Lessons Learned in Building a Great Culture and Making the Right Way the Easy Way (Part 2)

I am writing a series of blog posts about lessons learned in my career, including my time at CoverMyMeds as the company grew from 30 people to 800 and was eventually acquired by McKesson in 2017. In the last post, I covered part 1 of my Top 10 Lessons Learned in Building a Great Culture and Making the Right Way the Easy Way. Without further ado, here is part 2.

The opinions expressed here are, of course, solely my own and do not represent any employers, past or present.

5. Give people the tools they need to do their jobs.

If you’ve followed my advice on recruiting and hiring, you will have an amazing team filled with A players. Don’t undermine their work by being cheap and not giving them the best tools. You can’t “save” your way to building a great company. Make sure your software developers are as productive as possible by giving them a fast laptop and a large monitor. Make sure your product people are exposed to the best products out there to inspire them to do their best work. Give designers the best software and hardware to let their creativity flow unrestrained. Let your sales people book more convenient flights or hotels to make sure that they are as fresh as possible. And even if the expense does not literally pay for itself in pure productivity, you will more than come out ahead if you account for improved engagement and morale.

4. Provide meaningful perks that people value and that foster community.

Lots of companies think they can create a better or hipper culture by buying some snacks and a few toys. Make sure that you are providing perks that people value and that create a sense of community. And let your employees tell you what those things are. For some companies a pingpong table is a great place to take a break and create camaraderie. For others it ends up being a place where UPS leaves incoming packages. Some companies love employee-organized events while others look at it as “forced fun.” For some companies, free lunches are of great value. For others… well I’ve never seen a company where the employees did not love free food.

The point is, culture is not defined by perks. Rather, perks emerge from culture. Make a commitment to provide perks that provide benefits that your employees value, but take the time to make sure they provide true value. And again, push that decision making down to the people who know best, which are not the senior leaders.

Once CoverMyMeds had developed a great reputation, I had a manager from another company, opening a new facility, visit us for ideas. He looked around and took notes like “employees wear hoodies” and “kegs” and then showed me a sketch of how their office space would be laid out with designated gathering spaces that already had catchy names like “The Batcave.” I tried to explain to him that he was focusing too much on the superficial and should shift his focus more to the core essence of their culture, but I’m not sure he got it.

3. Measure employee engagement and deliberately take steps to improve it.

Employee engagement is critical to a healthy culture and business. An engaged employee is defined as one who is “involved in, enthusiastic about, and committed to their work and workplace.” A 2018 Gallup study found that only 34% of U.S. workers were engaged, and that is an all time high dating back to 2000. Shockingly low. However healthy cultures have a much higher percentage — I have seen as high as 80%.

Peter Drucker is credited with the famous quote, “If you can’t measure it, you can’t improve it.” And employee engagement is no exception. At CoverMyMeds we measured it through formal surveys (my favorite is Culture Amp), understood what led to disengagement, and took deliberate steps to improve. We not only improved engagement by making impactful changes but also by demonstrating to our employees that we were listening and took their feedback seriously.

2. Foster a blameless culture with positive reinforcement.

Avoid the temptation to look for who to blame when something goes wrong. Instead, internalize the notion that you are all in the same boat and succeed or fail together. This means no wasted energy spent on “CYA” activities that detract from getting the real work done. It also means that everyone on the team picks each other up when someone is down. In a “blame game” culture, when something goes wrong, everyone becomes defensive and points fingers, with the primary goal being that some other person takes the fall. The win is when the blame does not fall to you or your team. In a “positive energy” culture, when something goes wrong, people have open and honest dialog, search for the truth, learn from the experience, and apply that learning to improve the organization. The win is when both the problem and the root cause are addressed.

Of course, in the latter it may turn out that root cause is that someone is not effective at their job and needs to be removed. But isn’t it better that this happen sooner than later anyway? There’s no benefit in hiding it.

And finally…

1. Invest in people and product, not processes.

This one ties everything else together. Many companies spend time and money building a process that makes it easy to hire a broader range of people to do the work. This may work great for large, established companies or bureaucracies, but it is no way to build a new product or company that is going to change the world. For that you need to create process and foster a culture that requires exceptional people. Find and hire those people and let them create, nurture, and support exceptional products. This creates a virtuous cycle where you attract and retain the best people, who create great results, that drive the business to success, which results in growth, which creates career opportunities, that let you attract and retain the best people, and so on.