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Most HR leaders say culture is one of their most important assets. Ask them to define it, though, and the answers can get fuzzy fast.
Marcus Collins, a marketing professor at the University of Michigan, learned this after asking chief people officers and recruiters to try. “It was so many abstractions, so much jargon, and honestly, it was a plethora of nothingness,” he said.
So Collins set out to develop a definition, based on the premise that leaders can’t attract or retain the right people for a culture they can’t articulate. He found that the problem starts with what many companies erroneously think defines culture: their values.
HR leaders often conflate values and beliefs, says Collins. Beliefs as the truths companies hold about the world; values are what they consider important. Culture starts with the former.
Collins urges HR heads to ask themselves: What do we believe? Are our behaviors a reflection of those beliefs? If beliefs and behaviors don’t align, Collins says leaders should start by addressing that disconnect.
Consider Wells Fargo. In the early 2000s, employees opened unauthorized accounts for customers due to immense pressure to meet aggressive sales goals. The company espoused values like trust and integrity, Collins said, but its behavior reflected a different underlying belief, which was that employees were expected to outperform.
That disconnect is why Collins argues that culture isn’t perks or rituals but, rather, the fundamental beliefs that guide how a company operates. Patagonia, for example, has long organized itself around a commitment to minimizing its impact on the planet. Collins advises leaders to identify their own North star and probe whether their actions reflect it.
“The push to CHROs is to first challenge the way you see the world,” he said. “Widen the aperture of how [CHROs] think about what culture is so they can fully engage in it.”
Kristin Stoller Editorial Director, Fortune Live Media [email protected]
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