The Importance of Culture: Part Two

When we finalized the acquisition of Smart Chemical's completions division, now Refined Completions, I knew we’d have to change the culture. Part of intentional culture change is giving team members clarity on our why, and how they fit into that. Another part is giving them the time, space, trust, and respect they may need to absorb the changes. It may make some people uncomfortable but that’s not the intention.

When Jon and Connie from Air Oasis decided to implement Lean Manufacturing, they began with clarity and trust. Even then, there were a lot of team members who resisted because it was a massive change. Instead of clearing out all the team members who weren’t happy with the change, they trusted them to come to their own decision about what to do with this new culture. Most of them opted to stay and eventually embraced the new culture.

There will be people excited to come on board, and there will be those who are comfortable with the way things are, and don’t want change to happen. Sometimes it just takes time for the new culture to become normal and comfortable for the people who aren’t happy with it at first.

Changing culture begins with a decision: the owner/leader making the decision and being committed to the change. As a leader, this is where the power of being unoffendable is invaluable. When you’re grounded and really know who you are, it’s harder for people to offend you. It brings peace and doesn’t allow you to be disrupted as easily.

After you make that decision, you have to trust. Culture can only change when the process is based on trust. You trust your team members to come to the decision inside themselves whether or not this new culture works for them. They trust that you are implementing this new culture for their benefit. You give them trust, then they give you trust.

Like I mentioned above, good culture either attracts or repels. It’s like perfume, you either love it or hate it. If you hate it, you won’t be able to bear it and you’ll move to a company whose culture is a better fit for you. If you love it, you’ll be fully on board and enjoy coming to work every day.

To really understand how vital culture is, let’s look at a company most of us are familiar with: Southwest Airlines. Southwest had a strong culture of serving others and being highly customer focused. In recent years that has changed, and their focus has been turned inward toward different employee groups.

Even the CEO, who is currently chairman of the board, became so focused on the financial aspect of the company that he lost their WHY. Their why now is to look like everyone else, like with their change to premium seating, but they lost their focus.

The reason they didn’t have premium seating in the first place was because they wanted to be effective, efficient, and friendly at all times; you always knew what you were getting. You don’t get friendly and efficient at all now.

They’d had high standards and always chose what was right for the customer but when they became financially focused, they spun out of control. A healthy company is defined by its culture and through that, money is a fruit, as well as reputation. But as we’ve seen with Southwest, you can’t continue to grow a company by focusing solely on the fruit of money. You have to nurture the company and that means nurturing a strong culture based on a clear why, and the money will be produced, not the other way around.

This ties back to the book Secrets of the Vine by Bruce Wilkinson. Think about a vintner. Does the vintner focus on the bottle of wine? Or does he focus on the vine where the grapes are grown? A good vintner knows that successful vines depend on a strong and stable root system. Look at this picture of a grapevine.

Do you see how the roots at the bottom are as long as the vine itself? And there had already been some of the root system trimmed away when this photo was taken. In a vineyard, they’re there to grow grapes, not leaves, so they cut away and prune the vines that don’t bear fruit, so that the nutrients can go to making fruit.

Their focus is fully on the roots and the vines that bear fruit, because that’s how they get quality wine. Intentionality is the root system of your company’s culture, the culture you grow from that represents the grapes, and money and a good reputation are the wine. Focus on the roots, not the wine.