Your Culture Needs Work

My friend Jenni travels by plane for her work. Interestingly, she has experienced more travel disruptions in the last year than I have in my lifetime.

I genuinely think she should start a travel vlog chronicling her unique delays and experiences.

At the time of writing this newsletter, she shared her latest: “First flight of the year for me…Pilot just said, ‘We’re waiting on the mechanic to come look at something..”

Three hours later, she shared, “Take 2. ‘Deplaned and reboarded on another aircraft…”

One might think she has the Midas touch because, as she has explained, it's not restricted to one airline; she has run the lot, and they all have given her tremendous content for her fictitious travel vlog.

Culture

One might find it challenging to transition from discussing travel woes to organizational culture, yet as the famous saying goes…”Hold my beer!”

Far too many organizations see culture as an afterthought.  Believing Culture is what shows up after periods of effort and results.  It's the culmination of years of “how we do things around here” becoming a codification of how work gets done and not entirely intentional.

So many leaders fall into the trap of “build the plane as we fly it” regarding culture.

Waiting until the plane is loaded, passengers excited to start their journey, all settled in making nice with their row mates, deciding who gets to use the armrests and such, everyone with their noise-canceling headphones on…. Then the announcement comes. “Oh, sorry for the delay; we need to install brakes.” (Side note: I intend to share real-life stories; this brake one was a reality per Jenni.)

I've experienced this happen in two ways.

The first is when an entrepreneur starts a new endeavor.  They usually have a personal code of values and ethics, and their experience level determines how vocal they are about these navigational beacons of business.

Novel entrepreneurs are usually full of excitement and drive and less encumbered by things such as expressing their values.  They accept clients who hire them or buy their products, not always those who embrace the same business ethics or values.

These entrepreneurs hire contractors or employees who are their friends, former co-workers, or random Fiverr service providers based on price and availability.

They build the plane with any and all spare parts they can find, often rationalizing, “We don't need oxygen masks. I've flown for thirty-plus years and have never needed them, much less seen them fall from the ceiling.”

But like a value set expressed, identified, and encouraged, you often don't know what you need until you need it.

Those are the newbies.  I have lived that in 3 different endeavors.  Try as you might, it's hard to turn away business and income, even though the client has already beaten you up on price and made the bidding process more painful than a TSA full-body search. Future culture be damned.  We don't need brakes; use the wing flaps!

The Other Side

As I mentioned in the previous section, there are two types of “build it as you fly culture creators.” First, the new endeavors and then the take-overs.

The Take-Overs are leaders thrust into the role.  The other person gets promoted, and you're up!  Or the previous generation has finally passed the baton, and you're off to the races.  Or they are brought in to fix what the other guy broke!

I've been this guy, too. You know how and what needs fixing, but you're unsure what to start with.  The lavatory door or the overhead bin that won't stay shut. (I've seen duct tape and an experienced pilot avert a significant disaster with this simple fix.)

The lavatory and overhead bins are functional pieces of the operation, but they aren’t as important as seat belts, oxygen masks, or doors, right?!

“Ah, we can make this 45-minute flight and fix it when we have time…”

Therein lies the main challenge; we’ll fix it when we have time.

So many organizations are safe flying planes, yet there is nowhere to put your bags, and the “occupied lavatory” light stays illuminated indefinitely—so much so that it becomes the culture.  

The other difficulty the take-over leader faces is adjusting the culture to create a better atmosphere, yet not losing what was good from before and not causing significant disruption.

We see this happening right now in Washington, D.C. Whether we like it or not, we are experiencing a real-time overhaul of political and governmental culture.

Find your Seat

So how do we do it?  How do we create a framework to help our teams grow, thrive, and become unstoppable?

Jenni Catron shares three critical building blocks for a healthy, successful organization.  

There is a clear sense of purpose, a great strategy to achieve that purpose, and the people to do so. The people are the lynchpin between purpose and strategy.

While it's simple to recognize the blocks, like 13A, is not 13D, yet so many people get those seats confused!  The A seat is always a window on the left side when looking at the nose (port side).  But sometimes, D is an aisle seat and sometimes a starboard window seat.   Goodness!!  I see why we need a framework.

Jenni created one of those, too: the LeadCulture Framework. She discusses it in great detail in her book Culture Matters. You can also attend the IDL Summit 2025 in Spokane on May 7 and 8, walk through the framework with her, and get the book too.

Let me give you a sneak peek.

Here are the 5 Phases.

1. Assess

   • Getting Clear on Your Culture

   • Getting Feedback

2. Define

   • Clarifying Who You Are

   • Identifying the Gaps in Employee Needs

   • Clarifying How You Work Together

   • Creating Clarity Builds Trust

3. Build

   • Creating Rhythms that Protect Your Culture

4. Equip

   • Equipping Your Team

   • Equipping Your Leaders

5. Commit

   • Maintaining Momentum

That's the outline.  It is not enough to build a plane, but it is a place to start.

Using Jenni’s building blocks, we board a plane with a predetermined destination (our purpose), the flight plan we need to get there (strategy), and a pilot (people) to direct the plane. Yet, the plane's and its crew's functionality (culture) greatly determines when or how we will reach our destination.

Don’t rely on building or fixing the plane while in flight; do it long before you put people in their seats.  The entire journey will be more enjoyable and a lot less taxing.

Summit

As I alluded to a bit higher on the page, Jenni will be one of the keynote speakers at the Impact Driven Leader Summit 2025, which will take place on May 7 and 8 in Spokane, WA.  

I'm excited for her to grace the stage and share her valuable insights about the intersection of leadership and culture.

For those of you who attended last year, you know the value speakers at the IDL Summit bring, and Jenni will do just that for you.

As a kick-off to promoting this event, you can reserve your seat for less than the price of a plane ticket. This offer is limited to the first 20 seats, so get it locked in now.

I can't wait to see you in May!

Did you catch this podcast? If not, listen to it here.