belief and a crisis of confidence in leadership. A light cultural defense confuses people and creates a ton of friction - hire and train for culture, but no aligning reinforcement, support, or correction.

No matter how strong your offense, you need a good defense - things change, new dynamics emerge, and humans are gonna human. As your teams and companies grow, culture evolution happens organically - sometimes positively, other times not so much.

To guide positive culture evolution, build company counsels that represent different cohorts and construct frequent touchpoints and feedback loops so leadership stays close to the lived experience of today’s employee and customer needs. It’s often the perception of ‘immovable’ leadership that keeps employees from being as engaged in shaping and evolving the culture, no size or tenure of a company is immune to this dynamic. You have permission to change and a responsibility to evolve when and where you need to, but you may need to invite collaborators more often than you think.

The few principles are just a start, but an important one. A strong cultural offense and defense will improve a company’s cultural wellness and overall business fitness, no matter how fast it grows. In fact, a strong culture allows a company to get far less of the bad and much more of the good resulting from rapid growth.

Here’s to getting the best of what comes with growth by building strong cultures!