5 Basic Principles To Transform Your Corporate Culture

By Alex Zlatin, Maxim Software Systems

Emotional wellness is a term I was exposed to toward the end of last year. I was instantaneously intrigued by it and its implications on staff turnover in our company, client satisfaction, and retention.

The University of California Riverside has an amazingly accurate description of what emotional wellness is: If you are a person engaged in the process of emotional wellness, you are willing and able to:

1. Arrive at personal choices and decisions based upon the synthesis of feelings, thoughts, philosophies, and behavior.
2. Live and work independently while realizing the importance of seeking and appreciating the support and assistance of others.
3. Form interdependent relationships with others based upon a foundation of mutual commitment, trust, and respect.
4. Take on challenges, take risks, and recognize conflict as being potentially healthy.
5. Manage your life in personally rewarding ways, taking responsibility for your actions.

As we all live seven days a week — but spend at least five of them at work — it’s clear the work environment and the corporate culture at the place of employment plays a huge role in one’s emotional wellness.

We live in an era of information overload. Try searching the internet for “corporate culture” and I promise you’ll find yourself overwhelmed in no time. That is exactly what happened to me just over three years ago when I accepted the role of CEO at Maxim Software Systems.

At the time, I had already been with the company for three years in the capacity of Director of Operations and was intimately familiar with its advantages and shortcomings. As you can already guess, one of the biggest problems was the toxic environment and culture and, as the new CEO, I vowed to change that for the better. I promised myself I would replace stress with excitement, frowns with smiles, staff turnover with employees recommending their friends for jobs, and animosity with collaboration and teamwork.

It quickly became clear I would not find a readily available solution on the internet that would work for us. Having said that, what I did find there was inspiration.

In this article I’ll share five basic principles on which I based the cultural transformation I fostered for three years and still do to this day. By the end of this article, you should be able to clearly see how following these principles carries a tremendous impact to your employees’ state-of-mind, morale, and emotional wellness, on top of a substantial increase in customer satisfaction.

Slow Change Vs. Burning-The-House Approach

There are two main factors to consider when deciding on the change management approach that is better for your company:

• Impact on clients. In a “slow” approach the impact on your clients will be minimal. As changes are slow to roll out and be implemented, the clients will rarely even notice anything until further into the change process. In a “burning the house” (fast) approach, there is an extensive risk on impacting the service to your clients. This is true on a human resource level, where staff turnover is a planned activity to find the right staff and for products, services, and internal processes changes which directly affect the customers’ experience.

• Financing risk. This is only a factor if your company has a business loan through a financial institution. In that case, they require performance reviews and the ability to meet and exceed certain financial ratios. Also, organizations that provide funding are risk averse by nature and will be concerned with this type of approach. This can be detrimental to a company if the loan gets recalled.

I chose a slow and tedious change for our company to minimize the impact on our 1,300 clients, as well as to ensure the bank is happy with our plan to repay the loan and grow the company. This proved to be a good choice as we were able to pay off the loan earlier than anticipated and break the company free from its “financially crippling” situation with the bank.

Importance Of Purpose, Vision, And Core Values

When I just started my professional journey, I worked in fairly large organizations that all had a vision and core values. I remember thinking about how useless that was.

When I took the role of CEO of a 40-year-old company, I realized that one of the biggest missing pieces was a common goal. I started reading online everything there is to know about coming up with a vision and core values. Finding the information generic and too vague, I realized I shouldn’t reinvent the wheel and instead use existing core values — my personal ones.

The next stage was the vision, which was easier as all I had to do was imagine where I wanted to take the company. When it came to the purpose, the internet is an extremely misleading place. The most frustrating articles were the ones claiming to explain the difference between vision and mission/purpose; they failed miserably. I found the difference to be simple: A mission/purpose is the reason you like coming to work every day, while the vision is where you are taking the company in a perfect-world scenario.

Once I had these finalized, I presented them to the staff and, unfortunately, did not see an inspirational spark in their eyes. I immediately remembered myself as an employee and my response to the core values and vision presented to me there. It became clear that the reason I did not care about those core values or that mission was that I had not seen management or leadership behave according to them, so why should I?

And, although nice core values, they were not clearly aligned with my own. Creating those words doesn’t inspire people but watching the management and leadership team exhibit the core values throughout each day does. What I had going for me was the core values for the company were mine already. So, all I had to do was just be myself.

Transparency

In all organizations I had worked for, I encountered the same problem: A lack of “line of sight” for employees. They did work, good work, but the end result of their work was not clearly visible to them. They could not see how their daily effort contributed to the company’s success or how it brought the company closer to fulfilling its vision. I consider leadership’s ability to establish a clear “line of sight” for all employees to be the pinnacle of success. Although I am not there yet, I do practice “transparency”:

• State of the Company. Alongside our plaques of purpose, vision, and core values I’ve created another plaque with information about the company’s performance. It includes some financials such as revenue and cash increase/decrease, and some sales parameters such as attrition and new clients. It has goals and I update the stats for it every month. Countless times I was told by fellow CEOs that sharing this information is awkward and can lead to bad consequences. But, in reality, all employees can see at a glance how the company is performing and I am a true believer that this type of information sharing leads to greater employee loyalty.

• Feedback. Through my experience I found the majority of under-performing employees are not aware they are failing. Feedback is needed but is often given incorrectly. It is either given in a way as to not offend the employee, which leads to a less genuine conversation and not enough information for the employee to act on, or it is given at the time of an official performance review, which might be months away and by that time could have caused irreparable damage to the company and/or clients. I recommend giving feedback in a direct and honest way. Encourage feedback to be given to you and accept it as a steppingstone toward becoming a greater leader. Bi-directional feedback in this manner is instrumental to the success of facilitating an environment where employees feel safe and confident.

Personal Example/Leading The Change

If you think just behaving according to the core values is enough to change a culture, I can assure you it is not the case. Personal example is definitely the first step, but in order to lead the change you must have a few additional components:

• Persistence. Employees will, by default, act in the easiest way possible for them. True core values such as “Have Integrity” is not always easy. As a leader, it is imperative for you to push your team outside their comfort zone and truly behave according to the core values.
• Retrospectives. As issues are discovered, the investigation and learning process must include an understanding as to the core values that were not exhibited in the situation, as well as how true core value aligned behavior would have looked like in the discussed situation.
• Public Recognition. When staff members perform well it is crucial to share how their behavior and alignment with the core values have contributed to a positive outcome and the vision. This is not regular recognition, but a positive connection to the core values and it has a more powerful impact on the rest of the staff.

Belief

The reality is a “slow change” takes forever. In all honesty, it is never complete. You always strive for constant improvement. Throughout this journey, it is very hard to see progress at times and to justify continuing with the process.

There were many times I had thought to myself whether this effort was even worth it. I am very judgmental about myself and my decisions. I surround myself with self-doubt on a daily basis. But that is leadership in a nutshell — making decisions about something three to five years ahead based on assumptions made today. Without a mechanism of self-check and self-doubt, you will make more incorrect decisions.

It is in times of trouble and despair that a leader is needed most to inspire the team and instill the belief that this journey, although tough and long, is fruitful and beneficial for all. My recommendation for you is to never lose faith in the righteousness of your goal.

So, while making progress toward your goal, get feedback and learn more to change paths as needed. Also, to summarize this point, always believe in yourself. You are in a leadership role because someone believed you are the right person to do this. For the entrepreneurs among the readers, you once believed that you, yourself can do it, and to me, that means you will do it!

Essentially, the principals described above, have one purpose — ensure you put the right people in the right positions and provide them with the right tools to exceed client expectations. This is the goal of any good manager but especially of any good leader.

So, what is the result of this journey of ours, three years in? Honestly, I am so proud of our team that has formed. Through some staff turnover, we were able to build a team that is in-line with our mission and core values. That on its own creates happier employees. And happier employees result in loyal clients for life and an increase in revenue.

I can confidently say we have the strongest team we have ever had. This fact makes me extremely optimistic about the future, and in today’s rapidly changing environment, we are perfectly positioned to disrupt the dental industry in North America and beyond.

About The Author

Alex Zlatin is an author, speaker, and CEO of Maxim Software Systems. His company assists dentists and their staff in providing oral health to their patients through technology and expert advice. Zlatin has authored Responsible Dental Ownership – Balancing Ethics and Business Through Purpose to help dental clinic owners find their purpose and leverage it to manage their business and lead their team. He lives in Winnipeg, MB, Canada with his wife, daughter, and son. If you have any questions or would like to chat, please feel free to reach out at alex@maximsoftware.com.