3 Words I hate: Culture, Values, Attitude
Why? Because they make a manager's job harder
These are not magic words that you can sprinkle over your company to get amazing results - despite what some consultants will try to tell sell you. These are words that if used improperly, can keep you from communicating what your people need to do to succeed.
In my book, Output Thinking, I addressed these ideas - but here I've added something new at the end. FYI the book comes out Dec 7, 2023 and you can preorder the kindle version for the pre-release special.
I Hate the Words - Not the Concepts
The reason these three words are problematic is not because they sound too touchy-feely. It's that they are mental short cuts that not everyone uses in the same way. They mask the actual behaviors at the root of what we're talking about, and when that happens it makes for lazy and ineffective management.
Let's look at them one by one.
Attitude often means what someone does without being asked
"I don't like his attitude" or "She's got a great attitude" these phrases are really referring to a pattern of behavior. Perhaps he doesn't pay attention, or he complains a lot, or doesn't look you in the eye. Maybe he shows up late and always makes excuses why it's not his fault. Those may be the behaviors that make you think his attitude is bad. But they may have nothing to do with what he actually thinks. We use the term "attitude" not just to explain what is going on in someone's head (something we really have no idea about) but also to predict what they'll do in the future. What they’ll do in the future is the definition of behavior. Deal with that, not what you think is going on in their head.
Until we describe what we see as behaviors, not attitude, our opinion may be more about us than about the other person. For example, extroverts often think that introverts aren't engaged because they don't smile or make small talk.
On the other side of the coin, someone is often said to have a great attitude when they show behaviors you like. Things like eye contact, willingness to do what's asked, and even figuring out what to do without being asked. That last one can actually be a bit insidious. When someone figures out what to do without being asked it can be a sign of tacit knowledge which is good. But maybe they are actually a hinderance to scaling because they're so quick to produce outputs that should be produced by someone else so everyone can play at the top of their game.
I once had to take several flights with an injured leg that I could not put any weight on. I was using a contraption called an iWALK (which I highly recommend). As a result, I was interacting with a number of flight attendants on the different flights and I noticed that I felt some of them were friendly and some of them were grumpy. But those are attitudes. So I asked myself what behaviors led me to those judgments. Here’s what I came up with: eye contact (or lack of it), smiles not frowns, proactively asking if they could help me rather than waiting to be asked. Things like that are behaviors that are visible. It’s tempting to say some of those people cared more—but honestly, I don’t know what they felt. I just know what they did.
As a manager, you want your people to produce the outputs your company needs and to do that they need to behave in certain ways. But if you look at the different behaviors I've listed in the preceding paragraphs, you'll see that they each have different ramifications when it comes to the outputs you need. Some accelerate those outputs, some actually hinder the outputs, and some are just not what you'd expect. It's more productive to deal with behaviors than attitudes - though it may take a little more work on your part.
What are Company Values Really?
It's been said they are a set of guiding principles and fundamental beliefs. One of the best definitions I've heard is that values describe the lines we won't cross. Either way, they are just feel-good words until you equate them to behaviors. Let's say transparency is one of your values. Does that mean you share everyone's salary with everyone else? If you give someone a promotion or terminate them do you share all the reasons behind those decisions? If your company gets approached by a potential acquirer do to tell everyone right away or hold off until the discussions are likely to people's roles? How transparent do you want to be?
Only after you've given some thought to the behaviors you want to encourage or discourage does your value word become useful.
Culture, they say, Eats Strategy For Breakfast
Or Lunch. Depends on which misattribution you ascribe to. But there's a science to strategy, and culture is more like an art. The problem with "culture" is it's such a squishy word people tend to fall back on "I know it when I see it" or worse "Someone I'd like to have a beer with." If you hire for culture in that way, you're more likely to end up with a frat party than a highly functional company. This may come from the mistaken belief that a company should be a family. Not true - it should be a team. But that's a conversation for another day.
One of the best explanations of culture I've heard was a talk by Mark Brooks COO of Permanent Equity at their Main Street Summit in November 2023 - a conference I highly recommend for SMB owners and operators. He wasn't actually talking about culture; the talk was about managing managers. But he laid out a way to define the playing field within which managers can operate. He said, within this box mangers can do what they want but if it crosses a line, we have to have a conversation.
If you manage your managers this way, I think you'll have a great company culture, and what is that if it isn't behaviors?
Don't Be a Lazy Manager
My point is that a huge part of a manager's job is to give clarity. And clarity is best described in terms of visible behaviors and outputs that can be seen. This is hard to do - especially for squishy concepts like culture, values and attitudes. But do the hard work. Your people and your results will benefit.