“KEEPER
Definition: A person charged with responsibility for the preservation and conservation of something valuable.”
What is more valuable to an organization than its identity. And how does an organization demonstrate its identity? Through it’s culture.
As I said in Part 2 of this blog series, the Culture Keepers are the most important culture influencer in any organization. While the Culture Creators are responsible for identifying and articulating the desired culture, it’s the Culture Keepers who turn vision into reality. Without Keepers who are committed to the purpose, focused on the principles, and consistently delivering on the pay-off, your organization will never achieve it’s full potential.
So, let’s take some time to better understand who Culture Keepers are, what their responsibility is, and how you can ensure they achieve success.
CULTURE KEEPERS - WHO ARE THEY?
Culture Keepers are the people who make it possible to have an intentional culture. They are the leaders, managers, and supervisors who bring to life the Culture Print™ of the organization through systems and processes, tools and communication, and personal relationship and impact with your Culture Consumers.
Depending on the size of your organization, Culture Keepers can be everyone from a front-line supervisor or manager to a market/regional manager or team leader. In some cases, leaders could be both a Culture Creator and a Culture Keeper. For example, a Market General Manager is a Culture Creator of the sub-culture for her market and also a Culture Keeper of the overall culture for the entire organization.
CULTURE KEEPERS - WHAT IS THEIR RESPONSIBILITY?
Culture Keepers are the conduit between Culture Creators and Culture Consumers, providing a two-way flow of information and impact. From one end, expectations and direction. From the other, feedback and results. Anything that gets in the way of the free-flow of information and impact, one way or the other, will negatively impact the culture and stifle the performance of the organization.
Keepers must be fully bought-in to the overall Culture Print™ of your organization. That said, you don’t want an organization full of lemmings when it comes to your Culture Keepers. You want Keepers who bring diversity of perspective, leadership styles, and strengths and talents that will make your organization well-rounded and healthy. But be careful when seeking diversity within your organization. Diversity of perspective is vital. Diversity of belief is fatal.
“Diversity of perspective is vital. Diversity of belief is fatal.”
I’ve experienced the destructive impact of diverse belief. When an organization says it believes in and delivers one thing, but a Culture Keeper believes in and delivers something different, the result is dissonance and tension. This tension creates friction that reduces productivity, destroys morale, and ultimately diminishes performance and profitability.
On the flip side, when you have a fully aligned Culture Keeper who is engaged, empowered, and equipped, the impact for an organization is exponential. The bottom line is this: the #1 responsibility of the Culture Keeper is to ensure the culture of an organization can live, grow, and flourish to the benefit of all impacted by that culture.
CULTURE KEEPERS - HOW DO THEY ACHIEVE SUCCESS?
The first step for success for a Culture Keeper is ensuring they are the right fit in the first place. It’s nearly impossible to inspire and motivate others to support purpose and principles that aren’t aligned with your own. So, organizations must be very careful to only bring in Culture Keepers who will magnify their Culture Print and avoid those who will undermine it.
And individuals seeking a “Keeper” position with a company need to be equally careful that they are joining an organization and culture that they can support and grow. If not, they will ultimately be miserable in their job and their team and company will be miserable, too.
The next step for success for a Culture Keeper is consistent development and effective equipping. While hiring the right people is essential, the work of the organization does not end there. There must be a dedicated effort to develop the strengths of the Keepers as well as help them fully understand the desired culture you want them to keep. And with that comes ensuring your Keepers have the tools and processes they need to effectively deliver the desired culture.
Examples include: interview and hiring guides to ensure they attract and hire the right talent on their team; feedback and coaching templates and expectations to ensure they build performance based relationships and drive exceptional performance with their teams; recognition programs to honor and celebrate when their team displays key aspects of the culture or delivers outstanding results.
Again, the Culture Keeper is the conduit between the Creator and Consumer, and it’s vital that conduit is free of any friction that slows down or diminishes the desired impact, or customer experience, for the organization. Diminished impact equals diminished performance.
WHY IT MATTERS…
In the end, this all comes down to driving maximum performance and results for your organization. Great results come from employees delivering an exceptional customer experience. And that only happens when the Culture Keepers of the organization deliver an exceptional employee experience. You see…your employees learn how to care for your customers by experiencing the manner in which they are cared for.
“Your employees learn how to care for your customers by experiencing the manner in which they are cared for.”
If you want your organization to achieve its full potential, then hire the right Culture Keepers and effectively engage, empower, and equip them to deliver your unique Culture Print™ to their teams. Your Culture Consumers will thank you for it and will display that gratitude with their loyalty and their business, over and over again.
In Part 4 of Creating an Intentional Culture, I’ll take a look at those Culture Consumers, who they are (there are more than you probably realize) and how your organization can grow by delivering an exceptional employee and customer experience.
Again, I would love to hear your thoughts about the concept of culture influencers and why intentional culture matters. Leave your comments below and join the conversation.
Till next time…
By Dan Shurtz, Founder of The Culture Print
