A quick top of mind note on culture

Whenever I travel (I am now) I pay extra close attention to see if there are differences across the people I work with consistently. Not to mention, I check in with others and ask if they notice differences. Some teams keep the same standards and rhythm whether I'm in the building or not, others change.

This brings me to what my book outlines very clearly - culture is the invisible operating system of your team and it ONLY reveals itself when you're not there to manage it in real time.

Here's the simplest definition I can give you: Culture is how people behave in your absence. If, when you are gone, things don't go as well, people don't work as hard, they don't hold themselves to the same standard, they don't bring their A-game, that is the culture of the team. Not the version you see when you're standing in the room but the version that runs when nobody's checking.

This matters because you will not always be there. You'll be heads-down on something else whether it be putting out a fire or onboarding a new teammate, you'll have a week where you can't be as present. And in those windows, your team is either running on the foundation you've built or they're drifting from the standard you set.

How much they drift is how much of a gap there is between what is ideal, and what is actual.

So the question becomes: how do you actually measure something that, by definition, you're not there to see?

Here are three tactical ways to evaluate the culture of your team:

1. Track what happens when you're physically absent. Do people still show up to the office? Do they keep the same pace, or does everything slow down? If your team only performs when you're in the room, you don't have a strong culture, you have compliance. Pay attention to output, responsiveness, and presence when you're out of pocket for a few days.

2. Look at how information flows without you prompting it. Are people proactively updating you and each other, or do you have to chase them down? When something goes not as planned, does the team flag it to you? or does it sit until you discover it? A strong culture self-reports a weak one disregards issues until the manager finds them. If you find yourself constantly pulling information rather than receiving it, that's a culture gap, not a communication gap.

3. Watch how your less experienced people behave. Junior team members are the fastest mirror of your culture because they model what they see more than anyone. If your newer people are coasting, cutting corners, or going non responsive when you're away, they learned that from the environment or a lack of standards being set.

The standard you walk past or say nothing about is the standard you accept and they're watching more closely than anyone.

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