Ways to Improve your Company's Culture in 90 Days!

I was intimately involved in the creation of the culture at Southwest Airlines during the time that they were named one of the Top Ten Places to Work in America.

I was also integral in the creation of the culture from ground zero when we built JetBlue Airways, the largest mega-startup airline in commercial aviation history. Working with those two airlines gave me a first-hand look at how legacy cultures are built and sustained.

But you don’t have to be Southwest or JetBlue to have an amazing corporate culture. Here are a few things you can do immediately to improve your culture, and by doing so, you can increase your employee engagement, reduce employee turnover, improve employee satisfaction, and boost your bottom line!

1. Have Intention around your culture

Every organization has a culture, some by design and some by default. The question you need to ask is, “What do you want your culture to look like, and what are you doing to make that happen?” By having intention around your culture, you decide, from the C-Suite level that culture is important enough in which to dedicate resources, both human capital and money. When we created JetBlue, we wrote the company’s values before we hired the first employee. We decided what kind of culture we wanted to create; we wrote what the behaviors would look like; and then we went out and hired people who could behave in alignment with those values. We created the culture from the inside out.

2. Assessment — Take a snapshot of your culture

According to the Gallup organization, 76% of executives say their organization has a defined value system that is understood and well communicated. In contrast, 31% of employees believe their organization has a defined value system that is understood and well communicated. The only way to truly understand the state of your culture is through assessment. Herb Kelleher, President, CEO, and Chairman of the Board of Southwest Airlines at the time I was there, always preached, “Don’t ask employees any question you aren’t willing to answer and fix.” Make sure you have a post-assessment plan to address the cultural issues you discover. Employees will respond well to being asked if their feedback is considered and acted upon. They will not forgive you asking and not acting.

3. Create Structure around Culture — Stop thinking about culture as an event

Casual Fridays” is not a culture. It is an event, and events will not create your culture. Events may be a result of some of the culture structures you create, but they will happen after the fact, not before. Think about culture as its own department. At Southwest Airlines, we created a Culture Committee — a collection of employees throughout the organization who represented the depth and breadth of the airline. We met quarterly to discuss the culture — what behaviors were working and what behaviors did we need to improve. Then we went back to work and implemented it. We did little things, like writing hand-written notes to passengers, thanking them for flying Southwest, to big things, like creating Flight Attendant training that allowed our employees to bring humor into their safety announcements. We created a structure around the behaviors we wanted to see happening every day.

4. Define Behaviors

Culture is a collection of the behaviors of the people within an organization. I have mentioned the word “behaviors” many times. The key to culture is behaviors. Identify the behaviors you want to see happening in your organization every day. and then create a system around those behaviors. Hire to them. Train to them. Promote to them. Reward and recognize to them. Your culture will take shape around those behaviors, and the behaviors you don’t want to see will be choked out by those you illuminate.

5. Make it fun

Cultural fitness is akin to physical fitness. It is a process that takes time and you never truly arrive; you just continue to build and grow. Given that it will take time and energy, it is important to incorporate fun into the process so employees don’t grow weary. Gain employee engagement by asking for employees to participate. Culture is not the responsibility of leadership alone. The collective behaviors of the organization are owned by all and are best enhanced when all are involved in their care. If employees can have fun while helping improve their culture, they will generally give more than you would have ever asked of them.

Culture is a collection of the behaviors of the people within the organization. Get them all on board in understanding their importance, and your culture will thrive!