Hear an interview with omar khan done with landed radio, a premier service for business professionals.
LEADERS CREATE CULTURES
My wife and I often visit and enjoy Geneva. Ordered, peaceful, elegant. People move with grace. Restaurants and bistros almost 'reek' of understated style and good taste. Life moves slowly, languorously, delicately.
Home for us is New York City. Fast paced, frenetic, urgent. People move with passionate intensity and eagerness. Restaurants and coffee shops 'buzz' and almost 'rock' with people trying to actualize their own personal vision of the good life. Life pulsates and radiates here.
To experience this contrast, you don't have to move from a small Swiss town to the most bustling metropolis produced by the 20th century. Within Asia Pacific itself, just move between Hong Kong and Singapore.
Singapore is almost the 'Switzerland' of Asia Pacific. Everything works! It's well ordered, disciplined, exceptional in overall excellence. Infrastructure is excellent, restaurants are artful and interesting, with the flavors of the world well represented. Life is an ordered, focused progression.
Hong Kong is almost the 'New York' of Asia Pacific. Everything hums and vibrates! Here is where entrepreneurship took off in the shadow of China, before China itself began to express personal as well as collective enterprise as a priority. It's less tidy, more original. Restaurants are more inspired, if more uneven. Life is an ongoing, course-correcting aspiration.
Cultures are palpable. And leaders and people come together to create 'experience-points' that give us a true sense of the sponsoring culture. Geneva-ites and Singaporeans don't wake up every day and say, 'Now all together, here's how we're going to express our discipline, focus and graceful good taste.' And New Yorkers and Hong Kongers don't leap aerobically out of bed and boom, 'Okay, take no prisoners, another day another chance for a breakthrough --- GO!'
It's in the air yes, but also in the processes, systems, institutions, education, interactions, in EVERYTHING.
Come now to companies. To some extent, your industry should determine the culture you want to promote, stimulate, reward, reinforce and recreate daily. If your store offers haute couture of a classical type, then you have to consider the staff you hire. Do they understand that 'story', that ambience, that mythology, those experience-points? Do they know not to droop, not to dash, not to hurry, not to use slang? What about the aesthetics, the music, the lettering on the signs and displays, the check-out procedure, the bags in which the merchandise is placed?
On the other hand, you sell cutting-edge designs for up and coming style-conscious teens and young adults. Staff needs change drastically. We now likely need funky folk who can vibrate on the same frequencies as their customers. Different 'look', feel, sound, layout, behavior, speed, speech patterns. Things have to communicate both 'style' and a measure of 'rebellion'. It is the nature of a younger generation to want to 'stand out' while also 'fitting in'. This is as much a 'feel' as a fact, and the collection of Experience-points has to all back that up.
Suppose your company's brand promise has to do with 'customer intimacy' and you provide personal care products. When you create your culture, it has to be heavily 'spiced' with individuals who live/breathe/empathize with the EMERGENT as well as ACTUAL consumer trends along various consumer segments. These can't just be analysts. They have to be massive EMPATHISERS, people who can place themselves, perceptually 'in the skin' of all the demographics you're targeting. They have to almost NEED to generate LUST in their customers...and so all corporate communication, signage, dress, layout, hiring and promotion, metrics and scorecards, have to blare forth unambiguously on that front.
On the other hand, let's suppose you're in the innovation business. Your business focuses on IT innovation with practical business applications across global platforms. Now you have to understand not technology so much (which by itself is getting commoditized like everything else) but the BUSINESS NEEDS and challenges of your customers. Understanding their opportunities will allow you to design IT solutions that represent genuine 're-engineering' and which actually deliver BUSINESS VALUE not just technological intrigue and 'splash'. Your staff have to be business thinkers not just techno-geeks. They have to be aware of application and integration challenges, and the human factor in IT effectiveness. They have to get high on providing SOLUTIONS not just STUFF. Again, all company literature, all hiring, all leadership coaching, all internal success stories, all market communication, has to express this with PRIDE and CLARITY.
Culture begins with VALUE. Value is made real via 'experience-points', where our senses experience behavior or impact. But just as New York speeds us up, and Geneva calms us all down to some extent, company cultures are not only made up of people who are naturally attuned to that tempo and style, but the cultures in fact CONDITION the response in others.
Nobody panics when a cappuccino takes time to perfectly froth at Hotel Beau Rivage in Geneve. Everybody palpitates to get the Caramel Chai Latte NOW at Starbucks in the Sony Building in New York. By choosing our culture based on the primary value we embody, want to express and stand for, we actually educate and prepare others in terms of what to expect in interacting with us...this applies to both customers AND employees.
Of course we don't all have to behave or be just alike, otherwise our culture contributes only to our commodification. But we DO have to choose an idiosyncrasy that is RELEVANT to the core value proposition we are offering. Otherwise it's not identity, but narcissism.
That said, all cultures do need diversity. New York has meditation teachers and acupuncturists (in high demand) precisely BECAUSE of its pace and intensity. Geneve has financiers and entrepreneurial visionaries who flourish precisely BECAUSE of the infrastructure, organization and reliability of the place.
So though all cultures need iconoclasts, in a 'wired' and 'wild' culture, the iconoclast may be the more traditional thinker or classical person playing the role of 'devil's advocate' or providing analytical 'ballast'.
Be aware, cultures will form out of neglect if we don't design them consciously. So too will lives and businesses. If we don't intentionally choose the culture we want to create, and then challenge ourselves to LIVE INTO it, we will 'default' into a culture which is just a hodgepodge of our good and bad habits.
A culture is a read-out of either the attention or the neglect of its leaders. And since our culture is what our clients and our teams experience as the PRIMARY REALITY of our business, we just can't afford to leave it up to chance.
So what are key tumblers to turn when we seek to build our own winning culture?
As stated above, decide the primary VALUE your business stands for, expressed IN THE EXPERIENCE of customers and team members.
From that value decide what the overall culture should and must express. Do a sanity check to ensure that what you've come up with would actually amplify the value and 'Wow' appeal of your business.
List all the various 'Experience-points' and decide to what extent we DO or DON'T express this today. Start with the highest value experience-points and design forward from there.
Ensure that our leadership, talent-retention and development, hiring, coaching, reward and recognition ALL radiate this value, this culture (and the behaviours required to express it), with unstinting excellence at the primary experience-points.
Make sure it's a culture you LOVE and would be PROUD to make real. Challenge every iota of yourself to do a 'deep dive' into it and have a great time embodying it.
If you do, you will find you move up the value ladder quickly. You will build an extraordinary differentiator through culture. Moreover, you will innovate along a path that is distinctive to you, almost impossible to copy. And you will liberate new dimensions of values for those you serve.
Anything to beware? Yes! Keep checking the evolution of the times, and how your VALUE and culture may have to evolve with it. Any culture can be outmoded when it stops representing a value, or when it doesn't innovate to create new details and aspects, even while holding on to its core.
Banks offering internet banking and ATM's along with 'personal banking' for those whose volume of business requires it, are an example. Book stores providing cafes and reading space as well as web ordering are an example. Grocery stores becoming 'service hubs' (having DVD shops, florists, bakers, etc. as part of their set-up), creating sense-enhancing aisles and food displays, are yet another instance of this. Travel agents learning to become global concierges are another such evolution. Pharmaceutical companies that help hospitals with ordering, dosages and logistics are a current and future wave.
Other than this, pick your culture and feel free to splash on your version of New York or Geneva, Hong Kong or Singapore, or Bangalore, or Sydney for that matter. But play YOUR game consistently and with superb leadership execution.
Our culture is who we are, and to a large extent why we matter. Helping to design and deliver this is one of our greatest leadership opportunities. In the high value-added world of the 21st century, leaders who understand and act on this will create the companies that will succeed not only today but well into the future.
These are the companies we will RECOGNISE and these are companies we will truly connect with, because they consider us important enough to institutionalize an experience that gives us meaningful and treasured value.
Omar Khan,
Senior Partner, Sensei International
Phone: 1 (212) 295 2191, Fax: 1 (212) 295 2121
e mail: omar@sensei-international.com
Omar Khan is a globally acknowledged leadership development innovator and success coach. He is a sought after change catalyst and a pioneer in transformational learning. He is the author of the acclaimed book SYNERGY as well as the newly released and much awaited, TIMELESS LEADERSHIP.
