Episode 1: RevUP Culture

Shomali: Welcome to Association RevUP, your podcast home for “Association Business Pioneers,” presented by the Professionals for Association Revenue. I’m your host, Carolyn Shomali. I’m the Director of Content for PAR, and this is the podcast that will get everyone in your association talking about revenue health and association business.

Each episode is written and produced with these two guiding principles in mind. First, your time as an Association Professional is your most valuable commodity. Secondly, while sourcing new ideas and developing new professional skills is important, it can also be draining. As association professionals ourselves, our team at PAR can relate to being short on time and to feeling stretched too thin. So, this podcast will give you back your time along with new ideas for association business by sharing insights from industry leaders and association pioneers in a concise and entertaining format.

Whether you’re an association leader or a professional whose work touches revenue in some way, every episode will help you benchmark your own work and give you ideas for ways to improve the business of your association. And that’s where we begin today.

Welcome to episode one, as we explore the business case for culture.

Notter: The organizations that change culture the fastest win. The pace of change today has never been this fast, and it will never again be this slow. Your culture is going to change whether you care about it or not. If you can keep up with the changes and have the culture be aligned with what makes you successful, you will be the place that no one ever wants to leave.

Shomali: That’s Jamie Notter, co-founder and culture strategist at Propel and co-author, alongside Maddie Grant, of the books Humanize, When Millennials Take Over, The Non-Obvious Guide to Employee Engagement, and Culture Change Made Easy. He has been studying organizational culture for more than 25 years and helps leaders view culture like the tangible business tool that it is. Over the course of this season, we’ll cover partnership programs, digital strategy, sales training and management, and much more. But when thinking about ways to advance your association’s business, the conversation must begin with culture.

Notter: Culture is a tangible business tool for driving growth. The reason why culture is so important for driving growth is that culture drives behavior. Your culture is what drives behavior inside your organization. That’s what they mean when they say culture eats strategy for breakfast. You can come up with a great strategy, but if you don’t have a culture that drives the behaviors that make that strategy work, it’s not going to work.

Shomali: Consider Gallup’s 2023 State of the Global Workplace Report. According to the report, employees who are not engaged or who are actively disengaged cost the world $8.8 trillion in lost productivity. That’s equal to 9% of the global GDP. So, if you are in charge of growing revenue in any capacity, it makes sense to focus on the one thing that can drive the behavior. The problem? Most groups struggle to define what culture is. Here’s how Notter defines it.

Notter: Culture is the collection of words, actions, thoughts, and (sorry for the technical term) “stuff” that clarifies and reinforces what is truly valued inside an organization. Culture is about what’s valued, but it lives in words, actions, thoughts, and stuff.

Shomali: So, two takeaways so far: culture drives behavior, and it is easy to define as the words, actions, thoughts, and stuff that clarifies and reinforces what is truly valued inside an organization. Note the word “valued” and not “values.” It sounds like a matter of semantics, but there’s a difference. Honesty and integrity are likely things your association recognizes as values, but do your actions show that they are in fact valued? Notter says we only have to look to the most notorious ethical business failure of the 21st century to understand the difference.

Notter: In case you didn’t know, there was a cool organization that had “Honesty” and “Integrity” on the wall, in the lobby of their headquarters. It was called Enron. For you youngsters that don’t know that story, their entire management team went to jail for fraud. “Honesty” and “Integrity” were core values at Enron, but they were not what was valued. What was valued was making your numbers, even if you had to make a large accounting firm lie about it. And I don’t know what the collection of words, actions, thoughts, and stuff was that made that clear to people, but it must have been there because that’s the behavior they got.

Shomali: Let’s go through each element of culture to better understand where your Association is and where you want it to be. As we do, keep in mind that culture drives behavior. First up, words. What words would you use to define your Association’s culture? Imagine you’re interviewing a potential job candidate, and at the end of the interview, she asks, “What’s your culture like here?” What would you say?

Notter: I’m imploring you to be really clear. When I push people on what they would say in that interview, they’re like, “Oh, our culture’s great. We have a super strong culture here. Everyone loves our culture. You’re going to love the culture here. It’s a good culture.” I’m like, what are you saying? Or they go high-level metaphor: “We love our culture. We’re like a family here.” Who uses the family metaphor? Anybody? Yeah, raise your hand. It’s fine. I get it. You know, you take care of each other. That’s probably what you mean by that. But beware that the number one word in the English language associated with the word “family” is “dysfunctional.”

Notter: I want you to come up with answers like this: “Jamie, our culture is radically focused on collaboration. Everybody is on multiple cross-functional teams. We’re not in the office as much as we were before, but when we are, we got rid of the offices. We’re all working at communal tables. We want to be interrupted by each other so that we can cross-pollinate and connect dots. If you’re the kind of person that likes to put on their headphones and work by themselves, you’re not going to like it here.” That’s clear. I know what it’s like to work at that place. And for the record, you don’t have to be collaborative. You can say, “Jamie, we are radically siloed here. We stay in our swim lanes.” We don’t get out of them. We don’t distract each other with what other people are doing because that makes us faster, and when we’re faster, we win. So, you get to choose what culture you have, but you’ve got to be really disciplined in describing it and telling the story correctly.

Shomali: And that brings us to the second part of culture: behaviors.

Think about the behaviors inside your association. Do they support or contradict the words that you’ve used to describe your culture?

Notter: Actions speak louder than words, so you’ve got to look for the behaviors inside the organization. And if they are different from what the words are, the behaviors win.You tell me you’ve got a culture that empowers its people. We hire smart people. We get out of their way. We let them run with things. Cool, I want to work there. I work there, and then six months in, my manager asks, “Hey, Jamie, that project we talked about last week, what’s the status?” I say, “It’s done. It’s live. It’s on the website. The members already have it.” If my manager says, “Oh, did someone look at that before it went out? Did that get approved?”—that behavior just negated those pretty words you told me about a culture of empowerment.

Shomali: All right, so if you’re an association leader, this is one of the most critical roles you’ll play in improving your organization’s culture. It’s your job to continually monitor the behaviors and actions of your team.

How are they supporting or contradicting what is valued by your association?

We’ve covered how culture is impacted by words and behaviors, and now we explore thoughts. Notter says thoughts are any underlying assumptions, beliefs, and mental models about the way we work. For example, consider an organization that says they are 100% results-oriented, meaning where you work or how often you work doesn’t matter as long as you hit your defined sales targets. Now imagine a conversation among colleagues who ask, “Hey, where has so-and-so been? I haven’t seen him in the office in a while. Does that guy ever work?”

That’s an example of how the underlying assumption of “I have to see you to know you are working” can contradict the words and behaviors of your culture.

Notter: We have underlying beliefs that we’re not even conscious of, and they often direct our behavior. And the belief pre-pandemic—I’ll be interested to see how it evolves post-pandemic—that many managers had, and I have gray in my beard so I can say this, particularly older managers had a belief or have a belief that if I can’t see you, you’re not working.

And that’s there, and that’s driving their behavior. So sometimes you’ve got to go underneath the surface to get to that stuff.

Shomali: So we’ve covered words, behaviors, and thoughts that make up culture. And by now, you’re likely forming an idea about your own association’s culture.

There’s one more element to consider, and that’s the stuff that contributes to culture. These are the tangible aspects of work, like your office environment, how it’s designed, and even in the case of the American Society for Surgery, your dress code policy.

Notter: Their dress code policy in the manual, it’s printed out, is two words: “No nudity.”

If you show up for work and you are not naked, you are good to go. Otherwise, you get to wear anything you want. Now, they created this dress code because the CEO wanted a policy that was rooted in authenticity. He believes very strongly that if people can be their whole selves and not have to pretend to be anybody that they are not, he gets better work out of them. They get to deliver more to members when they have that culture. And he realizes, I can’t have that culture and then have a tangible aspect of work that says you can only wear jeans on Fridays.

Shomali: So by now, we know that culture is imperative because it drives behavior and that it must be defined by your association with words and then supported by actions, thoughts, and stuff that reinforce those words.

And when we come back, we’ll focus on three steps to make your culture stick.

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Partners like VPC Inc., who are a sponsoring partner of this podcast and the production team that brings PAR’s annual in-person conference to life, the RevUP Summit. VPC is an award-winning, full-service boutique production and broadcasting company.

And as for company culture, it’s obvious in working with VPC that innovation, client collaboration, and transparency are all things that are valued. They elevate the production value of RevUP so that our team can focus on the attendees and the content.

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Now, back to the show.

Shomali: By now, you know what culture is, why it matters, and some steps you can take to define it for your organization.

But knowing what you want to do is only the first step. Notter points out in his Culture Change Playbook that there are six things every culture needs.

Process, structure and design, and technology are three things that aid us in building our culture. For instance, how we run our meetings, how we structure our teams, as well as our physical space, and what technology we use to support our efforts.

The next three elements are dedicated to helping us maintain culture, and that’s what we’ll focus on now. These are talent, ritual and artifacts, and stewardship.

Notter: If you’re changing culture, then you probably need to change the way you hire people, and the way you interview them, and what you ask them, the way you onboard them, the way you do performance management. Those things are going to sustain that culture that you want over time.

Shomali: Artifacts and rituals are about how you communicate culture through actual objects. For instance, hanging your association’s vision statement on the wall is a physical way for people to remember what you stand for.

And perhaps most importantly, the third way to maintain culture is to ensure stewardship.

Notter: Who in your organization is tracking to see if these plays are working? Who’s measuring to see if those plays are actually changing behaviors and changing the culture? And then who’s measuring if the culture change is actually driving better results for you? This is part of culture management.

Shomali: Okay, so one thing that the culture manager would look for is what Notter calls culture patterns, which are competing commitments inside your culture. To explain what this looks like in action, we look back at one of the most catastrophic missions in NASA history, the Columbia Disaster.

On January 16th, 2003, the shuttle launched into space seemingly without issue. But during a routine examination of launch film, engineers noticed that the shuttle experienced a foam strike during its ascent, something that had happened on previous missions. NASA engineers sought to complete a more comprehensive investigation but were denied by their managers. On February 1st, as the shuttle began its re-entry into the Earth’s atmosphere, tragedy struck and all seven astronauts on board died.

Remember, NASA engineers had concern over the foam strike. Their concerns were not prioritized. This is an example of how competing commitments, known as culture patterns, can sabotage an organization’s culture.

Notter: There was a competing commitment inside NASA’s culture. At one level, they are committed to the scientific method. These are, like, they’re literally rocket scientists, okay? Like only brain surgeons maybe could beat them, but these are rocket scientists, and they’re some of the best rocket scientists in the world. And so they’re committed to the scientific method. The scientific method is based on an assumption that what you know today is probably incomplete.

Unfortunately, they had another commitment inside their culture that they weren’t really clear on or proud of. They probably didn’t know it was in there too much. And that is in NASA, you do not challenge expertise. These are some smart people. If they say stuff, they don’t want to be challenged. And that became like escalated in their culture to the point where engineers were told, do not send a message to anyone higher than you in the hierarchy. And they had a group of engineers that were researching the foam strike, and they had grave concerns, and it never got shared with senior management. And when they asked them why not, they said, because they’re up here, and I’m down here. This is why culture management or stewardship is important for your association’s culture to succeed.

Shomali: A culture pattern your association may face is incomplete innovation. Innovation is valued, you have the words in place and some of the right behaviors, thoughts, and stuff to support that culture, but there’s also this competing commitment that makes your commitment to innovation incomplete.

Notter: The competing commitment here is that most organizations are committed to creating new value. That’s my definition of innovation, is change that unlocks new value. The competing commitment is we are equally committed to appearing competent. We want to be the ones who have good solutions, who have the right answers, and know what their stuff and are smart.

That is, and that’s a fine commitment to have, but when that gets inflated too much, it makes it hard to create the new value.

Shomali: And in enters the culture pattern of incomplete innovation. You want to think about the future, you want to create value, but you are also concerned about looking incompetent, so you don’t run experiments out of fear of failure.

Notter: By definition, some experiments have to fail for you to learn something. But we don’t like failure. We say we like failure, but then when someone fails, they get in trouble, right? Risk-taking, if you take risks, it could go badly and you would look not good. Testing new ideas, taking something that’s unfinished and showing it to members to get feedback—that makes me look bad because it’s not finished. And so we choose not to engage in these behaviors, and you cannot have innovation if you’re not doing these things.

Shomali: The result is slow growth, missed opportunities, and leaving money on the table, which Notter says leads to another long-term impact: turnover.

Notter: Top talent does not like working in organizations that leave money on the table every time. They don’t like working for organizations that are not willing to grow fast. Some of them will stay, but I don’t know for how long, and typically if they do stay, they start to check out.

Shomali: So if you were to be your association’s culture manager, be aware of culture patterns. Incomplete innovation is just one example. You want to innovate, but you also want to appear competent. So let’s talk about a solution.

Notter: Create an environment of psychological safety. Have an environment where people can say things without fear of being punished or ridiculed. Training in conflict resolution, enabling people to have difficult conversations easily, is a big piece of psychological safety.

Shomali: Here’s an example of how one association put that into practice. The National Business Aviation Association encouraged innovation and psychological safety by encouraging employees to have an annual innovation goal. According to then VP Chris Strong, the message was that his team of employees would be rewarded for all ideas, big and small. Strong says that the idea “significantly influenced our culture, how people came to view their contributions to our success, and ultimately our outcomes.” He began the idea after listening to a speaker at a publicly owned company discuss their process for innovation.

Strong: He said everyone in their organization had an annual innovation goal, and it wasn’t about past failures—you had to do something new. For them, that became an assignment, a process, not something to be turned on immediately. It usually involved a three-step process: learning about sustainability at shows, setting goals for the following year based on best practices, and avoiding overwhelming tasks.

Shomali: So there you have it, the business case for culture. Here are three takeaways from our time together today:

1. Culture drives behavior.
2. Culture is the words, behaviors, thoughts, and stuff that reinforce what is valued in your associations.
3. Culture must be continuously managed so that culture patterns, like incomplete innovation, can be identified and overcome.

Now it’s time to honestly assess your organization’s culture. Where is it currently? And where do you want it to go? What did you learn today about culture that can help you get there?

It’s likely that you fit into one of two roles: either you’re part of association leadership, or you’re a practitioner. If you’re a practitioner, you might think, “These are great ideas, but I have no control over culture—leadership sets the tone.” That’s valid, but consider what you’re being asked to do in your role. What words, actions, thoughts, and stuff could help you excel? Are any of those improvements accessible to you? Or could they be? Talk it through with your team.

If you’re an association leader, you might think, “This is too big of a task, and we are too siloed for this to work.” Start by effecting change within your own department. Set the tone, watch behavior change, and create a ripple effect throughout your entire association.

And if it all feels too overwhelming, remember that associations that focus on culture win. When asked if they’ve worked on culture, some people might say they’re thinking about it but are too busy right now—maybe in six months they’ll get to it. But imagine saying that about financial management, not checking bank accounts or doing reconciliations because you’re too busy. You wouldn’t do that because you’re committed to financial management. We need to be equally committed to culture management.

On the next episode of Association RevUP, we’ll take what you know now about culture and apply it to sales leadership with Carrie McIntyre of Navigate and Jodi Ashcraft of the American Psychological Association.

Thanks to Jamie Notter for his valuable insights into culture. We’ll be referring back to this foundation throughout the entire season. For more from Jamie, check out his new book with co-author Maddie Grant, Culture Change Made Easy: See Your Hidden Workplace Patterns and Get Unstuck.

Association RevUP is a production of the Professionals for Association Revenue. Interview content comes directly from our sessions at the annual in-person RevUP Summit Conference. If you liked today’s insights, consider joining us at RevUP24, taking place November 20th and 21st in Annapolis, Maryland. Head to revupsummit.org to register yourself and your team, and use the code PARPOD for a discount for all podcast users.

Thanks for joining me today, and I’ll see you next week.