How do you know what kind of culture you have?

The blueprint for creating a better culture anywhere in your life is simple:

• Decide what type of culture you’d like to create

• Identify where you are today

• Determine what’s required to close the gap

Of course, this is an easy conversation to have and one of the most difficult processes to pull off. Frankly, it’s the same framework for most areas of our life.

Today’s post is focused on the second bullet: Identify where you are today.

While some people are more skilled in the area of self-awareness, most of us are not. We need help recognizing reality from those around us. We’ll explore this topic in a later post, today we’re looking at what you specifically can do to identify where you are today.

The short answer is to be observant of peoples’ reflexes in your group, team, or community where you’d like to see a culture shift. Reflexes are the greatest indicator of any established culture. That is, whatever is being done without intentionality, is the best representation of your truest culture.

Here are several examples of reflexes and what they might say about the corresponding culture:

• The situation: An employee misses a deadline and their supervisor addresses the matter to understand what happened.
  The reflex: The supervisor automatically followed up to fully understand how this happened.
  What it says about the culture: Accountability is important. Employees are held accountable for their performance. Of course, this may just be a great supervisor, but let’s assume for the sake of this exercise, this reflex is common across team supervisors.

• The situation: Your kids don’t rinse their dishes and load them in the dishwasher, they just set them on the counter next to the sink for someone else to handle.
  The reflex: Your kids don’t make an effort to clean their dishes after using them.
  What it says about the culture: It could be one of several reasons – your family culture is that parents clean up after the kids, your kids have no regular responsibilities, or cleanliness and order may not be a family priority. There is no right or wrong here, this is about recognizing the reality and whether it aligns with what you want to prioritize and create over time.

• The situation: Your head coach isn’t at practice and several members of your team slack off and only bring a 50% effort that day.
  The reflex: Team members feel it’s acceptable to not bring their best effort to practice when the head coach isn’t present.
  What it says about the culture: The other coaches are not respected (or feared) in the same way the head coach is. Or it may say that practice and games are not treated the same. In many instances, a coach may say your participation in games is predicated on your effort in practice. Others may let you practice however you see fit if you’re talented, and games are managed independently of practice. Again, neither is right or wrong. Keep in mind that this exercise is about recognizing what your reflexes say about your culture.

The same principles apply in any corporate environment:

• If you’ve ever flown Southwest Airlines, you see just about every employee seems to enjoy their job. Almost every flight begins with an attendant having fun with the standard, boring “welcome” over the intercom. A Southwest value is to provide an exceptional customer experience, and the “reflex” of going the extra mile is a great example of being given “permission” to serve customers in whatever way employees see fit.

• My daughter works at Chick-Fil-A and told me a story from a recent shift she was working. A high school kid was sitting in the dining room during breakfast and said, “My tots aren’t even full!” Meaning, his tater tots didn’t fill the box they were served in. Without ever being asked, an employee showed up at his table a couple minutes later with an extra large box completely filled with tater tots, with a smile, and sealed the deal with the classic, “My pleasure.” Similarly to Southwest, the value is an exceptional customer experience, and the reflex is the quick response to an opportunity to resolve a problem. This says a lot about having a culture of solving customer problems, regardless of who’s at fault.

This process of recognizing reflexes is a starting point to begin banking a list of potential reflexes and their corresponding insights about your culture. Start here to begin and continue vetting the validity of these reflexes through conversations. Over time, you’ll find a validated, shorter list of realistic reflexes as the foundation for identifying where you are today.