“You don’t need rules for the housekeeping at home either.”
“The Dutch culture is very tolerant,” I once said. Well that turned out to be a big blooper. “You tolerate a mosquito in your bedroom and the neighbors when they have a housewarming with lots of noise,” my colleague said. To tolerate means that you are irritated, but that you are not going to do anything about it. You let the mosquito fly and let the neighbors party. That's not very positive, it could be a lot better. Inclusive cultures in which people really embrace each other, they look for: how can we make each other better? We should ask each other that question more often. At least in every performance development meeting. I noticed how supported I felt when my team asked me: how can we help you?
These are the words of Thomas Mulder, Executive Director HR at VodafoneZiggo. “Zes vinkjes” (six ticks), he says routinely. “Until I was in my late 20s, I thought I would have preferred to join a student association. Then I realized what it meant to me, not to do that. I have been able to be myself more and I did not have to conform to the strict norms of a group.” I became more independent in my thinking and felt more peace and space to determine my own course and form my own judgments.
“The question: how you can make someone else better, is the core question about inclusion.”
It means that you are willing to explore together how you are different from others. You can use those insights to help each other. Simply by looking at each other carefully and consulting each other. You can really strengthen each other through feedback from the knowledge of how the other person is different and therefore sees things differently and enriches your own perception. Some differences are obvious and can easily create 'micro-exclusions' if you do not consciously deal with them. “During heated integration discussions during my time in Germany, I was sometimes really searching for the correct words in German. Of course, by the time I found these words, the momentum had already passed. You really have to make an effort to make the other person who is less skilled with a language, express themselves fully. It is easier to eventually ignore someone who is less proficient in a language. It is simple and persistent. And this is a very visible form of exclusion. Many forms of micro-exclusion form in your subconscious and are subtle but compelling. We recently had Iftar at the office. If I'm not careful, I end up talking to my own executive team through my unconscious bias to go for comfort. Humans, always value comfort: what we already know and have done before.
Cultural change is always done in the context of a business strategy
You have an audacious goal and a strategy with which you want to realize that goal. The culture is about the way in which we want to work together to achieve that goal. Three things are very important: congruence, involving many people in the formulation of the values and consistency in implementation.
Congruence is simply: doing what you say, and saying what you do and feel
If you are congruent, people will follow you. If you are not congruent, people will say: this is just song and dance. Cultural change must come from and internal conviction of the CEO and leadership team. They can't do that from the sidelines. Culture coordinates behavior: how do we work together effectively to achieve our goals. You cannot 'fix' a weak culture with a bureaucracy of rules. At home, if you have a good relationship with each other, you don't need rules for the housekeeping. That is why you cannot solve issues about transgressive behavior with a code of conduct. The code of conduct is the license to operate of your culture. The way in which people live the values every day, is a key measure of success.
You strengthen the culture by bringing the rules of collaboration to life in order to achieve a higher goal. In a strong culture, behavior is corrected before the code of conduct level is reached. In our culture I hear people commenting on each other’s behavior every day: “Oh, I didn't think that was an example of 'open up'”, one of the three core values of VodafoneZiggo. On Yammer: “I don't think that's a 'team up'.” “In the context of value to 'step up', I expected you to finish that presentation before the end of the day.”
Consistency in implementation should be simple and effective, and immediately transparent if it is not. For example, if you say: our footprint is important to preserve the environment. We are all going to drive electric and as an executive team you get into a private jet, people immediately realize that. At the same time, if your CEO gets out of the Thalys, you have to come up with a good story why you are not traveling by train and still want to drive a lease car. Visible examples from the executive team speed up cultural change. After the merger between Vodafone and Ziggo, no one had their own office anymore. On the first day, the executive team sat working next to the stairs in an open space. That creates a visible statement.
How do you know whether you have achieved something with culture development?
We continuously collect feedback about our culture. VodafoneZiggo's culture is in the top 2 reasons to come and stay. Development is number 1. So we conduct thorough research among people we hire and those who leave: what made you choose us? What makes you leave? We also monitor culture development four times a year in our Employee Satisfaction Survey: the 'heartbeat'. Together with turnover and absenteeism, these are all just indicators. With the help of these indicators, we have an informed conversation with our business counterparts. This may lead to adjusting the course or the scale or intensity of our interventions.
Furthermore, I continue to test the big picture: do the three parts of the strategic framework still fit together: the purpose (reason why we are here), the strategic pillars (how we are going to get there) and the culture (the way in which we work to make that happen). That is a continuous process.
